The top of the Rangers lineup has punished AL pitching all year. The league figured it might be nice of them to do that to NL pitchers in the All-Star game. The first four hitters in the Rangers' lineup were selected Sunday for the July 15 game at Yankee Stadium in New York: 2B Ian Kinsler, SS Michael Young, CF Josh Hamilton and DH Milton Bradley. Hamilton will start. The others were all selected as backups by the platers. The Rangers have had as many as four players chosen for the team on five previous occasions. The club sent a team-record of five players to the 2004 game in Houston. A look at the quartet after the jump: • CF Josh Hamilton: Hamilton, 27, will start, but probably in right field. No Ranger has ever played center field in the All-Star Game and with Ichiro Suzuki on the team, it's not likely that Hamilton will break that streak. Hamilton entered Sunday leading the majors in RBIs with 83, the second highest total by a Ranger before the All-Star game. He added to that total with a run-scoring single in the third. After leading the AL in home runs for most of the season, a recent lull dropped him into a tie for second with 19. He also ranked fifth in slugging (.544), eighth in on-base-plus slugging (.912). • 2B Ian Kinsler: Kinsler, 26, becomes the third Rangers second baseman to make the team following Julio Franco (1989-91) and Alfonso Soriano (2004-05). He has his work cut out for him in matching their All-Star ac ...
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