{"id":31328,"date":"2018-07-26T23:28:19","date_gmt":"2018-07-26T23:28:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=31328"},"modified":"2018-07-26T23:47:52","modified_gmt":"2018-07-26T23:47:52","slug":"texas-airhogs-speak-chinese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=31328","title":{"rendered":"Texas AirHogs speak Chinese?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>I saw a story in the Amarillo (Texas) Globe-News and chuckled quietly as I pondered how I might respond to it.<\/p>\n<p>You can read the story <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amarillo.com\/sports\/20180726\/chinese-baseball-team-takes-over-texas-airhogs\">here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s about an independent baseball team that plays its home games in Grand Prairie, near Dallas. They call themselves the Texas AirHogs. But here&#8217;s where the chuckle comes in: Its roster is populated by Chinese athletes who are getting some playing time while preparing for the Asian Games in 2020.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s more. This team used to play some of its home games in Amarillo. The team once was based exclusively in the Panhandle, then it decided to split its &#8220;home&#8221; schedule between Amarillo and Grand Prairie.<\/p>\n<p>Over time, the team decided to move exclusively to Grand Prairie, where it now is a training ground unit for the Chinese national baseball team.<\/p>\n<p>My head is spinning over this one.<\/p>\n<p>And it damn sure makes me glad that Amarillo is on the verge of welcoming a AA major-league-affiliated minor-league team that next spring begins playing hardball at the downtown Amarillo ballpark that is now under construction.<\/p>\n<p>There won&#8217;t be this kind of Mickey Mouse baseball going on with a team associated with a bona fide Major League outfit. They will play baseball in a shiny new park, ushering in a new era for the city&#8217;s profound image makeover.<\/p>\n<p>Good luck, Grand Prairie. Amarillo&#8217;s fortunes have taken a significant turn for the better.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I saw a story in the Amarillo (Texas) Globe-News and chuckled quietly as I pondered how I might respond to it. You can read the story here. It&#8217;s about an independent baseball team that plays its home games in Grand Prairie, near Dallas. They call themselves the Texas AirHogs. But here&#8217;s where the chuckle comes &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=31328\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Texas AirHogs speak Chinese?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[6125,179,1436,3153],"class_list":["post-31328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news","tag-aa-baseball","tag-agn-media","tag-downtown-amarillo","tag-mpev"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31328"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31331,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31328\/revisions\/31331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}