Jayson Stark's new Rumblings & Grumblings engages in a conversation with Buster Olney about realignment:
I think there's only one candidate to switch -- the Astros. Three reasons: 1) It's those mandatory interleague-rivalry games between the Astros and Rangers that guarantee the interleague schedules are all out of whack. 2) If you move a team from any other NL division to the AL, it means you have to start shifting around clubs in other divisions, too, to balance it out. And 3) every existing owner has the right to veto a move, and almost certainly would block it. So the only place baseball has leverage is in Houston, where they can make moving a condition of the purchase. That isn't too fair to Jim Crane, but that's the deal.
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
