Wise Management Fixed Texas

The right guys in the right jobs. That’s what it’s about in baseball. It helps to have the budget of a Central American nation, but that is not always a panacea when it comes to clubs making the Major League baseball playoffs.

Spending smart, making intelligent administrative judgments, having the right people as club president, general manager and manager can be more important than just having bucks to throw at a problem. It was not so long ago that the Texas Rangers were among the league hopeless. They spent $250 million on Alex Rodriguez, had nothing but small change left to pay for a pitching staff and couldn’t get anywhere in the American League West.

No more. Thanks goes to Nolan Ryan. It was grand enough that he became a Hall of Fame pitcher with 327 victories and 5,714 strikeouts, the most of all-time. But he is the guy baseball fans in the Dallas-Fort Worth area should be indebted to for bringing a winning attitude and winning baseball to Texas as president and owner. Last year the Rangers reached the World Series. This year they won their division and have already won their division title.

Ryan and his crew, featuring GM Jon Daniels (who was 28 when he got the position) and manager Ron Washington, have been better businessmen and more astute judges of talent than all but a few other baseball executives, and bef0re this autumn is over they may yet be considered the best of the best. They’ve made the Rangers baseball club as popular as the Texas Rangers with badges.

Compare what the Rangers have accomplished in the last couple of years to what the Chicago Cubs have done with a lot more disposal income. Actually, don’t compare what the Cubs have done in the last couple of years to what anyone else has done. For years fans in ChiTown complained that the ownership of the Tribune Company was holding the team back. But despite the optimism that kicked in when the Ricketts family bought the team, the results have been terrible. Cub failings drove Lou Piniella into retirement. The Ricketts botched the hiring of his replacement by sticking with interim manager Mike Quade and making it untenable for manager-in-waiting Ryne Sandberg to stay in the organization.

General manager Jim Hendry had an intriguing run trying to build and rebuild and end the 103-year (and counting) curse of not winning a World Series, but he ran his course without ending the Curse of the Billy Goat and is out. So the Ricketts must start all over. They need a new general manager. They need a new manager. They need new players, too, but so many it’s hard to know where to start. I think Ernie Banks is available and willing.

There is talk that Theo Epstein will jump from the Red Sox to the Cubs and bring manager Terry Francona with him. If they go, I hope they get eight-year contracts because it will take five years for them to reshape the Cubs into a team as good as it was in 2003. In the book and movie “Moneyball” Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane is offered the chance to run the Red Sox and apply his principles to shaping a team with money. He turned Boston down to stay in Oakland. Epstein took the job and made the Red Sox into two-time Series winners on his watch.

The rest of baseball caught up to Beane and Oakland hasn’t done anything at all lately but lose. Maybe the Red Sox will come calling again if Epstein splits. Nowadays, though, those looking to absorb wisdom might better study Nolan Ryan and the Rangers.