Sportsman of the Week Ending 8/2/2026

As we hit the dog days of summer, baseball enters the home stretch for playoff pushes.  And no team has made a bigger push than the Boston Red Sox.  Given up for dead, fired their coach, but now they are storming up the American League East standings and look poised for a playoff run.  No player has been more in the center of it than Ceddanne Rafaela.  The centerfielder at the top of the lineup has been a spark plug since the All-Star Break and especially this week.  Rafaela torched the Los Angeles Dodgers and Athletics for a Ted Williams like .419 average while clubbing 5 HR, 2 2B, 11 RBI and scoring 7 times for the week.  The Red Sox went 6-1.  Since the All-Star break, the Sox have gone 14-3 sweeping the Tampa Bay Rays (best team in the AL), Los Angeles Dodgers (best team in the NL), and, just before the break, swept the Chicago White Sox (first in AL Central) and New York Yankees (second best AL team).  The native of Curacao is mimicking his best recent Hall of Fame inductee and countryman Andruw Jones in his star play, and is the Longhorndave Sportsman of the Week!

Sportsman of the Week Ending 5/12/2019

The weather is warming up, and that means baseball season.  The Oakland A's aren't off to a strong start, but starting pitcher Mike Fiers sure gave the fans a show.  For the second time in his career, he completed nine innings without a batted ball in play resulting in a batter reaching base that wasn't scored an error.  In other words, he pitched a no hitter.  Fiers only walked 2 batters while a third baserunner reached on an error.  And he needed to keep the bases clean to protect a 2-0 lead (only 1-0 when he took the mound in the 7th).  Further adding to the unusual event was that the game was delayed 90 minutes due to a malfunctions in the lights.  Maybe the Reds bats fell asleep and never woke up.  But really, Fiers proved he could do it on his first no hitter in 2015, and backed it up against the Reds.  Mike Fiers is the Longhorndave Sportsman of the Week!

Sportsman of the Week Ending 4/22/2018

The weather is warming up, and so is the baseball action.  But no pitcher has been hotter in a game this season than Sean Manaea of the Oakland Athletics, who scored the first no-hitter of 2018.  The feat is more impressive in that it was against the team with the best record, and best offense in baseball, the Boston Red Sox.  Manaea got the 9 inning complete game with 2 walks and 10 strikeouts in an efficient 108 pitches.  He has long been considered a work in progress, in that his stuff was dominant, but seemed like he could not harness it.  Well through five starts this season, he leads the American League in innings pitched and has allowed only 22 baserunners in 36.2 innings.  And of the 5 runs he's allowed, 4 were solo home runs.  He's not giving up much, but on Saturday night, he gave up nothing hit wise.  And is a worthy Sportsman of the Week!

Round Rock, TX, MLB City?

Round Rock, Texas, is throwing its hat in the ring for (presumably) relocating a struggling franchise. Round Rock City Manager Steve Norwood announced:

“This may seem like an ambitious plan, but I think Round Rock could be an ideal location for Major League Baseball,” Norwood said. “I just think it’s logical here. … You’ve got Miami with 400,000 people, Tampa is 325,000 [people], Oakland is 392,000 [people], Denver is 560,000—and here is Austin at 700,000.”

Courtesy Sportslogos.net

Interesting he mentioned two teams that have had very public struggles to get a serviceable stadium, and another which just got one and is now unloading players in what is being called a "bait and switch" for fans. Round Rock is officially 20 miles north of Austin, but the "Metroplex" blends together up the I-35 corridor as Williamson County has been one of the fastest growing counties in the United States since the Dot Com boom. Note the Williamson county does not include Austin proper, but suburbs only, and Travis County (to include Austin) is also busting at the seams with population.  Round Rock has hosted two of the most successful Minor League franchises, the Round Rock Express. In 2000, the original AA Round Rock Express were established after a purchase of the Jackson Generals by a group headed by Nolan Ryan. In 2005, the same Ryan group acquired a second franchise, the AAA Edmonton Trappers, moved them to Round Rock, and moved his AA franchise to Corpus Christi. The AA Express still owns the Top 4 single season attendance records in the Texas league (2001-4) pulling in 2/3 of 1M people each year. Since the AAA franchise moved in, they've been 1st or 2nd in Pacific Coast League Attendance every year since 2007, leading in 2011 and 2012. Enthusiasm must be tempered by limited near term expectation. Reid Ryan, Nolan's son and Round Rock Express president and CEO, who is in Nashville, Tenn., attending the winter baseball meetings, said that it could be difficult for Round Rock to score a Major League team. Reid Ryan stated:

“I think having visions like that are good...but with the rules it takes, unless there [are] some monumental shifts, I don’t see any new markets getting a Major League team in the near future. Baseball is not a sport that has a lot of changes.”

For another blog, it's interesting how an entire college conference landscape can shift in a matter of days, but major league baseball moves can be more decadal in nature. But Round Rock has put Major League Baseball on notice: "We're listening to opportunities and we have the market and baseball history to support it." And they started in AA, have been promoted to AAA, and are now just waiting for the call to the big show!

**Originally posted in Reading Between the Seams by this same author**