#TexasStrong pic.twitter.com/4ybxJmKX9S
— City of Dallas (@CityOfDallas) November 2, 2017
Here’s the latest silly debate, spurred on by social media, that some sports fans are having. On Wednesday night, the Astros won the World Series for the first time in the team’s history. Great news for Houstonians, lovers of sports narratives that involve a team from a city recently struck by tragedy (in this case, Hurricane Harvey) claiming a championship, and neutral baseball fans who got to enjoy a pretty wild series. Sort of a bitter pill to swallow for supporters of the Texas Rangers, one of the Astros’ chief rivals and a team that has come painfully close to glory but never won the World Series.
So a few diehard, vocal North Texas fans of the Rangers may have felt like it was getting rubbed in a bit much when the Omni hotel lit up Dallas’ skyline with congratulations for the Astros. “Classy” move? A sign that Dallas is a “soft” sports town? A betrayal of our hometown team? Hot sports opinions on the matter are all over the internet, opening a new front in the Rangers-Astros beef that had already gotten especially nasty this summer over a disagreement on where the teams would play in the immediate aftermath of Harvey.
To add one opinion to a conversation that doesn’t need it, ideally the Omni would have the bandwidth and space for a message along the lines of “Congrats Astros, You Have Our Grudging Respect; As Fellow Texans And Humans We Support You In Most Endeavors; Rangers Are Still Better; See You Next Season.” But that wouldn’t really fit, or show up on photos of the skyline. So here we are, a reasonable and kind gesture raising hackles among jilted hometown Rangers fans. There is, of course, very little room for “reasonable and kind” when it comes to in-state sports rivalries.
