Time: 7:10 Central
Weather: Absolutely great, start temp 67°
Opponent’s SB site: Lone Star Ball
TV: Twins TV. Radio: Gladden will soon be cruising on his motorcycle being Weird for six months, say “hi” if you see him
Well, what we all wanted is for the Twins to be playing meaningful baseball in September, right? And they are! It’s just not meaningful for the Twins. Texas is currently tied with Houston for the one remaining AL playoff spot. The Astros have the tie-breaker; thanks to Rob Manfred, there’ll be no more of those boring Game 163s. Veteran Jacob deGrom starts for Texas. Him being a little down this year at age 38 still means an ERA of 3.86 (and a FIP of 3.11; he strikes out 11.12 per nine innings). He
throws an upper-90s fastball that still averages 97; he gets you with his slider.
Last year, I think I wrapped up by doing a quick rundown of all the teams currently seeking oodles of public money for brand new buildings, “renovations” to existing buildings (more luxury sections), massive tax giveaways for nearby land development, and the like. So, here’s the 2026 version (set to the tune of Malvina Reynolds’s “Little Boxes”):
There’s the Guardians, and the White Sox
and naturally the Vegas team
Royals likely get two billion
and the Cards want some of that
Rays also get TWO billion
while a pol quotes Shel Silverstein
there’s all kinds of expansion plans
don’t forget the Timberwolves
It’s a shorter list than last year, but that’s largely because several teams already got their funny money!
That Rays one is really wild (all those links are to posts on Neil deMause’s Field of Schemes website). One of the county commissioners who voted to give away oodles outta taxpayer money said he got the idea from his daughter reading The Giving Tree:
“I have a 12-year-old daughter, when she was very young, I used to read her this book called The Giving Tree. If anyone has a child, you know what that book is about: You have a seed, and you let it grow, and it gives back over time, and it does all these things. And in a way, this park is like the Giving Tree.“
Umm… the story is about a boy who finds a fruit tree, and takes from it and takes from it and takes from it over the years, and gives the tree NOTHING in return, and each time the boy/man takes, “the tree was very happy.” Finally the man cuts the tree down just because he wanna, and “the tree was very happy.” It’s a deeply sad book written by a really weird man! Who traumatized kids with this cover:
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Unless the commissioner meant how the public would keep giving and giving and get ZERO overall economic benefit from building a stadium, in which case that commissioner is smarter than most! (He is not.)
The Rangers won’t be demanding a new building for another decade or so, since they just got their second since 1994. They’ll of course want “renovation” money, it’s only natural.
Some renovations/decorations the team is happy to pay for/ provide itself. This March, while the team was in spring training in Arizona, the team unveiled a decorative stadium statue called “One Riot, One Ranger.” As Sam Blum of The Athletic explains, the title refers to a mostly phony-baloney legend of a 1896 incident where a single Texas Ranger stopped an illegal prizefight. The statue was finished by artist Waldine Tauch in 1961, and donated to the Love Field airport in Dallas. It was taken down by the airport in 2020, after a book came out about some of the less savory incidents in Ranger history.
Now, despite what the Rangers (the team) claimed when they issued a press release about moving the statue to Globe Life Field, the statue made in 1961 did not depict a generic Ranger. It was specifically modeled after one Jay Banks, who posed for it. (Davy Andrews at FanGraphs has the details, in a thorough post that The Athletic draws on.)
Jay Banks became quite famous for a picture that appeared in Life magazine in 1956. Here it is from The Athletic article, slightly altered by me:
The squiggly blob obscures what was in the original photo: an effigy of a person being hung. The casual gentleman on the left is Jay Banks. He was there to make sure the school would NOT be integrated. (You can see the original at either the Fangraphs link or The Athletic one, if you must.)
Yeah, if that’s the photo the guy was famous for, I wouldn’t mention him in the press release about his statue, either!
Naturally, some people were upset by this, but since they weren’t the richest luxury-box season-ticket holders, the team didn’t care.
Ah, taxpayer-funded stadiums and their decorative delights, folks. What won’t they think of next? Well, we’ve got all offseason to find out!
