beagle2009 said:

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I feel like it was a culmination of a general "Dallas vs. Houston" undercurrent that slowly gained steam over the last 10 years or so where most Dallas franchises considerably pulled away from Houston (Mavs v. Rockets, Cowboys v. Texans, and the Rangers before the Astros completed their rebuild). I think this extends beyond sports as well, where Houston has a reputation for being dirtier than Dallas, poor infrastructure/planning, and lower class compared to the "snobbier" Dallas culture. Not saying I agree with these generalizations but these are definitely some of the barbs I've seen thrown between my Houston & Dallas friends.

I feel like there has always been a little brother dynamic and once the Astros moved into the AL West, gave Houston fans a direct rivalry to channel that "hatred". The Harvey spat along with the pendulum swing between both franchise's success/regression just took it to another level.

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I'll chime in on this one as well. As someone who was a young kid around the Dallas area and rooted for (and still does) all of their teams, but then moved to the Houston area around 12 years old and still lives there, I can say that this pretty accurate. I personally really love Houston and think it has it has some really great character as Space City, the Bayou City, energy capital of North America and so on. I just don't get the animosity between the people who live there. You like Dallas, that's awesome. You love Houston, cool stuff. Who cares, and it's not worth being a dick over and starting some useless thread to bash on a team from the other City.

rbtexan said:

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I've tried to put my finger on when it was exactly that Astro fans developed such an animosity towards the Rangers. When I was growing up, the two fan bases were almost totally indifferent to each other...if anything, the Astros were the NL team that Ranger fans pulled for.

Clearly that dynamic changed when they switched leagues and wound up in the same division, but even then I viewed it as a nice little in-state rivalry and not much more.

Maybe someone can refresh my memory, but it seems like the shark got jumped when Hurricane Harvey (maybe it was Ike) hit Houston and they wanted to do something weird regarding rescheduling a series, or maybe moving it somewhere and the Rangers balked. I'm pretty sure that's when they really got a stick in their a$$ about the Rangers.

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Man, the Astros fans I knew at A&M were horrible even before that. I had already gone from indifferent or slightly a well wisher to bitter hatred by the time the 2004 WS rolled around.

rbtexan said:

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I've tried to put my finger on when it was exactly that Astro fans developed such an animosity towards the Rangers. When I was growing up, the two fan bases were almost totally indifferent to each other...if anything, the Astros were the NL team that Ranger fans pulled for.

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This is what I remember too. Having grown up in both cities, I was a fan of both and no one ever said a word about wearing the other team's ballcap in either city.

There's nothing worse than the fan base of a beat down program/franchise that gets good quick. Briles-era Baylor and so on. I think that's part of it too. But ultimately I think it's good to have a rivalry and neither team has close enough geographic proximity to any other franchise to have a real long-term rivalry. Neither franchise had a real long-term rival before this and it's part of what makes the game fun.

Yeah, it really is comparable to Tech's mentality with A&M lol

Why does the Yankees catcher get to come out and call the pitch for the entire infield without the pitch clock running?

28 pitches through 3 innings for deGrom

My favorite type of Astro fans are the ones that claim to be die hard Houston fans yet their favorite football team is the cowboys! How convenient.

Heim time baby. We need to stack these runs early!

Grossman big fly

Here we go again

Back? Looked like he was favoring his lower back

DeGrom hurt again

Damn. Not good.

Something not right with DeGrom. Leaving after only 50 pitches with a 5-0 lead in the 3rd. Dang that is not a good sign.

Can Degrom going 3-4, getting hurt, then Dunning finishing strong happen 25 more times?

DannyDuberstein said:

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We'll see if this is minor like the others. I'm getting the feeling he's getting very trigger shy with his history. Pitchers frequently pitch with pain and soreness of some sort. With his history, he may just be done with pushing thru and instead always being cautious

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Let's hope so.

Man, I hope I'm reading into this too much, but he looked like he almost wanted to cry coming off the mound. I'm very nervous.

DannyDuberstein said:

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We'll see if this is minor like the others. I'm getting the feeling he's getting very trigger shy with his history. Pitchers frequently pitch with pain and soreness of some sort. With his history, he may just be done with pushing thru and instead always being cautious

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If this is the case, why sign him then? If he's only going to be able to go 3 or 4 starts without having to come out then why sign him to that deal?

Looked upset, but the amount of time he lingered on the mound still had me thinking he was going thru some debate about coming out. May just be frustration to keep pulling the ripcord early

Tksymm7 said:

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DannyDuberstein said:

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We'll see if this is minor like the others. I'm getting the feeling he's getting very trigger shy with his history. Pitchers frequently pitch with pain and soreness of some sort. With his history, he may just be done with pushing thru and instead always being cautious

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If this is the case, why sign him then? If he's only going to be able to go 3 or 4 starts without having to come out then why sign him to that deal?

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Because they misplaced their crystal ball? Clearly they were thinking he'd be able to stay healthy enough to make it worth it

True. And the fact that Bochy waited so long to come out.

He's done this his whole career though. Not much crystal ball watching needs to be done for that.

Tksymm7 said:

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He's done this his whole career though. Not much crystal ball watching needs to be done for that.

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Not true at all. The last 2 seasons? Yes. Whole career? No. He had 30 games for 5 out of 6 seasons before covid. And he pitched 12 of the short 60 game covid year

Water Boy said:

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My favorite type of Astro fans are the ones that claim to be die hard Houston fans yet their favorite football team is the cowboys! How convenient.

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I feel for whoever the Cowboys are an upgrade for.

Exactly. Some recency bias in play. Now was he a risk because of that recent history? For sure. Even then they got 11 and 15 starts out of him vs entirely on the shelf. I think realistically with this deal you're thinking you may get two or three of 25-30 start seasons and one or two that could be 15-20, but hopefully at least dominant when he is out there. Most pitchers miss stretches at times

Are yanks getting extra time on the pitch clock with it not starting when it should?

Leaving a lot of runs out there. Concerning with this BP.

What game is this ump watching?!?

That's the inning we needed from Dunning.