{"id":38414,"date":"2019-08-11T21:09:16","date_gmt":"2019-08-11T21:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=38414"},"modified":"2019-08-11T21:09:44","modified_gmt":"2019-08-11T21:09:44","slug":"sod-poodles-winning-ways-become-infectious-lure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=38414","title":{"rendered":"Sod Poodles&#8217; winning ways become infectious lure"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?hashtags=SodPoodles%20%23Soddies%20%23downtownAmarillo%20%23Hodgetown&#038;via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/hodgetown-7.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-38415\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/hodgetown-7-300x230.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"230\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/hodgetown-7-300x230.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/hodgetown-7-768x588.jpg 768w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/hodgetown-7-1024x784.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/hodgetown-7.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s face it. Winning is a wonderful inducement for sports fans. It brings out those who might otherwise decide to stay home rather than go to the ballpark for an afternoon (or evening) of entertainment.<\/p>\n<p>I present to you the Amarillo Sod Poodles, who entered the Texas League this year and &#8212; in some instances &#8212; have taken the league by storm. Why and how? They&#8217;re winning a good bit more of their games than they&#8217;re losing.<\/p>\n<p>The Sod Poodles existed previously as the San Antonio Missions. Then the Alamo City landed a <em>AAA<\/em> minor-league franchise that played ball previously in Colorado Springs. The Missions needed a new home to play <em>AA<\/em> hardball. They looked around. Amarillo came calling. The powers that be in the Panhandle pledged to build a new ballpark. They offered the franchise some financial inducements.<\/p>\n<p>Then the team decided to relocate. They needed a new name and a new brand. They came up with the Sod Poodles.<\/p>\n<p>However, this wasn&#8217;t a team built from scratch. I mean, the franchise infrastructure already was in place. They had an organization backing them, the National League San Diego Padres.<\/p>\n<p>The Sod Poodles won the first half South Division title this year. They&#8217;re in first place so far in the second half of the season. They&#8217;ll be in the playoffs once the regular season concludes.<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re playing before full houses at Hodgetown. The cheers have been loud and throaty from what I understand.<\/p>\n<p>It fills me with joy to know that Amarillo is turning out to support this team with shouts and cheers.<\/p>\n<p>I won&#8217;t speculate how the fans would react if the Sod Poodles weren&#8217;t winning more than half of their games. I just know that winning does have a way of ginning up support.<\/p>\n<p>This baseball franchise is off to a smashing start.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?hashtags=SodPoodles%20%23Soddies%20%23downtownAmarillo%20%23Hodgetown&#038;via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let&#8217;s face it. Winning is a wonderful inducement for sports fans. It brings out those who might otherwise decide to stay home rather than go to the ballpark for an afternoon (or evening) of entertainment. I present to you the Amarillo Sod Poodles, who entered the Texas League this year and &#8212; in some instances &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=38414\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Sod Poodles&#8217; winning ways become infectious lure<\/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":[9,17],"tags":[6125,1436,8347,7816],"class_list":["post-38414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-sports-news","tag-aa-baseball","tag-downtown-amarillo","tag-hodgetown","tag-sod-poodles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38414","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=38414"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38417,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38414\/revisions\/38417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}