A Pittsburgh businessman and baseball Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan early today reportedly won the right to buy the Texas Rangers, bidding $385 million cash.
After a knock-down, drag-out, 15-hour US Bankruptcy Court battle, Greenberg and Ryan fended off a rival bid from Mark Cuban, USA Today reported.
The two sides bickered and bid for the right to purchase the team from yesterday morning until early today, until the final bid from Greenberg was submitted at 12:25 a.m.
Houston businessman Jim Crane, who partnered with Cuban on his bid, shook Ryan’s hand and told the current Rangers president they were done bidding.
The Rangers have been in bankruptcy for more than a year. Major League Baseball had already cleared Greenberg’s group, and Greenberg had brokered a deal with Rangers owner Tom Hicks to buy the team.
But the club’s many creditors objected and the matter wound up in bankruptcy court.
Ultimately, it is the baseball owners who have the final word. Three-quarters of them have to approve any team sale. Initially, Cuban and Crane had outbid the preferred buyer; Cuban’s offer of $545 million topped Ryan’s bid by $25 million.
The Ryan group almost immediately objected to that valuation, leading to a profanity-laced exchange between lawyers just outside the Fort Worth, Texas, courtroom, according to one report.
“You’ve been trying to stick it up my ass for the last hour,” Tom Lauria, a lawyer for the Ryan group, screamed at Lou Strubeck, the lawyer for the team’s chief restructuring officer, as they passed in a corridor, according to a Dallas Morning News blog.
That set off a string of F-bombs, the blog reported.