Rangers Rainout is Middle Finger to All Fans

Got this email just now:This e-mail regards your sponsorship of page on Baseball-Reference.com. Thank you for supporting Baseball-Reference.com. We are writing to let you know that your sponsorship of the following page will expire in 21 days. Clicking the link will take you directly to the renewal page. The 2010 TEX Page ($110 to renew for 1 year). Last year I tweaked a few Rangers fans for kicks by sponsoring their team page. They could not look at their American League Championship team's BB-Ref page without seeing my name and I sure got a lotta larfs outta it.

But I am strictly minor league when it comes to messin' with Ranger fans. Earlier today, our division rival and their fanbase got shafted in a manner usually reserved for Guillotinings. Rupert Murdoch and Bud Selig cancelled Sunday night's ALCS GAME 2 on Sunday morning due to pending rainout ...and then that day never saw a drop of rain hit the field in Arlington. Memo from Selig to Ian Kinsler: Get the f- off your field on a night that X-Factor will attract more viewers than your curly locks would ever make the nation's couch potatoes swoon for.

There is absolutely no way that a speculative rain forecast would have inspired Fox to postpone a Sunday Night American League Championship Series Game that involved the Red Sox or the Yankees. A National League Championship Series game? Mets, Phillies, Cubs. Anyone else, they'da done the same, hung the fans out to dry... even if the weather stayed dry.

The Dallas/Ft.Worth/Arlington market is supposedly the 5th largest in the country behind NYC, LA, Chicago and Number Four Land. The Dallas Cowboys have a national reputation - they even once got mentioned (mockingly) in a Dead Kennedys song so they transcend their own sport, the Dallas Mavericks are the reigning NBA champions and the Rangers are the reigning American League champions (still hurts to type it but I gotta). What does this get Rangers fans? Not a damn thing but the chump treatment.

As much smack as I have talked about the team and their fans, watching the Rangers fans get flat-out sodomized by the league and Fox is too much. Imagine a freak October rainstorm makes for a soggy game one Saturday in SoCal. You bought six Sunday Game Two tickets on SchlubHub, Pops was driving down with your hot stepmom and her two cougarette friends, your Angel Bro had pitched in for the ticket fees and the six of you were gonna make it a day and a night to remember. Then suddenly the league and Fox decide that since it might rain and get no ratings because the Yankees or Red Sox were not involved, the six of you would each have to untangle your complicated lives with twelve hours notice and regroup on Monday afternoon for your planned Sunday night party. And then of course, Pops is at the swingers club on a sunny Sunday and you are home with the National League and Rosy Palm. There is one word for this: willful neglect. That is two words, yeah yeah yeah, but it adds up to one: BS.

Leave it to Fox and MLB to actually make me feel sorry for Rangers fans. How many people are stuck with tickets to Monday's game that they can't use because they gotta go to work Monday? Too many for me to laugh at, enough for me to pause and hum some Phil Ochs... Oh, there but for fortune go I...

This could happen to any team at any time. And not just rain; It could be a brush fire in some canyon nearby blocking freeway visibility, a smog alert, anything and we would get the shaft from Fox if we were not the supporting act for New York or Boston. And then the problem could disappear and we would just have to adjust our lives accordingly with nothing.. not even like a free "I survived the rainout that wasn't" teeshirt or cap. No Boston/NYC = no ratings ...and baseball is thus an afterthought, as are the tens of thousands of fans who made plans to see the product in person.

Texas Rangers fans ...This is a shame and y'all deserve better.

However, Go Tigers.