Sports Blog

By Bill Peterson
To Hays County baseball fans, here is an enormously relevant and important question: Why fool with driving to Round Rock for a Triple-A baseball game and fighting traffic that could last three hours or more when you can arrive in Houston in two and a half or three hours to see a major league game and better restaurants?
The question continues to fascinate this veteran baseball writer more than six years following the inauguration of the Round Rock Express, because the fact that an issue arises at all is a complete anomaly. The Dell Diamond is no more than 50 miles from most points in Northern Hays County. Minute Maid Park requires a drive of around 175 miles. It should be a no-brainer.
But that insensible Austin traffic utterly perverts time and space relationships. It's impossible to forget or tolerate the maddening traffic running through north Austin and its near suburbs, particularly during rush hour. It once took me nearly two hours to drive from former employment at an Internet house at MoPac and Far West Blvd. to the Dell Diamond in the early evening. It's never taken more than three hours to move from Buda to Minute Maid Park, even in the thick of Houston's awful rush hour on the Katy Freeway, Admittedly, the wide-open drive along SH 71 and IH-10 invites a bit of a lead foot.
Last Friday, yours truly wandered up to Round Rock for Roger Clemens' appearance. Leaving at 2:20 p.m. and arriving at 3:30 p.m., the wind was at my back. But our good friend, Gerald Castillo, leaving a little later, needed three and a half hours to make the trek to the Dell Diamond from San Marcos so he could photograph the moment for the San Marcos daily.
The ball yard where the Missions play in San Antonio is much closer by road time than the Dell Diamond. And yet, it's hard to decide if it's really so ridiculous that the Dell Diamond is located so far away as the outskirts of Round Rock.
One wants to say, environmentalists be damned, that the Dell Diamond belongs on the auditorium shores in downtown Austin, where it could make a thriving scene even more enticing. But a couple considerations intervene.
First, Round Rock is a great little baseball town with successful traditions in the amateur game. Maybe the franchise would be more supported in downtown Austin, but Round Rock pretty consistently brings in 9,300 fans per game. Looking around the yard on the night Clemens pitched, most of the crowd consisted of older folks and families, kind of a Texas Rangers crowd.
Like the Rangers, the Express plays in a suburban setting. Would young singles and couples who congregate in downtown Austin make the same kind of scene one finds with the libidinous crowd at Minute Maid Park in downtown Houston? Suburban types often don’t like taking their families to the urban centers for a night of entertainment, especially when they just fought traffic to retreat from downtown offices.
Perhaps the franchise would draw just as well in Austin. But that’s questionable, and it’s not questionable that the franchise draws successfully in Round Rock.
Another factor: One hates to imagine trying to get around near the shores if 9,000 fans – at least 5,000 more cars including game personnel – are trying to wedge into a ball park. So, it’s probably just as well that the franchise is in Round Rock. Which doesn’t make the drive pleasant.
On a related note, any hope that the Hays High School football team’s move to a southern-oriented Class 4A district would eliminate the annual non-district drive into Williamson County can be forgotten. The Rebels play their second game of the schedule in Leander against Cedar Park on Sept. 13. One already dreads the day.

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