Sad sad read
i know this was posted a while back on Rawk and apologises if people have seen itPOSTED BY A LAD ON RAWK:
This is a letter to Tom Hicks from a Texas Rangers fan that I have been speaking to
Why oh why did we sell to these
.............Liverpool Fan:
I wrote this last year after Tom Hicks bought the Liverpool team. I think it sums up how I feel about what Tom Hicks has done to the team....
Dear Mr. Hicks:
Allow me to introduce myself. I have been a die-hard baseball fan since the day I could walk. When the Rangers built the Ballpark, I snapped up season tickets. Good ones to, Section 30, Row 19, seats 10 & 11. The seats looked right down the 3rd base line. What great times I used to have sitting in those seats. George Bush, used to walk up and down that section shaking hands and signing autographs. He knew how to work the crowd. Guess that is why is he president now. What about the time when Kenny Rogers sat about 10 rows behind me, just before the All-Star game. He talked to everyone around him, and also signed autographs. Remember those great years when we won the division. What a blast it was watching Pudge, Gonzalez, Raffy, and Rusty. A lot of home-grown talent mixed with some excellent coaching from Johnny Oates. I will never forget watching Juan Gonzalez hit a monster home run off the Diamond Club windows in the playoff game against the Yankees. All of those red Rangers jerseys, and the echoing of the chants at the games. Those were the fun days.
I was thrilled when you first bought the team. Imagine having a billionaire own our Texas Rangers. We all thought we were going to win the World Series. And what a splash you originally made. A-Rod was going to be a Ranger! We were going to show the Yankees what the Texas Rangers were made of. You also brought in a top-flight pitcher, Chan Ho Park. Things couldn't have been better. You made these moves despite Doug Melvin publicly telling you that the Rangers needed to retool, and rebuild. You wanted to hear none of it, and fired Mr. Melvin. No worries, because you replaced him with the genius of all baseball, John Hart. He came with some warning signs, but you ignored those.
Hart destroyed the fan base, by ignoring all of the loyal fans. North Texas has over 6 million people living in Dallas/Fort Worth and the surrounding areas. Good years, or bad, we showed up in droves. Why, because the Rangers were fan friendly, and it was a great way to spend an evening. Man, I wish Hart would have never showed up. This went from being a baseball team, to a business concerned about the bottom-line. Texans are full of pride, and Mr. Hart and yourself did everything conceivable to destroy this pride. Selling the naming rights to a California business of all things? You had to be greedy and go with the highest bidder, rather than a local company. Radio Shack, Dell, American Airlines, Alcon, Bombay, Pier 1, Nortel, etc... We would have been fine with any of these companies. But for an extra quarter million a year, you sold out the fans. That hurt, and we started bad-mouthing the ownership, but we kept showing up at the games. Then Hart decided that Rangers fest was a waste of time and canceled those gatherings. I enjoyed listening to the Rangers players at those, and feeling like I was part of the team. Hey, I was spending almost $8,000 a year on tickets, couldn't I have a way to connect with the team? You were still spending money, so we went from loving you, to being able to put up with you. That was until the wheels fell off. You traded A-Rod. How embarrassing it must be that you are still writing $8 million checks to him every year. Then you
off Nolan Ryan so bad that he quit being an ambassador to the Rangers, and signed a contract with the Astros. Then I noticed you started showing up to the game in a private helicopter, only to take a tunnel under the stadium to get to your seats. You would leave your seats and go through the Rangers dugout any time you needed to get up. Remember me telling you that previous owners would get up and shake hands with the fan base around them. Not you anymore. You would wear your white golf shirt and get annoyed when a kid tapped you on the shoulder for an autograph. Over time, the security personal wouldn't even let anyone within 2 rows of you. At the same time you were burning bridges with a terrific fan base, a new owner showed up in town. Marc Cuban, was making local sports fun again. Talk about fan-friendly, this guy was the man. He loved the crowds, and connecting with everyone around him. He brought in smart management, marketing guros, and did everything he could to make watching a basketball game the best entertainment package possible. Cuban was savvy enough to know that people how a ton of options on how they can spend their money. So guess what, I dumped my Rangers season tickets and bought Maverick season tickets. It hurt at first, but what a great time I have had going to those games over the years. The energy of the crowd, the playoff games, watching the owner get so passionate. Those tickets, and the memories from them, have been priceless.
Mr. Hicks, it is time you start paying attention to what you are doing. We have one of the worst payrolls in baseball. You have gone cheap on just about everything, and keep raising the prices of parking, beer, and hot dogs. You are on record of saying if the fans return, you will start spending again. I have news for you Mr. Hicks, the fans are gone. You have no one to blame but yourself. I was at the Red Sox game last night, and was astonished to see how few people were in the crowd. Not too long ago, it was hard to even get tickets to a Ranger/Red Sox game. Last night I bet only 28,000 people were actually in attendance, and most of those were Red Sox fans. Before you destroyed this team, 28,000 people would have showed up to watch the Royals.
You made a comment earlier this week, that will stick with me for a while. You talked about your new soccer team, and all of the passion that their fans showed. You wished that the fans at your American owned teams shared that same passion. I want you to do me a favor, and have someone pull out some of game tapes of the Ballpark fans from the mid-90's. You will find that we all showed up in red, and we were loud and passionate. Then pull out a tape from when you first bought the Dallas Stars. You will find that same energy from the fans as well. You are the one was sapped that energy from us, and you have a lot of work ahead of you to make it come back.
I left the Ballpark for the last time last night, and drove past the new stadium the Cowboys were building. I started talking to the guests I took to the Ranger game about buying season tickets for the Cowboys when the new stadium opens up. You had my money Mr. Hicks, but now it is going elsewhere. I will still keep my Ranger memorabilia displayed in my game room to remind me of all the good times I used to have at the Ballpark. Until you do something to change my mind, those memories will be the only connection I have to the Rangers. Hopefully those memories will not fade into oblivion.
Take care Mr. Hicks, and I wish you the best of luck. You are a smart man, but you have a lot of work ahead of you. It will be interesting to see how you handle yourself. Enjoy the trips to Europe to watch you new team. Take a ton of pictures of all of their fans. Sometime soon I have a feeling that a European reporter will be reminding you of the comments you made last week, and asking what happened. Take a good look in the mirror before you answer.
The day a shovel gets dug in theground at Stanley Park is the day i win the Lottery which will be never
by 