looks a helluva lot brighter for Texas than Houston. Houston has very little in the majors and almost nothing in the minors.

Sticks with their team through the highs and lows no matter what. Stick with the Stros’ if they are you passion and you live and die by every pitch from game to game. When something goes very wrong and you swear off every watching another game but you are back the next night. You need to stay with them. If not well come on over to the dark side and watch great baseball from a very young team that is taking off.

were you raised a Houston fan? Did you cheer for them just because of the players (Biggio/Bagwell) on the team?

I don’t like it when people just switch teams for the hell of it. That means you weren’t really a true fan.

So, if you’re not really a true fan, I suggest you wait and see who wins the world series and go with that team till the next year and then switch again.

We have enough as it is. However, the band wagon is getting more full by the day, and there may not be room for you by next year.

If you are truly a fan, stick with your team through the down years.

then you won’t ever truly be able to leave them. That’s just the way it is. For example, I grew up in Dallas and now live in Houston, and I really like the way Daryl Morey runs the Rockets, to the point that I find myself watching their games and paying close attention to the likes of Battier and the Chuckwagon, but I will never be able to root for them against the Mavericks. Ever. You see, I grew up watching teh suck incarnate that was the Mavericks leading up to and during the "Three J’s Era" and experienced personal vindication when Nash and Nowitzki emerged as legitimate, likeable stars, so I will always follow the Mavericks.

If you can just switch allegiances on a whim then you really should just get out of sports in general and take up knitting or jarring.

Does the use of ’Stros bother anyone else? Does Astros really need to be shortened? Maybe we should start calling the Rangers the ’Gers.

’Gers before…..hers?

You are not beholden to laundry.

The Rangers are fun to root for at this point but they have also never paid off so root at your own peril. If you are impatient (and really I mean don’t have the patience of a priest) then you’re not going to enjoy rooting for them. Lots of heartbreak and sadness and I can’t shake this feeling that they’re going to win the first two games of the WS only to lose it and never get back there in my lifetime.

So, yeah, if you are getting frustrated with the AStros you probably aren’t going to do so well as a Rangers fan.

One request – if you do start posting here though, refrain from teh pessimism. You probably don’t have enough cred to say things like “that guy sucks.” you haven’t seen suck

then your allegiance shouldn’t change. that said, you can’t just choose who to root for (if you do, that is truly a bandwagon).

i don’t choose to root for the rangers, it just happened. usually it’s a proximity thing, if not it’s a family thing. i can’t help that i’m a ranger fan. it would be easier to be a yankee fan.

if the only reason you rooted for the astros was because of bags and biggio, then you were a fan of the killer b’s, not the astros.

and you can make it through the suckatude. like clark said about the mavs. i was a fan of theirs starting in the early 90s. they were awful. but they became a finals team. that’s the greatest feeling in the world. staying loyal to a team through thick and thin. why was i a mavericks fan? same reason i’m a rangers and cowboys fan. i grew up in northeast texas and my dad was a fan. seeing them succeed was great. it’s like they are a part of you, like family. you don’t dump your brother or sister when times get tough. in fact that’s when you need to be your strongest, it makes success much sweeter.

stay with the astros.

as I was reading different SBnation baseball blogs. But I thought this was an interesting question.

My thoughts are, if your heart lies some where else, if you enjoy watching another team play, then watch another team. I don’t think fan loyalty is permanent. We sign NO blood oaths. I grew up in Oklahoma as well as Boomer1 did. We are equally split it seems between the Royals, the Rangers and the Cardinals. I rooted for them all. I have favorite periods from each of their history that connect to those teams.

In fact at one time I was a huge Rangers fan. But I’ve since moved from Oklahoma, and I really don’t care that much about the Rangers. It turns out I was a fan of a certain period of the Rangers (Ivan Rodriquez, Juan Gone, Rusty Greer) but now, I root for the Rangers, like you want an old friend to do well….but I got no real vested interest one way or the other.

So if your heart is no longer and Astro fan, it ok. It’s ALSO ok (and I highly recommend this) to have “back up teams”. Those teams that you kinda always will pull for, and can go to for entertainment when your main team is out of it by Memorial Day, is a joke in the league, having just lost at home against a crappy team like the Astros (I’m a Rockies fan, and live in Denver atm) The key to this is knowing who is your main team. If they play each other…whose hat are you wearing (and the answer better not be “who ever has the best record/team”..’cause then you would be a pathetic front runner)

and your new team can not be under any reason: The Red Sox, Yankees, or Cubs…don’t be that guy.

Only because there was not an option for “none” Because just by answering this question you have lost your fan card to cheer for any baseball team.

The only salvation you have now is to attend 7 astros games in a row, then throw yourself at the mercy of their fans to see if they will accept you back.

You get 1 team each sport each level. You don’t pick them, they pick you.

I started liking the Astros because of Biggio and Bagwell. I really don’t feel any connection to the team anymore. According to most of you, I should stick with a team solely on players I liked as a kid and that doesn’t seem logical.

In the last 5 years, I’ve been to 10 Ranger games to 1 Astros game. I live in a family of Ranger fans and have kept up with them. I was leaning toward the Rangers because of these ties and I can actually go to a game every once in a while, not because they’ve been doing well recently.

I’m not sure who to pick now after all of your comments. Most of you would rather not have anymore Ranger fans join.

I posted this same question over at The Crawfish Boxes and got 2 comments, so it looks to me Astro fans don’t care about their team.

as long as they don’t pretend they are real rangers fans and act like their lifelong dream has been fulfilled if they win a playoffs series (yes, thats our dream)..

So I’m hoping both games will be good.

Be a man and be loyal to your team.

to my team. I switched when I was a kid, but will never do so again.

However as a Rangers fan I would like to say that I do support all fans who want to jump on board now. It will only help the Rangers attendance, buisness, et al. and allow them build a better team.

There’s no reason you can’t pull for both teams. Outside of the interleague foolishness (and a long shot at an Astros/Rangers world series), there’s no real conflict of interest. Two leagues, two teams, two times the chance you’ll get a winner.

but it does reveal it. I’ve always felt that bandwagon fans would be the kind of people who wouldn’t support their son’s or daughter’s teams if they played for a real lousy club. Does that make me a racist?

Learning about them, watching them develop and sticking with them sticking through the inevitable bumps. If you’re looking for a team that you can get behind for the long haul, the Rangers are probably going to be much more gratifying to watch over the next few years than the ’Stro’s.

But if you’re more of a casual baseball watcher, and just wants performance and recognizable names to root for, well… you might as well stick with the Stro’s and root for Berkman and Roy O. If what you’re looking for is immediate gratification, you’re probably not going to get it from the Rangers either. Their advantage lies in their young core, which likely won’t be complete until 2010 and beyond. So unless you can appreciate that and are willing to patiently watch the assembly process that comes before the rewards are reaped… you might as well wait a year or so before jumping onto the Ranger bandwagon.

to never switch again… for-e-ver