Stealing home

Hicks should prove a good steward of this franchise; he is, after all, no Brad Corbett or Eddie Chiles, two former owners who nearly buried the Rangers beneath horrible trades, bad business deals, and a distaste for the sport that would linger long past their doomed associations with the club.

After an hourlong discussion about the business of baseball and broadcasting, Hicks is asked whether he feels any responsibility owning a baseball team; he has, after all, bought a piece of a sport that's 150 years old, a sport romanticized more than any other in the history of America. He thinks for a moment, then utters a phrase not often associated with Tom Hicks: "It's kinda neat."

"I don't think anyone can buy a sports team who doesn't love sports," he says after a few more seconds. "There are much better investments. They may not lose their money, but they can be stale investments. I think I really looked at it from a business point of view."

He then laughs a little and recounts the days when, as a boy, he tuned the radio by his bed to broadcasts of the Dallas Eagles games at Burnett Field in Oak Cliff, where Willie McCovey and Eddie Knoblauch blossomed into major-league heroes. A native Texan, Hicks didn't grow up with hockey. He was a child of baseball.

"Buying the Rangers was a business deal," he says. "But I noticed when I was walking to the press conference at the Ballpark that I got real..." For a second, he stumbles over his words. "I looked out on that stadium, and I got real...kind of...a touch of emotion that I wasn't expecting to have. It was kind of like realizing you were going to own something that was historic, a slice of Americana. I didn't have that feeling when I went out to the Stars Center the first time. An ice rink is a completely different thing."

Tom Hicks owns the Ballpark in Arlington now. Incidentally, he mentions with a grin, he also owns the land where Burnett Field used to sit.