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I did the math once. Kansas City has fewer total miles to travel to the old AL West locations (LAA, OAK, SEA, TEX). Houston is only closer to Arlington but KC is closer to the other three than Houston is. Somebody explain to me how it makes *sense* for Houston to be in the same division with Seattle - whom they would have to play just as often as the Rangers.

Here's my "tin foil hat" view of what happened. In 2008, the Rangers were bankrupt and up for sale. Nolan Ryan was the preferred bidder until the previous owner went back to bankruptcy court and the judge re-opened the bidding. That's when Jim Crane teamed up with Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban to outbid Ryan's group.

Selig did not want anything to do with Cuban so he awarded the Rangers to Ryan and Crane probably threatened to sue. Selig told him don't do it because the Astros will soon be up for sale and Selig would see to it that he would be approved to buy the Astros.

Then, in 2011, the Astros are up for sale and Crane's bid was ridiculously high and heavily leveraged at $678 million (Forbes had estimated the Astros were worth about $550 million). That scared away any other bidders.

Next Selig throws Crane a curve. As a condition to accepting the bid (which had already been agreed to between Crane and the previous owner), Crane would have to agree to switch leagues. That was not part of the original sale offer.

Crane is no idiot and realizes that this will not only piss off the fan base but that the AL means lower revenues (10 of the bottom 12 attendance teams are in the AL plus AL teams must pay for a full-time DH). He refuses to switch so Selig spreads dirt on Crane to accuse him of racism, sexism and child neglect through certain media contacts.

It takes six months for Crane to relent but only if he gets a rebate. The price? $70 million. Selig makes the previous Astros owner pay half the rebate.

Selig gets what he wants and they begin spinning how great this is for the Astros, ignoring all the obvious math that it wouldn't be.

To date, Crane has shrunk the payroll from $90 million under the former owner to $13 million presently and the team is heading to their third consecutive season as the worst team in baseball. Attendance has tanked and the front office is selling a "we'll be great sometime around 2017" mantra while they apparently try to retire as much debt as possible.

Thanks for the post! That’s very interesting info I wasn’t aware of. I’m strictly a Pirates and NL guy, so the AL is almost a foreign country for me. Can’t stand Selig, though. B^)

Here's my "tin foil hat" view of what happened. In 2008, the Rangers were bankrupt and up for sale. Nolan Ryan was the preferred bidder until the previous owner went back to bankruptcy court and the judge re-opened the bidding. That's when Jim Crane teamed up with Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban to outbid Ryan's group.

Selig did not want anything to do with Cuban so he awarded the Rangers to Ryan and Crane probably threatened to sue. Selig told him don't do it because the Astros will soon be up for sale and Selig would see to it that he would be approved to buy the Astros......

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Nice conspiracy theory. Where it falls down is by making Selig the boogeyman. Selig simply does the bidding of the big money, big market teams.

Selig is just a used car salesman schlepper from Milwaukee. Nice guy, loves baseball, likes to build group consensus. He might be able to bend or slightly shape the opinions of the big owners, but he is no evil mastermind.

Your conspiracy needs to include Bilderbergs or Steinbrenners or John Henrys.