I was reading some stuff about the Rangers financial situation and MLB's involvement with the team over the past year, and stumbled upon a couple of remarkable, and contradictory, quotes...
Compare and contrast...
Tom Hicks, on September 12, 2009:
Hicks said that the decision regarding Purke was made by the Rangers without any influence by Major League Baseball. The Rangers offered $4 million but were told that Purke would not accept less than $6 million. He has since enrolled at TCU.
"We were very disappointed that we made a miscalculation in what it would take to sign our No. 1 Draft pick," Hicks said. "His slot was $1.8 million. We were prepared to pay up to $4 million, which would have been the third-highest bonus ever given to a high school player. That was something we thought he would agree to do.
"We were disappointed that the family insisted on $6 million. The Texas Rangers were not willing to do that. It had nothing to do with MLB restrictions. There is a clear misimpression we didn't sign Matt Purke because MLB wouldn't let us. That's not true. We didn't because of Tom Hicks, Nolan Ryan and Jon Daniels. We were not willing to go to $6 million."
Nolan Ryan, on January 27, 2010:
Ryan, the Texas Rangers’ team president and future minority owner, was the guest speaker at the TCU Business Network of Dallas at the Intercontinental Hotel. The event was presented by the Neeley School of Business and the TCU Alumni Association.
Ryan was asked about Purke, who was the Rangers’ first-round pick in the 2009 First-Year Player Draft.
The sides had agreed before the draft to a $6 million deal, well above the slot money for the No. 14 overall pick, and owner Tom Hicks gave his approval.
That was in June. By July, Major League Baseball was overseeing the Rangers’ finances and had the final say on all transactions beyond what had been budgeted.
When the Aug. 17 deadline to sign Purke arrived, the commissioner’s office wasn’t going to budge.
"At 5 o’clock on the day of the deadline, they called and told us what the amount was," Ryan said during a question-and-answer session. "And it wasn’t nearly enough."
Ryan said he spent the next six hours attmepting to get commissioner Bud Selig to give the Rangers more flexibility.
Would it be too harsh to say that Tom Hicks flat out lied to the beat writer for the team's official website back in September?