After saying yesterday that he wasn't going to comment anymore until after the season, Tom Hicks (via T.R. Sullivan) is now crawdadding on his remarks from yesterday:
Rangers owner Tom Hicks said he has nothing but the highest admiration for shortstop Michael Young and made it clear he wasn't singling him out or criticizing him in a Dallas radio interview Tuesday.
Hicks said that Young was a great guy and a quiet leader who leads by example, while bringing up the fact that the Rangers miss the kind of vocal leadership that David Dellucci gave them the past two seasons.
"There may have been some confusion over what I said and I want to set the record straight," Hicks said from Dallas. "Let me make this clear. I have nothing but the utmost respect for Michael Young as a player and a person. He is the heart and soul of the team and somebody who we want to be with the Rangers for a long time. He is the type of player who we want to be on a championship team, and I strongly feel that will ultimately be the case."
Of course, that doesn't really address the issue of Hicks saying that the Rangers need to change players rather than managers (other than to suggest that Michael Young isn't one of the players that needs to be changed), or that the team lacks "mental toughness"...
Meanwhile, over at the DMN blog, Evan Grant says the mood in the clubhouse yesterday was "agitated," but also has praise for the way Jon Daniels handled the situation.
There are also links to the audio of Hicks' comments on Norm Hitzges' show that caused this whole uproar here.