Texas teams feuding at wrong time
Nobody with priorities in order is focusing on baseball in Houston, where Hurricane Harvey continues to flood and decimate the city.
This week’s Astros-Rangers series that was supposed to be in Houston is being played in St. Petersburg, Fla., a decision that followed rounds of pettiness by both teams.
Reid Ryan, Astros president, said the team asked its Texas neighbor to swap their two remaining home series. In other words, play in Arlington this week and in Houston in late September. The Rangers would have played 12 straight September road games before finishing at home with the A’s, not a friendly schedule for a wild-card hopeful. Plus, Rangers general manager Jon Daniels suggested it would have been unfair to fans with tickets to the September series. The Rangers declined. The Rangers proposed playing this week’s series in Arlington with the Astros getting the profits as “home” team while using the series to jointly raise funds for relief efforts, according to Daniels. But the Rangers would have kept their September home series. The Astros declined. The teams put baseball first and failed to compromise, so MLB moved the series to Florida. As people die and families get uprooted, neither team looks good.
The Rangers didn’t want to play all those road games at season’s end, and the Astros likely will be away from home 19 straight games, including this weekend’s series against the Mets that had been scheduled for Houston.
Obviously, it’s insignificant where and when games are played at a time like this. Perhaps this Astros-Rangers series shouldn’t have been played at all, the integrity of the schedule be damned, or at least delayed out of respect for what’s happening in Houston, which is affecting the lives of many team members’ families.
Countless good people are donating time, energy and money to relief efforts. The Rays are donating all proceeds from the Astros-Rangers series. Teams and athletes in and out of Houston, in and out of baseball, are stepping up. The region and state are rallying together and trying to overcome together.
The heroes are the public safety workers, volunteers and folks assisting fellow citizens. Baseball is an afterthought. It’s a time to join forces and cooperate. Not a time for pettiness.