Drawing a county line in the sand over Texas Rangers shirts

Downtown Dallas would be a great place for baseball.

I think leaders should start on that right away. It’s perfect for a National League team.

If there was one lesson to be learned from the Great Texas Rangers Dallas Skyline T-shirt Scandal this week, it was that Dallasites love the Rangers, too, and would very much love some baseball on a rail line.

Fine. Bring it. Let’s have the Tom Landry Freeway series.

Surely the Miami Marlins would move. Or Arizona’s team isn’t drawing that well.

Why not add a team? After all, since the Houston Astros switched to the American League in 2013, the NL doesn’t have a Texas team.

The nearest NL team is more than 600 miles away in Busch Stadium, St. Louis. That’s a throwback to Texas before 1962, when Houston landed a team.

And sure, the Rangers own this territory. But they should welcome the added interest and rivalry a second team would bring, no matter where it plays.

Before long, Dallas-Fort Worth will pass Philadelphia to become the largest TV market with only one team.

But this was not just about Arlington, or shirts, or how the Dallas skyline turned up on Rangers West Division champion T-shirts designed by Major League Baseball.

This is about the second- and third-largest counties in Texas, and whether the third matters at all to the second.

As Arlington’s tenant and business partner, the Rangers were wise to cancel their own shirt order and help extract a complete apology from the league. After all, they may be asking city or county voters for upgrades when the current lease expires in eight seasons.

Before the T-shirts were pulled from sale at MLB.com, there was a Twitter commotion from east of the county line, more like bleating than tweeting:

▪ “Dallas has the only skyline.”

(Arlington’s entertainment district certainly has a shape. And ESPN seems to like the Tarrant County courthouse.)

▪ “Reunion Tower is the only landmark.”

(The U.S. Capitol is recognizable. But you wouldn’t put it on a Baltimore Orioles shirt.)

▪ “It’s all just one big metromess anyway.”

(It’s “DFW,” not “D.”)

▪ “Why not use the biggest city?”

(That cuts out a lot of good cities. If the Tampa Bay Rays win, do the shirts show only Tampa, Fla., and not the Rays’ St. Petersburg home? If the Minnesota Wild wins a Stanley Cup in St. Paul, will the shirts show only Minneapolis?)

▪ “But — Dallas Cowboys … ”

(The Cowboys have a successful brand known worldwide. It’s an asset to Arlington and Tarrant County. The shirts weren’t.)

▪ “Stop. I love both counties.”

(Exactly. So include both.)

▪ “You might as well complain about the airline pilots who say, ‘Welcome to Dallas.’ ”

(Former Fort Worth Councilman Joel Burns always asks if his plane landed at the right airport.)

But so much for intraregional rivalry.

Let us unite as a region, state and nation. Look out, Toronto.

This story was originally published October 6, 2015 at 9:47 PM with the headline "Drawing a county line in the sand over Texas Rangers shirts."