The Texas Rangers Refused To Switch Home Series With The Houston Astros While Their City Was Underwater

#Astros & Rangers will play their upcoming series at Tropicana Field in St.Petersburg, Fla because Rangers refused to play ball w/the Astros pic.twitter.com/h5TSfWmCCf

— Mark Berman (@MarkBermanFox26) August 28, 2017

Rangers GM Jon Daniels on @1053thefan says switching home series wouldn't be fair to #Rangers fans who had tickets to September series.

— Alex Del Barrio (@alexdelbarrio) August 28, 2017

I completely understand the idea of not doing other organizations any favors in a business as cutthroat as professional sports, but I think it can be universally agreed upon that this is taking that concept above and beyond social acceptability. Ultimately, it falls on the league to relocate around natural disasters, but trying to leverage another MLB President for three of his home games when his city is under the sea is as heartless and cold blooded as it gets. Playing off a defense of your own revenue as a defense of your fans' financial commitments is just disgustingly disingenuous. Especially when you consider that every Rangers' fan with a soul would have gladly changed around their schedule to show up to games played one month earlier - when their team was still technically (albeit barely) in contention, mind you - if it meant doing a solid for a struggling neighboring city that was dealing with a hell of a lot more than being 15 games back in the division. 

At the end of the day, it's not the Texas Rangers' professional responsibility to sacrifice even one single ticket sale, but - since it's quite obviously their moral responsibility - they probably should have known that they were going to end up looking like cruel, insensitive dickheads by refusing to do so. When you poo-poo the idea of undergoing a minor inconvenience on behalf of those undergoing a major catastrophe then you deserve every ounce of backlash that comes your way.

​Simply agreeing to switch series would have been the easiest positive PR that an organization has ever received, and instead they intentionally pitted themselves against the most sympathetic of parties by claiming "unfairness" in the face of a drowning region that's too distraught and destroyed to give a shit about a first pitch. They temporarily switched the focus of a tragedy that took lives, families, friends, and/or homes to fucking baseball, and the Texas Rangers are shocked that people are pissed off and responding emotionally?