Texas Rangers Fans Can Again Dream Of A Merry Baseball, With The Departure Of Owner Tom Hicks

Comments (0) By Richie Whitt Thursday, Dec 24 2009

"I don't foresee us going against what we have done over the last three years, and that's developing our own talent and bringing it up through our system," Ryan said on a separate conference call. "I think everybody that is going to be involved, obviously their goal is to try to bring a winner here and try to do what we think is within reason to do that and makes good business sense."

And the Rangers will no longer have to worry about what Hicks says, or how much he doesn't spend.

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Tom Hicks has made some strategic blunders during the years he has owned the Texas Rangers, but selling the team to Pittsburgh sports attorney Chuck Greenberg was not one of them.

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Greenberg, a sports attorney who owns minor league teams in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and State College, Pennsylvania, envisions himself as the CEO over a board of directors, delegating the day-to-day running of the team and baseball operations to experienced baseball people.

"My role is to have great people in positions of authority and to create an environment that enables them and encourages them to be their best, then to let them do their job," he said. "I think on the baseball side, this team is the envy of the baseball world right now. That's not my role. I won't inject myself in a way that would interfere with anything."

The new owner, in other words, will own, not lead. He'll nod. He'll write checks. He won't be visible. Jerry Jones and Mark Cuban he ain't. Which, come to think, may not be that bad of an idea seeing that the last championship trophy in this town was hoisted in 1999 by—gulp—a guy named Hicks.

But when Rangers Ballpark gets a bigger video screen in left field or the team signs a sexy free-agent or absorbs salary in a deadline trade next season, you'll know there is indeed a new owner.

"The goal is simple: Win," Greenberg said. "Win the division, get through the LCS. We want to win a World Series."

For a franchise that has won exactly one playoff game in 38 seasons, Christmas came early.