The Houston Astros routed the Oakland Athletics on Sunday and may have made a bigger imprint on Twitter. As Houston pounded Oakland, the Astros took a shot at the A’s and their decrepit situation.
It’s no secret that the A’s will likely be on the move. Oakland has openly flirted with relocating to Las Vegas as stadium plans appear to be growing closer to reality. That has ramped up disenfranchisement between the team and its fanbase, who have grown sick and tired of how the team has been handled, built, and operated. Many have called for owner John Fisher to sell the team, some even wanting him just out of the picture. But the Astros didn’t seem to care about all that.
“10 runs in front of tens of fans,” the Astros savagely tweeted.
https://twitter.com/astros/status/1662951102600339460
Ouch. I mean, ouch. Not the fans need any sort of thumping, but the Astros’ social media team isn’t here to make friends online. That’s a hard enough task as it is, of course, but they clearly kept that animosity and disrespect going. It’s hard to blame them for going after the team when the team is showing little respect for people who go to the games and root for the team, too.
The other vantage point, of course, is that the fans didn’t earn any kind of shellacking or putdowns. But sports rivalries often have a bit of venom in them that aids in looking past that rational line of thinking.
So, in other words, Houston may have found the rare case where a heavy pot-shot might have been worth taking.
About Chris Novak
Chris Novak has been talking and writing about sports ever since he can remember. Previously, Novak wrote for and managed sites in the SB Nation network for nearly a decade from 2013-2022