It’s been two days since the Texas Rangers wrapped up their first ever postseaon series win. Rangers fans though are still reveling in the team’s historic accomplishment as the team prepares to begin its best-of-seven series with the defending World Series champion New York Yankees on Friday night.
The prospect of facing the Yankees in postseason play used to give Rangers’ fans nightmares. It may still, but the Rangers did fare well against the Yankees during the regular season. Rangers’ manager Ron Washington feels like his team can beat anybody on any given day when they’re executing well. Washington joined Galloway & Company on ESPN Radio in Dallas following the team’s convincing Game 5 victory against Tampa to talk about winning a postseason series for the first time in franchise history, the performance of ace starting pitcher Cliff Lee, and of course, the work still to be done in the next round.
On winning this series after everything the team went through this year:
"I am very thankful. You couldn’t write a better script. We decided we wanted to be something during spring training and we went out there and did whatever had to be done to make it come to fruition. We’re in a good place right now, we’re very pleased where we are, but it’s not over with yet."
On how important it was to play well against the Yankees earlier this year:
"Yeah, well that gave us incentive to know that we can play with those guys. We have to eliminate putting those guys on the bag, we have to eliminate turning that lineup over because that is a very educated lineup, that’s a very professional lineup, and it’s a very wise lineup. We’ve just got to make sure that we make them earn everything that they get. If we do that, we will be in every ballgame and when you’re in a ballgame you have just as much of an opportunity to win it as everyone else. We’re just gonna go out there, we’re gonna get focused on what we can do, we’re gonna make sure we try to limit the opportunities that we give to them and everything that they earn is acceptable."