Wow did you guys see Bermans tweet? Rangers officially are the most hated sports team. More than Jazz Mavs Cowboys.
So why are the Astros fans on here bugging out about the Rangers?? Like you wrote, it makes sense to have played at least the two games in Arlington. Some things are more important than Baseball, a sport, etc. Unfair as it may be for the Astros, that's just how it goes. The way some on CF have been talking about the Rangers, I wasn't sure if the Rangers were the diabolical masterminds behind Harvey or if the Rangers were the ones that did the planning and building of the City of Houston and its roadways.
If the roles were reversed,I'd be surprised if a Houston team didn't accommodate. Hell, they'd probably end up being coerced/forced to..like switching leagues or something.
No they wouldn't. No team is going to do that. You're basically making things worse for your fans to accommodate another city's fans when the problem did not originate in your city. It literally never happens in any sport across the board. Again, thousands of rainouts over the years in baseball. Dozens or hundreds of other sporting events cancelled/moved/etc for unique circumstances. Can anyone point to a single one where another team's future scheduled games were moved/cancelled to accommodate them? This just seems like b****ing about Dallas for the sake of it. It's a completely unreasonable expectation of a league or another team.
They discussed it on Mike & Mike, and both Golic & Greeny said the Rangers were doing the wrong thing and they have no horse in the race. This isn't Dallas hating. This was an opportunity to do the right thing. The Rangers did what they did for competitive reasons more than anything. They could have negotiated compensation for any lost revenue, but that isn't what they wanted to do.
No matter the culpability of the Rangers (personally I think the Astros would have obliged and switched series with them had the roles been reversed), the Astros should galvanize around this and use it as motivation to play relentless baseball the rest of the way. Yes, baseball is a marathon, and Hinch certainly coaches that way, but with September here it's turning into a sprint at the finish. I believe in our guys to turn things up. There's just too much talent not to.
Certainly - I agree 100% that the Astros can use this as a rallying point / bulletin board material and hopefully it helps them get out of this little slump they've been in. But I think there is 0% chance the Astros do any different if the situations were reversed. Again, we have thousands of games of history of cancelled games and no one's ever been asked to do something similar.
The goal isn't compensation for lost revenue - it's maintaining their fanbase. You don't tell your own fan that they suddenly have to go to a game tomororw instead of the time they actually planned, unless you absolutely have to. People might have other plans, or be out of town, or need to line up babysitting, or maybe it was a big family event planned long in advance, or whatever else. Basically, people are asking the Rangers to screw over their fans so the Astros can maintain their homegames and give their own fans a month to plan for it - for an event that had nothing to do with them. It's just a bizarre expectation. Again, it's never happened before in thousands of rainouts and cancellations across any sport (as far as any of us knows). Division games get rained out all the time - no one ever suggests this kind of thing as a solution, and with good reason.
No one has ever suggested this as a solution because this is a unique situation which had a unique solution available. You say no one ever suggests this kind of thing as a solution. Clearly Reid Ryan and the Astros suggested it as a solution. It appears clear that MLB thought of it as a solution. The Rangers even "thought" of it as a solution, but did not agree - which is their right. Hurricane Ike played havoc with the 2008 Texans schedule. Two games had to be moved and teams' bye weeks were shifted. Prior to that, i am pretty sure that shifting bye weeks had never happened before in the entirety of the NFL. But, it happened it 2008 due to the unique circumstance. In essence, the situation led to a solution that had never been applied. Some situation has to be first and using that as an argument makes no sense. Fans get inconvenienced every year with games being postponed and moved to dates that they can't attend. Going to a different game can also be a hassle. Shoot, neither my wife nor I work and we still have 4 Twins tickets to exchange from a rainout in May. Nothing as yet has been convenient and/or available. While inconveniencing your fan base is clearly not desirable, I suspect the vast, vast number of fans would be accommodating and understanding. When you buy that ticket for a future game, there is absolutely no guarantee that game will take place, as evidenced with this week's Astros games. Even a covered stadium that is apparently safe and playable is unusable due to this unique circumstance.
Stop it. The only game that would suffer is today's (even then, I don't know if it would have suffered much). There would have been a ton of people at the last two games. The ironic thing is that they would have had a higher attendance these three games in a simple swap than they will get at the end of the year when their team is completely out of the playoffs and they are sitting the players that matter.
Don't even bother arguing with Major. He's dug his heels in and not going to back out no matter how idiotic his argument is. This is a terrible situation, and we should have never expected the Rangers to be reasonable or do the right thing.
They don't have to make plans to go to a different game. The games Arlington would have moved are a month away. The real people who would be thrown off are people visiting the area during the time frame. That isn't really screwing over your fan base. You don't force season ticket holders to come to these games instead. You give them the option of a pro-rated refund. It really isn't complicated. For rainouts, it makes sense as they are usually one game. It is rare a site becomes unavailable for a week plus. It doesn't happen because rarely do these situations occur, and then how often do the teams have available games to swap?
Maybe you should try thinking harder, or try actually thinking... Are you seriously implying the Astros would suggest doing something they themselves wouldn't be willing to do if the situation was reversed?
The Rangers decision is what it is, but what's surprising is the snarkiness and "so what" attitude coming out of their front office and most of their fans in defense of the decision. Just reiterates how much that fan base just doesn't "get it."
Yeah similar to what bobrek said, I think the key here is that, this has nothing to do with a typical rainout. So there haven't been thousands of these situations before. Perhaps there have been a handful of natural disasters that have caused city-wide, massive displacements and issues. Within those handful of comps--I'd say it's a rare case where, within the next month, both teams involved in the situation have a home & home coming up. That makes this very unique...there was an extremely easy/valid solution that the few similar cases likely didn't have. And the Rangers made a bad choice. I understand the perspective on causing issues for their own fans. But that's when you put out a press release and say what you're doing, and why you're doing it. Their fanbase isn't going anywhere because the ownership shows compassion to a city in a state of disaster. People aren't jerks. And if they can't think ahead and see that...then they (the ownership) are idiots when it comes to understanding business/fans/people. (At a minimum, the Rangers ownership really needed to allow this to come out in a way that didn't sound so jerky. But even in Daniels' own response, he seemed tone-deaf.)
If Houston didn't accommodate, they'd deserve all the vitriol. Houston has accommodated the league well in the past... not the least of it being forced to switch leagues. Defending the Rangers here is a pretty damning double down.
Not only that. Due to circumstances, both teams were in Dallas and had no trouble getting there. So, this was the perfect storm (sorry) in which everything conspired as perfectly as possible to do the series swap. Instead, teams, families and fans are being disrupted the most in this eventual solution.
