The Silver Boot Series

I-45—the stretch of road that connects North Texas to South Eastern Texas—or as we like to call it—Houston!

On your way south, you head pass towns like Madisonville, or Huntsville (real big stature of Sam Houston sits on the side of the roadway) there’s also a big prison there too—never understood who would build a car dealership right next door to the fence line of a state prison, but oh well.

Houston Texas, the first Texas city to have a MAJOR League baseball team in it, back in the 1962, the Colt .45’s were the original team, and name, they played outdoors at Colt Stadium at a  diamond that you could have saddled the mosquitoes and ride them for 8 seconds, and win something, but a future seeking man by the name of Judge Roy Hofheinz, teamed up with a man named David Carrier to create an indoor facility that would keep the Houstonians cool and comfortable, and of course so he could watch his team without swatting the flying dive bombers, they changed the name of the team and the name of the stadium and created an entire domain! THE ASTROS—short as you know for Astronaut- There was the Astrodome, Astrodomain which included Astroworld, AstroWorld Hotel, Astro hotdogs, and of course—ASTROTURF! Or as it is more commonly known as—carpet!

As the Astros were going, then comes along that was transferred from the Nation’s Capitol to North Texas and called themselves the Texas Rangers… the Astros, thinking that they were the only team in the Lone Star State, now have company, and it wasn’t until 2001 that the I-45 series began, actually it was Major League Baseball that installed inter-league play, and the Rangers and the Astros have battled it out for 10 years now, with the Astros holding a slight lead in wins, but the fact is, that Silver Boot has made a home for itself in North Texas for some time now.

Give credit to Executive Vice President of Communications of the Texas Rangers, John Blake for coming up with the award for the two teams… I mean he could have called it the Governor’s Boot or Hat or Shovel, or whatever, but the Silver Boot has some class to it…. Be it a little bias when you consider that the Lone Ranger used Silver Bullets in his gun as a calling card. The Silver Boot is close enough!

The series is really as close as this area gets to having an All Texas World Series, since we have seen both teams go to the Fall Classic, in 2005 the Astros beat the dreaded St. Louis Cardinals to win the National League Pennant, only to take on the Chicago White Sox and get swept in 4 games including the 14 inning marathon loss… but none the less the Astros were the first to make it to the World Series in Texas…. It took another 5 years for the Rangers to make it to the Series and be the ONLY Texas Team to win a game in the series—even though they lost to the San Francisco Giants in 5 games—just last October!

So the Silver Boot series for the 2011 season begins tonight—and there will be five more games to go—with two more in Arlington then at the end of the month they take their turn down in the bayou city—at Minute Maid Park….

Rangers lead the series over all 33-27—and for the last six years that boot has seen a lot of North Texas—most of the time fans can to the Texas Rangers office in Uptown off of

McKinney Ave

and

Pearl Street

—(shameless plug for the Rangers)

There are a lot of good things about inter-league play, but there are a lot of draw backs, mainly because it takes away what could be games against your division rivals that could put some distance between teams… the up side though is that fans get a chance to see players from the other league other than All Star Games, and those are far and between—the last time that Arlington held the Mid-Summer Classic was July of 1995… the next time that the Classic will be in North Texas will most likely be when Hell Freezes Over—oh wait it did… the Rangers already went to the World Series! And the Mavericks Won the NBA Championship! So I guess it will be here sooner than I think!

The Rangers and the Astros! Just Fun Baseball!

Just a thought!