The Texas Rangers are no longer crowing about bringing the World Series to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex while Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones's team stumbles out of contention for the Super Bowl it will host.
Nolan Ryan must be seething. It's a wonder he hasn't ordered over-matched manager Ron Washington to stand in the batting cage against him.
This is not how Ryan wanted the signature moment of his three-year presidency of the team to play out: skulking home, down 2-0 to the San Francisco Giants. Off the field, things are on the up and up - a 20-year, $3-billion (all figures U.S.) television contract with Fox Sports Southwest provides solid financial underpinning, and Ryan is still tickled at seeing Rangers paraphernalia in San Francisco International Airport, indicating they are no longer a "North Texas-type franchise," as Ryan, 63, himself said Thursday.
And that is the point, really. The Rangers will remain in everybody's good graces, in no small measure out of respect for Ryan, the Hall of Fame strikeout king and Texas icon. Despite a limited ownership stake of 5 per cent, he is the face of the American League champions just as his five-year stint as a player helped set the stage for the building of division winners from 1996-1999 and, ultimately, Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, even though there were no playoff appearances.
It is Chuck Greenberg, a Pittsburgh-based lawyer and minor-league baseball owner, who is the club's managing partner and local gas and oilmen Bob Simpson and Ray Davis, who bankroll the club, which the group won in a brutal bankruptcy auction in August, 15 months after former owner Tom Hicks started defaulting on loans and after a protracted battle with Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who threw in his lot with disgruntled second-lien lenders to gum up the works. It was Hicks who hired Ryan in February, 2008 - a rare bright move by the leverage-buyout specialist.
When another Hall of Famer, Hank Greenberg, bought into the Cleveland Indians, he saw one of his missions being furthering de-segregation of the game. Ryan wants to free pitchers from the tyranny of pitch counts. "Pampered," the 324-game winner with seven no-hitters called modern-day pitchers in a Sports Illustrated article.
Rangers pitchers show up in spring training and throw live batting practice to hitters on Day 1. You want a long-tossing program? Most teams have their pitchers throw 120 feet. Rangers pitchers throw from 225 to 300 feet to build up arm strength and set them up to pitch in the midsummer Texas heat at a ballpark that is considered hitter friendly.
"I'd like to think that we built an attitude toward pitching in that ballpark that wasn't there," Ryan says of the fact the team's earned run average was its lowest since 1990.
For a guy who was the prototype of the no-bull Texas pitcher, Ryan has a deft touch off the field. When he talks about employees, the word "us" is used as much as "ours." His alliance with Greenberg made the Pittsburgh lawyer commissioner Bud Selig's favoured option all along. "Nolan gave them instant credibility," said a source familiar with the commissioner's office. "He's not impulsive. Bud likes that."
Greenberg says he is an admirer of Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim owner Arte Moreno, who purchased the Angels in 2003 from Disney and started cutting prices and aggressively marketing the club beyond its Orange County borders. So Greenberg lowered ticket, parking and concession prices one week after gaining ownership of the Rangers. Hot dogs can suddenly go for $1 during a given inning. True to his roots as a minor-league owner, Greenberg realized on a stroll through the ballpark that the team's radio broadcasts couldn't be heard in the concourses by fans lining up for food and souvenirs or to simply escape the heat. He changed it on the spot.
The Rangers attendance of 2.5 million was its highest since 2005, but Greenberg and Ryan know the real work lies ahead: Selling private suites and corporate sponsorships at a time when the Cowboys still have the after-glow of a new stadium. Superstar centre-fielder Josh Hamilton won't be making $3.25-million again, and it will take making Cliff Lee the richest pitcher in baseball history to keep him out of the clutches of the New York Yankees. A $68-million payroll won't come close to cutting it and Moreno's Angels, who have won five of the past seven AL West titles, will be back with a vengeance.
Still, the Rangers are hardly a financial basket-case, unlike their previous owner, as is demonstrated by the $593-million auction price that was 3.45 times the club's reported revenue. That's reflective of being the fifth-largest market in the country. The Rangers had been in bankruptcy for 15 months, another sorry episode for a club whose warped history has not received the recognition it deserves: 33 losing seasons and 17 winning seasons and six different ownership groups - all hugely underfunded with the exception of a group fronted by president George W. Bush. Meanwhile, several of the key characters in baseball's steroid scandal played for the Rangers.
Yet Saturday night, Ryan will throw out the first pitch before Game 3 of a World Series. (Sunday night, it's George Bush, Sr., and George W. Bush). Baseball is back in the Metroplex - a little bruised, but in much better shape than three years ago. And there's not a lot of that going around this country right now.