On Monday, we got a couple of interesting stories about former Rangers team executives. The first story was that former Rangers owner Tom Schieffer was named by Bud Selig to be the MLB overseer for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Schieffer, if I remember right, was essentially forced out by Tom Hicks after he took over the team, forcing out what was the then popular team president over an idea to merge the Stars & Rangers front offices. Yeah, that worked out. Scheiffer had a big hand in building our ballpark, and it’s nice to see him get a gig in baseball. From what I’ve read about it nationally, it seems to be a pretty well received move. Except for those I suppose in the Dodgers organization, who probably don’t want the intrusion. One remark I saw said Tom is a good choice, as he wouldn’t have aspirations to be involved with the team once the interim tag is removed. That’s probably good for the Dodgers, or more importantly whoever ends up owning the team. That situation has the potential to be a colossal nightmare. If you click through to this link over at mlb.com about the situation, there’s a short video there with Peter Gammons. Peter obviously doesn’t like Tom Hicks, as he gave a lot of credit to Scheiffer & Dubya for rebuilding the franchise, and getting the park built, and then goes on to say “except for when it was screwed up for awhile by Tom Hicks”. Ouch.
The other news is a story I saw on Monday morning about the ouster of Chuck Greenberg as Rangers’ president. It’s very much a dirty laundry story for sure. But to be honest, I don’t think anyone really believed the cover story given at the time. Everyone kind of figured there was some kind of backdoor mess that forced Chuck out. This story gets into some of that. While one can never really know what story is 100% gospel, this has a big long look inside the situation, and while I’d be surprised if this 100% the truth, I’d say it’s probably pretty much in the ballpark (har har har). Most DEFINITELY worth a read.