With attendees protected by a phalanx of police officers and under no obligation to talk to the media, there wasn’t a lot of news coming out of the owners meetings in Arlington last week. Next to revelations about the Astros’ systemic cheating, the story about police escorts protecting Astros owner Jim Crane and his colleagues was probably the biggest of the proceedings. As such, one particularly salient note about the potential disappearance of local blackouts went largely unnoticed.
Just to be clear: There are police officers stationed in the lobby of the hotel working as security, and when they got the sense Jim Crane did not want to talk, they cut in to the media scrum and escorted Crane to a staircase leading to the level where meetings are taking place.