ARLINGTON Greg Luzinski Jersey , Texas (AP) — ct or an engineer. He also had what he thought was a far-fetched dream of playing professional baseball.The kid from California who was a 54th-round draft pick and went on to play 12 major league seasons as a utility infielder for five teams is now the manager of one of the youngest teams in the majors. The Texas Rangers formally introduced Woodward as their new manager Monday, two days after hiring the Los Angeles Dodgers third base coach.“I share a common bond with most Rangers fans right now. This has actually taken away the sting of losing two World Series in a row,” Woodward said. “A lot of Rangers fans, obviously I feel your pain, it’s real, I get it. … I know how to get to the World Series. I’m going to instill a philosophy and a belief and a process in place to get us to that point.”Woodward’s introduction as a first-time big league manager came just more than a week after the Dodgers lost in the World Series for the second year in a row. Texas had been the last team to do that, in 2010 and 2011.The Rangers are coming off consecutive losing seasons for the first time since 2005-08. They lost 95 games this year when the focus turned the development of younger players — seven position players 25 or younger played at least 106 games.“Ideally what we’re putting in place here is the beginning of the foundation of a championship belief and culture,” Woodward said. “I don’t know how many wins we’re going to have next year but that championship belief, I believe, is powerful and it’s important to instill in these younger players now.”General manager Jon Daniels described the 42-year-old Woodward as an “energetic, winning manager to help us drive the culture here at the major league level. We’re all going to grow together, we’re all going to win together.”Daniels said the Rangers met with or spoke by phone with about 15 candidates after Jeff Banister was fired Sept. 21. Texas won AL West titles in Banister’s first two seasons (2014 and 2015).As a player, Woodward spent parts of 12 seasons (1999-2011) with Toronto, the New York Mets, Seattle, Atlanta and Boston. He hit .239 with 33 home runs and 191 RBIs while playing every position except pitcher and catcher. Woodward said he played for 11 different managers during his career, several of them first-year managers. He also played for Bobby Cox one season in Atlanta.His coaching career began as a minor league infield coordinator for the Mariners in 2013 and he joined their big league staff later that year. He spent the past three seasons on Dave Roberts’ staff in Los Angeles.Woodward said he wants to create a culture where players can learn and grow every single day. He said that is what he will place the most value on moving forward.“Process is a big one for me, I don’t like to think of results,” he said. “I think young kids, young players nowadays http://www.philliesfanproshop.com/authentic-pat-neshek-jersey , they get caught up in results. … I want to drive home the process that’s going to get them the results.”Woodward said he had to fight every day as a “very average, probably below average” player and has always had that same kind of energy as a coach. He said it important to relate that to players.The new manager will wear No. 8, and donned that jersey Monday for the first time in the big leagues. Yes, he was a fan of Cal Ripken Jr. growing up. But that was also the number of Woodward’s high school coach Tom Quinley, a Yankees fan who revered Yogi Berra (who also wore No. 8).“He passed away this past season, and it was very emotional for me,” Woodward said. “He took the role of many things for me, obviously as a mentor, as a father figure. He did everything for me. I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for him. … It’s pretty special to me, and obviously in honor of him.” Lots of news about former Royals today"Don’t have anything from the current Royals to headline today, but lots of news about former Royals.Jay Jaffe looks at former Royal Greg Holland’s recent career path and new contract. Does he get some sort of secret Royals medal for how poorly he pitched for the Cards last year?Also at Fangraphs, Craig Edwards mentions some former Royals (Chavez, Volquez) who are going to Texas as part of building their 2019 team on the backs of budget free agents:Jonah Keri at CBS, talks about the “Zobristification of baseball”.Notice how one of Ben’s former teams, the one where he filled in for an injured Alex Gordon in the OF in the regular season and then 2B in the playoffs, is conspicuously absent. C’mon, Jonah!Bill Baer of NBC Sports talks to Peter Moylan about the difficulties of not having a job going into Spring Training.After some slow weeks, lots coming from the Fansided network :KOK’s Chase Jones provides “Ryan O’Hearn analysis and preview for 2019”Also at KOK, Bradley Porter gives “Reasons to be excited for 2019”Again at KOK, Morgan Vogels does an “Offseason Prospect Watch (for) Scott Blewett”Cullen Jenkel at KC Kingdom slideshow lists “Kansas City Royals: Four reasons Whit Merrifield’s extension good for Royals”Finally Mitch Williams Jersey , guest writer Jan Doggush gives his take on why “Whit Merrifield should be a Royal for life”On that note... we have a policy at Best of Royals Review (TM) to not use the material of current writers (except the lead Kevin, Max, is fair game).But since OMD has been around forever (and we wanted to pick someone other than Will), we’re going to ignore that rule today:Mike Moustakas: A Minor-league Odyssey CommencesIt sounds silly to say it, but RoyalsReview has a fairly rich literary history for a blog.Frequently, there are ballads, poems, and breaking news about antiquarian book stores. In May of 2014, Mike Moustakas was hitting .152/.223/.320 and was demoted to Omaha (on the same day Max became EIC). Duggan captures the moment so beautifully: “the 25-year-old Greco-Californian”, the coffee cup with “Frank” on it, and “Moustakas closes his mouth in bewilderment” are just some of the gems in this story.HE NEEDS TO FINISH THIS. Ahem... I mean, enjoy this literary masterpiece.I think it’s been a few weeks since we’ve had multiple listicles.Why not today?David Schoenfield of ESPN “Ranking the worst current contracts on all 30 teams”Mike Axisa of CBS Sports lists “Top remaining needs and possible targets for all 30 teams as spring training approaches”Jonah Keri lists “MLB’s best player at each uniform number”.Royals notes below:Going a little off the beaten path these next two entries. So a couple of weeks ago, I missed my regularly scheduled rumblings.I took a little road trip to San Antonio for the PAX South gaming convention. On the main expo floor are companies, large and small, hawking their wares. For instance, promoting a new HD remake of Resident Evil 2, Capcom’s booth was, more or less, a recreation of Raccoon City replete with ambiance generators that included a full sized police car covered with zombie body parts. That said, I decided not to wait in the 2+ hour line for some RE swag. But smaller companies had more modest booths and were more approachable. It’s a very popular show for indie developers Dave Cash Jersey , both to show their games and recruit talent. Along with the trade show floor, there are a number of panels about, among other things, game development and getting into the industry.For instance, a few years ago when I went, Sid Meier had a forum and, this time, God of War director Cory Barlog had a session about how he got to where he was in the industry.There are a substantial number of people looking to do just that.For the indie games, there appear to be a couple of popular approaches. The first is the “Game type X” meets “Game Type Y” mashup. At the booth for a company called Kitfox, a friend of mine played a game called “Boyfriend Dungeon” which was a hack-and-slash Diablo-style game crossed with a Japanese dating sim. Meanwhile, I played a game called “The Shrouded Isle” where you play the high priest for a demon who is returning to the world. It’s a resource management sim around Victorian-era human sacrifices where you have to put the right villagers in charge of building your cult, sacrifice those who fail, and purge the unbelievers from your town. The second is to take a type of game, say a tactical shooter or sports game, and try to do it in a way that is different: a unique way of controlling the shooter because it’s in space or emphasize the management aspect of the sports sim (ala OOTP).Today’s game fits into this category.Berzerk Studio had a simple but incredibly popular booth.People were just playing their game on a 60” screen with music thumping. That game features today’s song of the day: Just Shapes and Beats.It is literally what it says it is: beats and shapes.You (and up to 3 of your friends) are little geometric shapes that try to dodge other shapes on screen that are formed in time to music. In looking at reviews of this game on Steam, where it’s quite well received, it fits into a sub-genre of games aptly called “bullet hell”. Some of the level designs are better than others but the overall package is extremely good. There are a few where the difficulty level really ramps up, especially the boss levels, but there’s a casual mode that doubles your life and even my poor reflexes could rock through the game in a few hours.The story is simple but a great example of visual storytelling: there are no words, just shapes and music.It’s such a simple premise: there’s a bad shape guy corrupting the world for the peaceful little good guy shapes and you have to help save it.If you play through the game up to “Close to Me” and it doesn’t get you http://www.philliesfanproshop.com/authentic-pat-neshek-jersey , just a little, I’m not sure you have a heart.It’s a pretty cool accomplishment for cute little shapes that look like they belong on my toddler’s toys.My experience burned incredibly hot and fast: the story mode is only 3-5 hours long (or 1.5 hours if you splice together a no-hit video of the entire story), depending on your reflexes and replays, and I doubt I’ll play it much more except in social settings, but it’s an incredibly fun few hours.What’s really going to last for me, beyond the memories of seeing this as PAX and playing it with my wife, is the soundtrack.I’m not into electronica or, apparently, chiptune and EDM, which is what they call it in their game description.For the record: I’m sure those are accurate terms, I just haven’t paid much attention to music since the late 90s so it’s all new to me.I’ve already downloaded a number of the tracks from this game and you’ll be seeing more in this space in the future.Rather than going with some of my favorite tracks, today, we’re just going with the first level as it plays out like a tutorial and you can see what the gameplay is like.Also, if you want to try it out before buying, there’s even a downloadable demo on the Switch.