NEW YORK — “Even though I am French, I cannot think of one of these pictures being painted in France. Every one of these pictures is American, from New York.  I love this city, its clean-cut look, its sky, its buildings, its scientific, cruel, romantic quality.” — Louise Bourgeois

That quote is printed on a blue wall in the Bourgeois display at The Met, where I spent Friday afternoon after the first of two Rangers-Yankees rainouts was announced. By the time we all reconvened before Sunday’s doubleheader, everyone had stories of how they had kept themselves occupied. Nathaniel Lowe saw “The Lion King.” Chris Woodward saw “Mrs. Doubtfire.”

Me? I got a tour of The Met from The Athletic’s resident museum connoisseur.

One of the displays was an entire room dedicated to Louise Bourgeois, which is where I discovered the quote above. The reason it stuck out to me: Almost directly across from where those words are writ large on a wall between two works of art, there hangs another series of Bourgeois’ paintings — abstractions in the general shape of guillotines.

To borrow the vocal inflection of another famous New Yorker: Could they be more French?

It would be comical if it weren’t so irksome, this human inability to see ourselves as we truly are. We require other perspectives to get closer to the whole picture, even as the picture changes with age. Those outside perspectives alone are not the entire picture either. One of the trickier balancing acts of the human experience is the attempt to hold fast to your core beliefs while allowing space to learn from others with insight, while also filtering out the inaccurate views of others, all the while trying to recognize and remember that they are autonomous adults, and allowed to perceive you however they want — even if they are wildly incorrect!

So naturally, this got me thinking about baseball. It is played by humans, after all. By the time players make it to the big leagues, they have usually done the broad strokes as to what kind of player they’re going to be: a power pitcher, a crafty middle reliever, a three-true-outcomes machine, an on-base pest. But the fine-tuning never stops. The input from coaches, the slight adaption of a batting stance, or an overhaul of a slider. On and on it will go, hopefully forever.

And you and I will sit in the press box, or the stands, or at home watching on television, and we will — to varying degrees of accuracy — perceive the players, coaches and front office members that make up the team. And I will certainly think some baseball version of, “Boy, that sure looks French to me, but what do I know?”

I wrote that entire intro before the end of the first game of Sunday’s doubleheader, but it ended up being pretty apt. After the game, which the Rangers lost 2-1 on a Gleyber Torres walk-off home run, manager Chris Woodward said the words, “That’s an easy out in 99 percent of ballparks. … He just happened to hit it in a Little League ballpark to right field,” as part of his postgame comments.

If you didn’t know Woodward and couldn’t detect the dry/wry humor in his intent, it wouldn’t be difficult to think that he was legitimately whining about the stadium — blaming it for the loss. If he had been, that would have been very newsworthy.

He didn’t mean that literally. But more than a few members of the New York media took it that way, and by the time the second game (a 4-2 Rangers win that featured a “Little League” home run by Eli White to nearly the same spot), Woodward was trending on Twitter.

“It was a joke,” he said shaking his head slightly. “Listen, I love this place. This is like one of the cathedrals in all of sports. It’s obviously — everybody knows it’s got a short right field. It was more of a joke than anything (laughing). We hit one of our own in this (second) game, so I guess karma’s funny that way. But no, I love this place; it’s a beautiful ballpark.”

I did not expect the phrase “… remember that they are autonomous adults, and allowed to perceive you however they want — even if they are wildly incorrect!” to be so relevant so soon.

Between the two previously scheduled days off on either side of the two-game series in Philadelphia and the rainouts on Friday and Saturday, Woodward was presented with quite a dichotomy in regards to his starting rotation.

On one hand, by the time the rain cleared out and play began on Sunday, he had starting pitchers — Dane Dunning and Glenn Otto — who were pitching on seven and 10 days of rest, respectively. Taylor Hearn, who was on six days of rest by this point, was made available out of the bullpen; he did not appear in either game but is still available for Monday’s series finale.

Jon Gray and Martín Pérez both pitched against the Phillies, so Monday and Tuesday shouldn’t be too weird, but if Hearn does make an appearance out of the bullpen on Sunday, Wednesday would be too soon to come back and start a game. So, Woodward said, the Rangers will probably need a spot starter from Triple-A Round Rock, likely Kolby Allard or A.J. Alexy. Spencer Howard is not an option; a bout with food poisoning caused him to miss his last start, so he’s still not stretched out to a full starter’s workload.

Speaking of the rotation, it’s been … pretty good? 

Just as nobody predicted, the Rangers have been in an extended stretch where the starting pitching has been a little better than the offense. Before the split doubleheader, the team had won four games in a row over the Braves and Phillies. Since (and including) the infamous “Why didn’t Woodward let Martín Pérez go longer than seven innings?” game, Rangers starters have averaged 5 1/3 innings per start with just 1.38 runs on 3.13 hits per start. That includes April 29, when Spencer Howard was the “starter” following opener Garrett Richards and only lasted 1 2/3 innings.

The two stars of the rotation have been Pérez and Dunning. In Pérez’s last two starts, he has combined to pitch 14 innings and allow just one run on six hits, walking four and striking out eight. For Dunning, the numbers are similar: 13 2/3 innings, two earned runs on six hits with three walks and 12 strikeouts.

Alas, the offense has been in something of a funk, ranking 20th or lower in runs scored, batting average, home runs and walks drawn. They are, however striking out a lot less. Before Sunday’s 13-K game against Gerrit Cole, they ranked second in the league with only 185 strikeouts.

Ibáñez has played better defense at third base this year

On Sunday, it was brought to Woodward’s attention that Andy Ibáñez was climbing the leaderboards in a number of defensive categories. Not bad for a guy whose arrival in the big leagues was dependent on his ability to be something other than a designated hitter. Ibáñez showed marked improvement last year — his throws in spring training in 2021 were perpetually adventurous, but by year’s end, he seemed more at ease making throws.

This spring, Ibáñez was again asked to improve his defense. He worked with both Adrián Beltré and Michael Young when the two were in camp. And thus far, the results have been encouraging. Coming into the doubleheader, Ibáñez had already accrued four DRS (Defensive Runs Saved) at the position, good for a four-way tie for second place among all third basemen in baseball, ahead of such players as Bobby Witt Jr., Josh Donaldson and Manny Machado, and tied with Nolan Arenado — despite having played fewer innings at the position than any of them.

Remember: DRS is a cumulative stat (like home runs), not one that can be gamed by a small sample (like ERA or batting average). Ibáñez has been good at third base.

“It’s not surprising, just watching,” Woodward said. “I know sometimes it’s hard to shed a (reputation) when you’re labeled as ‘not a great defensive player.’ It’s really hard to shed that. And there’s some bad defenders in the big leagues that are still labeled as good defenders because they’ve always been labeled as that. And that’s unfair to some guys like Andy who — you can get better defensively. I’ve seen it when guys come into the big leagues: ‘Oh, this guy’s terrible shortstop.’ And then he works his ass off and becomes a good one. And there’s still some (who say) ‘Ah, he’s not a good defender. Never has been.’ Oh, really?  … I’m proud of him. He put a lot of work in to be good over there. And he still works at it.”

Shortly after getting the vote of confidence from his manager, Ibáñez took the field as the first baseman in the first game of the doubleheader. He started well — making a nice pick at first base, then pulling off a nifty unassisted double play — but he also made two errors. Neither one led directly to a run, but they probably did cost Dunning an inning’s worth of pitches.

Leody Taveras is 6-for-20 for Round Rock in the six games since the last one of these, with a double, a triple, four walks and eight strikeouts. Those walks are perhaps the most encouraging part of the equation — before this week, Taveras had just two walks this season.

For the season, his line is now at .362/.393/.600 (.993 OPS) with six walks and 27 strikeouts in 105 at-bats. You’d probably still like to see the strikeouts come down a bit, but the hot start hasn’t faded much. Of note, in Sunday’s game in Reno, Taveras was removed from the game after three at-bats. Team officials were able to confirm to The Athletic that he was not removed for injury, nor was he being called up. “Manager’s decision” was the verdict.

Whilst in Philadelphia, I met up with one of our regular readers there (hi, Adam!) for coffee. After the incident two weeks ago when I was bailed out in Oakland by a card I’d been using as a bookmark, he wanted to make sure I wasn’t cardless on the road again. I’ve always really liked the 1991 Fleer design, because it seems like a situation where someone hated their job and thought, “What’s something that would definitely get me fired? Yeah. All-yellow should do it.”

It’s the same energy as the rumors of Elvis Presley insisting on adding the vocal trills to “Blue Christmas” or Jonny Greenwood doing the heavily distorted chuh-chug! chuh-chug! guitar hits at the beginning of the chorus of “Creep.” In both instances, the additions were allegedly intended to sabotage songs the artist hated, only for those things to become signature traits of the song.

The All-Universe inserts were such a joy in 1991. Here we were, looking at this goofy sea of yellow weirdness and then out would pop a sleek black border around a portrait of a player set against a fun backdrop — in this case, IN SPACE. The only thing that could have been cooler to me at age 11 would have been if they had made a card with a pitcher’s glove on fire, or I don’t know, maybe one where lightning was striking a player’s bat.

I don’t know for sure if this insert set was a response to the Diamond Kings series at Donruss, but if so, Fleer [holding Fleer’s squishy cheeks in my palms]. Baby, you did it. You beautiful, horrifyingly weird card design, you did it.

I once created a playlist called “Phoebe Bridgers songs that are just OK” and the joke is that the playlist is empty. Here, she covers a classic Metallica song in a completely haunting manner, as part of the Metallica Blacklist, a project in which dozens of artists cover songs from The Black Album. It’s an interesting project because multiple artists cover the same songs (this is one of 12 versions of “Nothing Else Matters,” for instance).

Want to hear every song we’ve featured? There’s a playlist.

OK, this is not a particularly great photograph, but it was the one I’ve sent to the most people this week: This coat, on display at The Met, is the one that Abraham Lincoln was wearing when he was assassinated. It was a very bizarre feeling to see an artifact from such a historically significant moment. I saw about a million things on Friday, but this is the one that stuck with me the most. You can read more about the coat’s history here.

 (Photo of Ibáñez: Seth Wenig / Associated Press)