By RANDY GALLOWAY
rgalloway@star-telegram.com
Not to stray far from that what-the-heck-happened storyline that carries over from Green Bay last week to Arlington on Sunday.
Or stray far from the Horned Frogs vs. The World storyline that has the national college football crowd suddenly focused on what Darrell Royal once described as University Drive cockroaches, and he meant it as a compliment.
But a few words, please, on the strange new twist of Tom Hicks vs. His Bankers.
Yes, the calendar tells us it’s all about Arlington’s new football team and Arlington’s new football yard, but also in Tarrant County, which is the heart of the fan base for Arlington’s baseball club, there’s now TCU football that’s all the rage.
Still, this is money time for the Texas Rangers. The financial bloodstream for a baseball team flows in the fall and winter. That means season tickets have to be peddled, which has been a failed process for most of this decade.
Coming off an unexpected 87-win season, and with new ownership on the horizon, the transfusion news has been very positive on renewals, particularly considering the Rangers are baseball’s most financially destitute club.
Then came the official, yet convoluted, word from Hicks on Wednesday. He wants to remain as majority owner.
At the ballpark, you would have thought a large sewer line just erupted.
Talking to several different employees Thursday, there was heavy depression noted.
"I work for Tom, I wanted Tom to be successful at this, but, frankly, we can’t sell Tom," said one. "Our fans, for the most part, will not buy Tom. And our former season-ticket holders, and we’d lost a lot of those because of Mr. Hicks, will not come back if Tom is still the owner."
That’s not news. Anyone in the media with an e-mail address can tell you that. We’ve heard enough of it over the years.
Hicks, as far as I can tell, is certainly not a hated boss by the baseball people who work for him. He’s just considered hopeless as an owner. Fans normally respond to the product on the field, and attendance did grow last season, but ...
"No one says it publicly, but there was disappointment that we didn’t draw better, based on how well the team played into September," said an employee. "Yes, attendance was up, but it was up from one of our worst years ever at the gate. The perception of the team, unfortunately, still has a lot to do with the perception of Mr. Hicks, including, of late, all the financial difficulty."
Once Hicks said last summer that he would sell his majority interest, then came renewed optimism. Three serious bidders surfaced, one of them including Nolan Ryan in the partnership. Ryan is still considered the Great Credibility Hope by most all who work at the ballpark, although there’s one small pocket of resistance to Nolan, which is another story.
Yet, word began to surface last week that Hicks was planning on reinventing himself, and he was wooing a heavyweight backer, and was now ready to make an offer to himself. (Figure that one out.) I e-mailed Tom this on Tuesday morning:
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