AL ball is almost as good to watch as NL ball. The things I miss are:
1. Being able to see NL ball in Houston and AL ball in Arlington. Now the nearest NL team is in St. Louis. But I did get see Rockies-Giants last year in Denver but it got hailed out during the game.
2. More late games that end too late to want to watch the end and miss the newspaper deadline because we ended up in the West division.
3. 90 years of NL tradition-50 as an NL team and another 40 as a Cardinal AA team with a short time as a Cub AAA team.
4. the strategy involved in deciding when to pull the pitcher and have a pinch-hitter and/or a lineup shift.
quote='Owl 69/70/75' pid='12491850' dateline='1444637462']
(10-11-2015 12:48 PM)grol Wrote: I'm sure the ownership will do well with the AL Astros. But I'm one of the NL Astro fans that still resent the move. Just saying cause you brought it up.
Just to clarify, the current ownership group were never given the option of staying in the National League. The move to the American League was a condition imposed by MLB as a requirement for approval of the sale. And since MLB has a statutory anti-trust exemption, they can do that. The options given were 1) to buy a team that would move to the AL or 2) not to buy a team. Drayton always kissed up to Bud, usually with negative results, and this was just one final example.
I will say that after spending time in Dallas and working part-time for the Rangers, AL ball grew on me and I'm not as opposed to the move as some. I've also been able to see a few games that would not have been available without the shift--Darvish's near perfect game and Pettitte's final career start among them.
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