Fishing Sea

What Rangers' sale needs is bailout help Fort Worth Star Telegram

And my question is: What are you waiting for, Bud? MLB has been running this team for a year now, so why not reclaim control of this franchise entirely? Take over the Rangers. Save this sale. At least give Michael Young & Co. a chance of saving this season. Harsh but necessary. Because a season that began with so much optimism and expectations feels so very doomed barely a month in. With the exception of a handful of C.J. Wilson and Nelly Cruz developments, everything that can go wrong, so far has gone worse. Victories have been botched into losses. Rich Harden has been questionable. Hitting mostly has been nonexistent. Frankie Francisco has gone milk carton, as have Kinsler and Salty because of injuries. Into this melee comes what can only be described as an ownership debacle. And despite being given a free pass by a few of his media friends, Hicks deserves a good deal of blame. He brought Monarch Alternative Capital into Rangers' players and fans' lives. It does not care about the best interest of baseball, or Rangers fans, or baseball at all. It wants a big fat return on its "investment," and Monarch owns 51 percent of the debt, which gives it just the hammer to be a wrench. I admit this is where I get fuzzy on financials. We all agree Monarch made a risky investment; all it had to do was look at Hicks' books to know he was leveraged to the nth and thus why this debt was available for purchase for a steal. So why exactly is Monarch entitled to a guaranteed return? Doesn't risky imply Monarch assumes some risk? This, frankly, is why so many of us are torqued off about the financial crisis. Too many idiots with MBAs walking around with little ability to do anything except trade paper and generate paper profits. And then when their idiocy crashed around them, we paid for their risky loans. I am pretty sure we would not have shared profits. Hicks has gotten crossways with some very bad men. A very teeny, tiny portion of me feels bad for him. He needed to sell two years ago. Quietly. Get a good price. He tried to save face, waited until everybody realized he had to sell and crashed into a crashing economy. And most of whatever money he generates already was designated for assignment -- creditors.

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News

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