Rivalry Building in the Lone Star State

Other than a mutual claim to Nolan Ryan, there’s not much history and even less of a rivalry between the Houston Astros and Texas Rangers.

That changed this weekend.

Texas’ two major league teams played games that count for the first time in their 30 overlapping seasons starting this weekend at The Ballpark in Arlington. Next weekend, they’ll meet three more times at Enron Field.

“It’s not going to be like the Subway Series or anything,” said Astros second baseman Craig Biggio. “But it starts here. It just takes time. You’ve got to start somewhere.”

This is the fifth year of interleague play, with NL teams posting a 477-463 edge in the first four years.

With no crosstown connection like the Mets-Yankees and Cubs-White Sox, no postseason history like the Giants-Athletics and Cardinals-Royals and hardly any other ties to add intrigue or intensity, the stakes are being artificially raised.

The six-game stretch has been dubbed the “Lone Star Series” and the team that wins the most games will get a trophy called the “Silver Boot.” If there’s a split, the cut glass boot with silver highlights atop a crystal baseball will go to the team that scores the most runs.

A better promotional gimmick would’ve been to call this the Nolan Ryan Bowl.

Ryan is by far the best of the 35 players that have played for both teams, and his decision to wear a Texas hat on his Hall of Fame plaque is the closest there’s been to a Rangers-Astros controversy--and it wasn’t much of one.

Although Ryan spent nine years in Houston and only five in Arlington, he was a Ranger when he reached the milestones that sealed his spot in baseball history--his sixth and seventh no-hitters, 300th win and 5,000th strikeout.

It’s also worth noting he left Houston under bad terms with the then-owner, although relations have since been repaired. He’s now part-owner of the Astros’ Double-A affiliate, the Round Rock Express. Both teams have retired No. 34 in his honor.

The next-most prominent player to have made the professional trek across Interstate 45 is Ken Caminiti, who signed with Texas this year after 10 seasons over two stints with the Astros.

“A rivalry won’t happen until you get a World Series,” he said. “How can we be rivals with them? I think there’s a lot of Houston fans here and lot of Texas fans there. I mean, they’re so close.”

The natural rivalry between the cities of Houston and Dallas could prompt fans to spark some friction on the field.

“I guess that would be the whole deal,” Astros first baseman Jeff Bagwell said. “I imagine if you’re a Texan, it would be pretty important. But it’s not like the Yankees-Mets or the Cubs-White Sox. For the players, it’s just another game.”

The original interleague plan was to switch up which AL and NL division meet each year, but that was scrapped because of the difficulty is matching up divisions of different sizes and also to preserve the regional rivalries interleague created -- even though it meant preventing this one from starting.

So Tom Schieffer, then the Rangers president, prodded baseball to consider putting Texas in the NL, partly to build a rivalry with the Astros. Eventually, Rangers owner Tom Hicks agreed to stay in his division in exchange for an annual home-and-home series with its in-state neighbors. It’s already on the calendar for 2002 and hopes are high that it will remain an annual event.

“I think it’s a no-brainer,” Texas manager Jerry Narron said. “If we’re going to have interleague play, we should be playing the Astros.”

Biggio pointed out another benefit of the interleague, intrastate meeting.

“It’s a short flight,” he said. “We don’t have many of those.”

JAPANESE JUMP-START: Ichiro Suzuki zoomed into the lead among AL outfielders in fan voting for starting All-Star spots, and likely got a big boost from home.

This is the first year that paper ballots were distributed in Japan, and this week they were included in the totals for the first time.

Baseball does not yet have a breakdown on how many votes Suzuki got from Japan, but speculated he benefited from the international ballots.

Of his 451,865 votes, however, about 229,000 came from the Internet.

Suzuki was a seven-time batting champion before joining the Mariners this season. Trying to become the first rookie outfielder to start for the AL since Tony Oliva in 1964, Suzuki passed Boston’s Manny Ramirez in the latest tabulations.

The All-Star game will be played July 10 at Safeco Field in Seattle.

TRADE TIME: Bobby Higginson thinks it’s time the Detroit Tigers made a move. Maybe a lot of them.

The Tigers, who went into the weekend 10 games under .500, have not had a winning season since 1993. Higginson joined the team in 1995, and the outfielder has a no-trade clause through 2003.

“We’ve been spinning our wheels since I’ve been here, really,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going to change just by going out there and just keep rolling the balls and bats out there and one day something is going to click in and we’re going to win the pennant.”

Higginson, however, said he wants to stay with the Tigers.

“We’ve been going at this thing with pretty much the same bunch of guys for a few years now. While I’m not saying that it’s any one (player’s) fault--because I’m just as guilty as anybody--changing the parts a little bit isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And I think we might need to change some parts,” he said.