Monthly Archives: July 2010

07.06.10
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Let’s pool money and buy the Rangers

If, unlike me, you have nine figures burning a hole in your pocket, you may be interested in participating in a July 16 auction for the mired-in-bankruptcy Texas Rangers. The neverending saga of the Rangers sale may be finally coming to a close, as the frontrunning Greenberg-Ryan group has its price established at $502 million, with any new auction bids required to be greater by at least $20 million.

The interesting backstory is that a previous suitor may reemerge in the group fronted by Houston trucking magnate Jim Crane, who actually outbid Greenberg-Ryan. From the Dallas Morning News article (link up top):

Lenders also claimed that Houston businessman Jim Crane had been the highest bidder last winter, but that baseball commissioner Bud Selig forbade negotiations with Crane.

Instead of the Rangers’ “pre-packaged” bankruptcy plan sailing smoothly through bankruptcy court in Fort Worth, Bankruptcy Judge Michael Lynn appointed William K. Snyder as the team’s chief restructuring officer. Last week, Snyder recommended a new round of bidding.

If anything, this appears to be a last-ditch attempt to wring out more money to creditors than anything else. The Greenberg-Ryan group’s bid, in combination with $75 million guaranteed by previous owner Hicks Sports Group, would get the number just over the $576 million that is owed.

Though the Rangers are doing well on the field right now, it’s clear that the team is struggling to make ends meet. Capmaker New Era claims that the Rangers are over $100k in arrears, and that the bankruptcy could wipe out the bill. I’ve got a solution: Make the Rangers play without caps for the rest of the season! That’ll go over well during the coming oppressive Texas summer heat (mitigated by the high percentage of night games played).

07.03.10
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The day has come… for a proxy fight

It’s too bad that per the ML Constitution, teams and owners aren’t allowed to sue each other. They’re not even allowed to have open sniping in the local papers or even a Lincoln-Douglas style debate. Instead, we have Bill Neukom sending lawyers down to San Jose to fight for the Giants (big and little). For the A’s, it’s County Assessor Larry Stone penning an op-ed in today’s  edition of San Francisco’s paper.

In Stone’s plea to Neukom to call the dogs off, he mentions that the A’s have proposed their own solution for determining compensation for South Bay territorial rights.

As I understand it, the A’s have agreed that following the opening of a San Jose ballpark, the Giants would have the right to ask Major League Baseball to arbitrate any damages to their fan base or revenue that were caused by the new stadium. Neukom has apparently rejected this fair and simple approach, most likely because projections conducted in a fair manner just might show that the San Jose ballpark would have a positive impact on the orange and black.

Obviously, Neukom would reject such a deal as it doesn’t involve a massive upfront payoff, the kind many believe it would take for the move to happen. However, by continuing to take such an intransigent stance, Neukom risks allowing Bud Selig and his committee to dictate compensation terms. Here’s are the four main tenets I expect to be the framework regarding the committee’s report:

  • The A’s hurt the Giants when they moved to Oakland in 1968 because it split the market in two.
  • The Giants hurt the A’s when they moved to a downtown SF ballpark in 2000 because they suddenly had a new venue that was more accessible to everyone in the Bay Area.
  • Trading the higher population of the East Bay and access to the North Bay for the South Bay’s corporate money and lower population is essentially a wash.
  • San Jose’s progress in terms of getting pieces of a stadium deal in place put it in advantageous position.

That last part is not to say that Oakland isn’t making its own progress as it formally acquired the OFDT site from CEDA, but as long as there’s no EIR or negotiations with private landowners it’s well behind. That said, what would you consider fair  compensation given the four points above? Is it at all clear cut?