Commentary

This is no time for silly baseball fight

Jon Daniels has won more than 1,000 games as Rangers general manager, but he was never going to win the battle of Hurricane Harvey. At least not in a sports world where opinions tend to go wherever the Twitterverse is taking them.

Daniels wanted to do the right thing. And in terms of what makes sense and baseball's guidebook, he did. But this was one occasion where making a wrong decision for his team would have provided a better look and kept this from turning into a revisiting of the Ryan-Daniels Feud of 2013.

With the need to move this week's Astros-Rangers series out of Houston, the Rangers made a generous offer. Houston President Reid Ryan had a more generous offer in mind. The two sides could not agree, so the teams find themselves at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla., presumably playing before friends and relatives.

Late last week when it was clear that Harvey could become a major problem for the city of Houston, the two teams considered their options.

"We were told the most recent precedent was Baltimore playing in Tampa as the home team in April 2015," Daniels said. "We offered to do the same along with Houston getting all the revenues. We also were prepared to play the series anywhere Houston wanted to."

But Reid Ryan, son of Nolan whose conflict with Daniels needs no rehashing, wanted the swap. Given that the Astros will miss at least a few more home games (they are also playing the Mets in Tampa this weekend), it's a reasonable request.

From the Rangers' standpoint, games in Arlington this week would have fundamentally been home games for Houston or at least neutral-site games, given the difficulty in ticket exchanges, sudden walk-up sales, etc. Houston would be allowed its own game presentation along with the obvious home team rule of batting second.

Ryan didn't care for that offer. "The Rangers wanted all six of our games at their park," he said. "The fact that the Rangers refused to go home and home with us, we had to look at all the options that were out there for us."

Daniels said it's silly to suggest his team was refusing to help.

"It wasn't about gaining an advantage, that's not close to accurate," he said. "Ultimately this is all so inconsequential against the backdrop of what the people in South Texas are dealing with."

And that's really the major point here. If you're an Astros fan and you think Daniels is not being as charitable as he should be, fine. Likewise, if you're a Rangers fan and think Ryan should be more focused on moving on with the games and dealing with the real human tragedy in his city rather than whining about a baseball schedule.

Daniels preferred to inconvenience the fewest fans and alter the lowest number of games. I've said this before but it needs repeating. Home-field advantage in baseball is nice if it's Game 7 of the World Series. Otherwise, it's a lot more irrelevant than in other sports.

While the Rangers have been better at home this year, the Astros have a far superior road record. Together the Astros and Rangers are 72-58 at home and 71-59 on the road.

The message: Just play the games and move on.

That's what the Baltimore Orioles did in 2015 after riots made playing an early season series against Tampa Bay untenable. So they moved the games to St. Petersburg, Fla. This was in April. The Orioles didn't balk about moving a series scheduled for Tropicana Field to Camden Yards later in the year.

As Manager Buck Showalter said, "White pants, gray pants, it's still baseball between the lines."

There are other precedents. The G20 Summit in Toronto forced a Blue Jays home series to be moved to Philadelphia. And I can't explain this one, but in 2011 the Miami Marlins moved a home series to Seattle due to a U2 concert.

Maybe a little U2 music is in order for the Astros and Rangers. If that can't bring a little peace and harmony into one's life, I'm not sure what's going to work.

Either way it's an unfortunate series of events that sent these teams to Florida. The giant headline on the front page of The Dallas Morning News on Tuesday read: Helping Hands.

If Ryan and Daniels couldn't agree on their plans, they should have flipped a coin and lived with the results. As much as loyal fans need baseball right now, we don't need silly baseball fights.

Sports on 08/30/2017

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