Friday morning, Travis Metcalf was sitting in the batting cages in San Antonio, preparing for another ho-hum day as a Double-A ballplayer.

By sundown, he’d taken a 31â2-hour bus ride to Houston – mostly spent staring silently out the window – dressed for three innings as a certified big-leaguer and capped his night waiting for bags to arrive at the Four Seasons Hotel.

During batting practice with his Frisco (Texas) RoughRiders teammates, Metcalf learned he had been promoted past Triple-A as the newest member of the Texas Rangers.

“It seems like everyone found out before I even knew,” said Metcalf, who turned his freshly charged cell phone on to leaf through nearly 40 text messages and an earful of voicemails.

The roster move was made early Friday after it was reported that Texas’ two-time All-Star third baseman, Hank Blalock, would miss 10-12 weeks due to impending surgery to remove a rib.

Metcalf, who in 2005 was the Rangers’ minor-league Player of the Year, through 38 games this year with Frisco had been hitting .294 with 11 doubles, six home runs and a team-high 25 RBIs.

In a three-year career at KU from 2002-04, Metcalf set the Jayhawks’ single-season home run record with 18 as a junior. His 29 bombs in his Jayhawk career are also a school record, which no current player has a legitimate shot of touching. Following his record-setting junior campaign, the Rangers took the Wamego native in the 11th round of the amateur draft.

Metcalf was not surprised to leapfrog Triple-A.

“I know they’ve had some stuff happen, and I heard about Hank, and I was thinking like a Triple-A call-up,” he said. “But they always told me there was no need to go to Triple-A as long as I could handle stuff (in Double-A).”

Taking care of business was easier said than done for Metcalf in 2006, following his award-winning season the previous year.

After being promoted to the Texas League from Single-A Bakersfield, his batting average dipped to .221, and another Ranger farmhand, John Whittleman, had jumped him as the organization’s top hot corner prospect.

“Basically it was just adjustments all around,” he said of his struggles. “I went into a slump, and it seemed like everyone was trying to fix me. But I know my swing the best.”

And after self-improvement at the dish, now he’s preparing for his first full day as a major-leaguer, having been given his uniform and a handful of congrats from Ranger veterans such as Kevin Millwood and Michael Young.

Metcalf’s family will make the flight to Houston tonight for the game, the second in a three-day interleague series with the Astros. The right-handed Metcalf could get his first major-league start tonight, with Houston trotting lefty Wandy Rodriguez out to the mound.

“I’m just taking it as, I’m going to get called up, prove myself and play,” he said. “And hopefully put up a couple of numbers while I’m here.”