Round Rock, Express benefit from Astros-Rangers swap
&Mdash; For the past four years, the Round Rock Express floundered in the Pacific Coast League standings. In 2010, things finally hit rock bottom with a 57-87 record.All it took to turn around their fortunes was a franchise swap.
Oklahoma City, you take our Houston Astros' Triple-A team that finished a combined 83 games under .500 from 2007-10. Round Rock, you get the Texas Rangers' top affiliate that played four games above .500 in that span.
Presto. As the Express and Redhawks wrap up their four-game series at Dell Diamond tonight, Round Rock is in first place while Oklahoma City is stuck on the bottom. Rangers, first; Astros, last — Triple-A mirrors MLB.
Round Rock has seen immediate benefits from its association with the Rangers, including plenty more victories and attendance and merchandising gains. Management, players and most fans are happy.
"For one thing, there's not the mass exodus after the seventh or eighth inning,'' Express general manager George King said. "Our fans are looking at the standings more than they have in the last few years. Fans are embracing this team. It's fun to be at the park.''
Round Rock leads the PCL in attendance, averaging 8,378 fans per home game. A year ago, the Express were third with an 8,325 average at this point. Express officials said marketing numbers and merchandise sales also are up across the board, though they did not have exact figures.
"The timing couldn't have been better for us with the Rangers going to the World Series last fall,'' Express president Dave Fendrick said. "A lot of excitement built up around here for that team and organization, and we've benefitted.''
The Express, King said, also have gotten a boost from the occasional presence of major league stars like Josh Hamilton and Nelson Cruz, who have had rehab stops in Round Rock.
Round Rock fans have enjoyed seeing Chris Davis on a daily basis for over a month. Davis, 25, the best young talent to play here at least since Astros outfielder Hunter Pence in 2007, is on an other-wordly pace with 17 home runs and 48 RBIs in just 31 games. He is batting a ridiculous .374.
Davis, one of a handful of Round Rock players who wore the Oklahoma City uniform last year, has high praise for his new Triple-A home.
"They really take care of you here, and the fan base in Round Rock is unbelievable,'' Davis said. "They're two good places to play in, but the difference is the crowds. This is probably about as close to a big-league feel as you'll find in the minors.
Cool Bars In Houston Texas - News
Floaters stay cool at “Rockin' the River,” a free event sponsored by Trinity Vision, featuring live music. Expanded coverage of Texas is produced by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit news organization. To join the conversation about this article,
Oklahoma City, you take our Houston Astros' Triple-A team that finished a combined 83 games under .500 from 2007-10. Round Rock, you get the Texas Rangers' top affiliate that played four games above .500 in that span. Presto.
What to watch for: Though it's more likely than the health care compact, don't bet on the federal government giving Texas the authority to use federal funds without any strings attached. Bill: SB 28 would institute a statewide ban on smoking in bars,
That's why we all need to start requesting pickle-juice chasers at bars. We can't let a bunch of bike messengers in Brooklyn corner the market on this trend. This is Texas. If there is any place in the country that should be leading the way on
I'm running the Mudder with friends from the University of Texas at Austin: Julien, a 32-year-old business analyst from Houston, and Hoa, a 35-year-old video editor who lives in LA. And as soon as we start the event, I begin to understand its draw.
150 BEST BARS IN AMERICA - San Diego Happy Hour Magazine
ONLY 2 from San Diego made the list?! El Agave & the Beachcomber…
Bars are wonderful institutions, part watering-hole, part social hub, part cultural phenomenon — places where people go when they want to be out in a crowd or else to be alone; where they can (depending on the bar) laugh, talk, dance, sing, sulk, play, fight, flirt, and of course leave sobriety far behind if that’s what they’re after. Places where people just go .
Every bar has its own personality, influenced by location and décor, by specialty (kind of music, kind of featured booze, kind of clientele), and by the personality of its proprietors and bartenders — but that personality can change over time, meaning either from hour to hour or year to year. There are reasonably sedate after-work places that turn into raging singles scenes as midnight approaches, and there are bluegrass bars that evolve into biker bars over the course of a decade.
There are bars with rigidly defined customer bases, bars with themes, bars with specific kinds of music, bars with encyclopedic collections of certain kinds of liquor… There are bars for everyone (even teetotalers) — because if there wasn’t a bar for whatever kind of person you are, someone would open one.
It is a measure of both our thirst and worldliness here at The Daily Meal that we know bars, of all kinds and in many places, pretty well. In assembling this list of the 150 Best Bars in America, then, we drew first and most of all on our not inconsiderable collective personal experience. We also, though, solicited the opinions of some bar-savvy friends of ours — people like cocktail book author (and Bartender Magazine editor) Ray Foley, who likes the classic cocktails at The “21″ Club in Midtown Manhattan as much as we do; and wine writer Roger Morris, who’s the kind of guy we’re likely to run into at Cibo, a great bar in the Philadelphia airport.
We spoke to Southern Foodways Alliance director John T. Edge, a fellow fan of The Twisted Spoke in Chicago; and craft beer expert Joshua M. Bernstein, who tipped us off about the treasure-trove of Belgian beers at Ebenezer’s in Lovell, Maine…. Then we narrowed our choices down to 150 places and divided our selections into categories according to style, location, specialty, and clientele, offering more than one recommendation in each.
What we’ve come up with is an admittedly subjective — but well-researched and wide-ranging — collection of great places to drink all over the country. Every one provides a great drinking experience — no two alike, guaranteed. If your favorite bar isn’t on our list, let us know in the comments below. We’re always looking for new ones.
Cool Bars In Houston Texas - Bookshelf
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