Mitch Moreland Hits Walk-Off Homerun to Lead Texas Rangers Past the Houston Astros

The Texas Rangers clinched the series against the Houston Astros in exciting fashion last night. The Rangers defeated the Astros 5-4 in 11 innings.

In an uncharacteristically poor home start for C.J. Wilson, the Rangers were able to have enough big hits to still win. Wilson went 6 2/3^rd innings and gave up 4 runs on 11 hits. There seemed to be some rollover from his last start where he threw a career high 129 pitches against the New York Yankees.

Reliever Yoshinori Tateyama (Seen Right) got his first win on the mound with the Rangers after coming over from the Japanese League. Tateyama has appeared in 14 games with the Rangers and has accumulated a 3.52 ERA while giving up 6 earned runs this season.

Jordan Lyles, who at 20 is the youngest player in the majors, was on the mound for the Astros. He allowed three runs and seven hits and struck out six in seven innings of work.

The scores for the Rangers all came from big hits with Michael Young, Nelson Cruz, Josh Hamilton and Mitch Moreland all hitting solo home runs to keep the Rangers in the game.

Hamilton continues to excel over his last 17 games against the National League, not counting the World Series, he is 36 for 75 a .480 batting average with six homers and 21 RBIs.

After not leading for the entire game, Moreland hit the walk-off home run in the 11^th on the first pitch and it couldn’t have come at a better time. A bad storm was rolling in and it looked as if the game didn’t end when it did then the game would have been drug out much longer or delayed altogether to today.

Shortstop Elvis Andrus and 3rd Baseman Adrian Beltre were the only Rangers not to record a hit.

The Rangers clinch the series with the win.

Other Game Notes:

The Texas rangers set a world record at the game. Upon entering the ballpark all 33,533 fans were given a pair of sunglasses and at the end of the 6th inning they were all asked to put them on. This sets a record for the most people wearing sunglasses in the dark.  One of the more notable fans in attendance was former President George W. Bush who was shown during the event to be wearing his sunglasses, which was greeted with a big cheer from the crowd. A Guinness Book of World Records representative was there to verify the feat.