Saw a few stories this morning, and I felt like saying a few words on them. It’s about two bits of the Rangers recent past that are no longer a part of the team. Tom Hicks & Scott Feldman.
1) It appears from multiple news reports that Scott Feldman will be signing a one year deal to pitch in Chicago with the Cubs. He’ll be getting $6 million base plus $1 million in various incentives. That’s technically a cut in base pay, as he made $6.5 million for the Rangers in 2012. The team held a $9 million option for 2013, that they obviously weren’t going to take, instead paying Scott a $600,000 buyout. So I suppose you could say Scott is getting a small raise (by MLB standards, I’ll take a “small” raise of $100k) if you combine his 2013 option buyout from the Rangers and his 2013 salary from the Cubs. But still, given the way 2012 ended, I don’t think many Ranger fans will be sad to not see him here in 2013. Will he turn out to be the second coming of R.A. Dickey, where he wins a Cy Young down the road after leaving the Rangers? Probably not, but stranger things have happened.
2) Tom Hicks is out – totally. I knew about this first part for awhile. While a ton of noise was made about Tom Hicks being out when the Greenberg/Ryan group took over, I knew that wasn’t totally the case. If you remember, one thing Hicks was big on was splitting things into pieces to deal with them. That extended here, and Hicks had separated the deal for the parking lots around the park away from straight ownership of the team, so Hicks retained a piece (although how much, I’m not sure) of the parking lot deals. Whenever I’d mention that at games, people would sound surprised that it was still Hicks’ thing. I speculated it was done that way to mesh in somehow with the failed Glorypark project from some time ago. Anyway, word came down this morning that Hicks is totally out now that he settled a suit over the parking lot situation. If you read the story about it, it seems like it was a slander suit, but there was also a statement saying terms were sealed, so what actually happened is unknown.
But, having Hicks’ name still hanging around somewhat was a bit surprising to read – even though I had heard something about the parking lot stuff before. That I was STILL hearing his name in news definitely garnered an eyebrow raise from me. :)
Also, don’t I recall hearing that he owned some small percentage of something other than the parking lots? Some token thing so he can say he still has some small piece – akin to like owning a single share of Facebook? You technically own part of the company, but nothing that could amount to anything? Am I remembering that right?