After winning 14-1 on Tuesday, Astros fans have plenty of reasons to point and laugh at the Rangers. And given the history between the two franchises, there is reason for unease between the two sides. An attempt at some broadcast-room humor on a miserable night for Rangers shouldn’t even be a blip on anyone’s radar, but it did piss off some Jose Altuve supporters, apparently because they didn’t get the irony.
After Altuve hit his first three hits—joining Manny Machado (2016), Mike Cameron (2002), and Carl Reynolds (1930) as the only players in big-league history to do so—to give him strikeouts in six straight in— Off the bat for the series, Rangers play-by-play announcer Dave Raymond tried to spice up the situation after his color commentator CJ Nitkowski reviewed Altuve’s exploits.
“Okay, hear me on this…” Raymond said as the Astros went up 9-0 in the fifth. “You’re sitting there bragging about his six. I’d just say: I mean, it’s easy to get six when you hit them over the fence. This idea is that you don’t even give the other team a chance to get you out. So, it’s not that great.”
Nitkowski agreed, saying as Altuve paused, “I think you’re making a good point. He couldn’t do it there.”
Raymond, who worked on Astros radio broadcasts from 2006 to 2012, carried on, pointing to Altuve’s Monday single in which he was fired as he tried to expand it into a double.
“Right. I mean, if he gives the Rangers a chance, I think they can get him very well,” said Raymond. “Even the hit he kept in the yard that day, we knocked him out in the second. So, I don’t know. I’m not sure I admire yet.”
After about 70 seconds, Raymond finally broke.
And he said, “No, I’m a fan.” “That’s impressive.”
The joke may have just been fun on a horrible day in Arlington, but Ben Verlander, Fox Sports MLB analyst and brother of Justin Verlander, tweeted the video to his 171,000 followers, asking, “Is this Rangers broadcast satire? Or quite literally the worst in sports history?”
This was further reinforced when Barstool Sports’ PFT team, who has over a million followers on Twitter, retweeted it, jokingly, “Home running is for cowards.”
If there was any doubt about the Rangers broadcast crew’s appreciation of Altuve, it was erased on the postgame show when Bally Sports analyst and former big league reliever Mike Bakchik said Altuve “may be the greatest offensive second baseman ever.”