COMMENTARY

Rangers embracing Year of Napoli

— The Texas Rangers’ No. 7 hitter carried the team through the American League Championship Series.

Their new No. 8 hitter is doing all he can to power this team to its first World Series triumph.

Mike Napoli, whose three-run home run was huge in support of Derek Holland in Game 4 on Sunday night, ripped a two-run double to right-center in the eighth to break a tie game and a tied World Series on Monday night.

Napoli scored Michael Young with the go-ahead run, and Nelson Cruz — the ALCS hero — for insurance in a 4-2 victory that puts the Rangers one victory from capturing the World Series.

World Series champions ... the Rangers aren’t there yet, but they are two victories closer than they came a year ago when Napoli, not coincidentally, was a Los Angeles Angel.

Apparently, Tampa Bay Manager Joe Maddon was ahead of his time. It was after Napoli’s Game 3 home run in the American League Division Series that Maddon said, “It’s the Year of the Napoli.”

Back then Napoli was merely a first-round star. What he accomplished at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington the last two games goes far beyond not only that big first-round blow against the Rays, but also the 30 home runs and .320 batting average he put together this season.

The credit starts with General Manager Jon Daniels, who wasn’t going to be able to get Napoli directly from the division-rival Angels last winter but acquired him through Toronto for reliever Frankie Francisco instead.

Then it goes to Manager Ron Washington. Knowing how Cardinals Manager Tony La Russa loves to work his bullpen for favorable matchups, Washington needed to split up David Murphy and Mitch Moreland down at the bottom of the batting order. That would prevent La Russa from using left-hander Mark Rzepczynski against the back-to-back left-handers.

So Napoli, who was hitting sixth in front of Cruz during the ALCS, found himself deposited in the No. 8 spot for Game 4. It’s not usually a position on the lineup card left to a man whose OPS (on base plus slugging) was over 1.000 for the season and best on the team.

Doesn’t matter. Napoli just goes up whenever his name is called and takes his whacks.

Sometimes those whacks rub opponents the wrong way. When Cardinals starter Chris Carpenter retired Napoli on a warning track fly to center with two runners aboard in the sixth, Carpenter was shown by the Fox cameras shouting an obscenity in Napoli’s direction.

That didn’t matter, either. Napoli would get another turn to break open a 2-2 game in which the Cardinals had squandered all kinds of opportunities while the Rangers were riding on the home runs of Moreland and Adrian Beltre.

It came in the last of the eighth, and it came against the left-handed reliever Rzepczynski, who had failed to handle Murphy’s grounder back through the middle, loading the bases with one out.

With the score 2-2, a sacrifice fly would have done the trick. Napoli went one better, which should be expected by now. He drove a 1-1 pitch hard into the right-center field gap to score two runs.

The Rangers have turned this World Series back in their favor with 4-0 and 4-2 victories. They aren’t the kind of slugfests one might have expected the Rangers to need to get this close to their first championship.

But it has been a power show from Napoli, anyway, as he has driven in five of the eight runs in Games 4 and 5.

Just to make sure no one viewed him as a one-tool player, Napoli’s defense has been stellar. He handled Holland’s two-hitter in Game 4, and in the ninth inning of Game 5 he combined with closer Neftali Feliz on the old “strike ’em out, throw ’em out” double play to keep the Cardinals from rallying to tie.

He even finished the game with a flare as Lance Berkman struck out, but the ball glanced off Napoli’s shin guard and rolled almost all the way to the first base coach’s box before he retrieved it and flipped to Moreland for the final out.

It was the last out to be made in Arlington this October. The Rangers go to St. Louis with two chances to wrap up their first championship.

Forty years of Rangers baseball. One Year of the Napoli.

Sports, Pages 24 on 10/26/2011

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