Remember last summer and fall when certain elements of the Pittsburgh media were lamenting Chuck Greenberg’s impending purchase of the Texas Rangers? How when the Rangers went to the World Series, those same talking heads moaned about the Pittsburgh native taking a Texas team to the World Series and not the Pirates, even though Greenberg had only technically owned the team for a couple of months?
Well, Greenberg is resigning as the Rangers’ CEO today after apparently butting heads with Nolan Ryan. Craig Calcaterra notes at Hardball Talk that Greenberg has a relatively small stake in the team’s ownership which means that he’s pretty much done with the Rangers a little more than seven months after taking over.
I mention this not to celebrate or anything (Greenberg seems like a really smart guy that’s done very good things with the Pirates’ minor league affiliates in Altoona and State College and honestly, the amount of credit Nolan Ryan gets for the Rangers’ surge last year drives me crazy because GM Jon Daniels, the real architect of the club, is often completely overlooked — though, to be fair to Ryan, Calcaterra also notes that Daniels sided with Ryan and not Greenberg in not wanting to break the bank for Cliff Lee this winter), but because things like this happen and it’s really dumb for Pirate fans and the local media alike to openly pine for new owners on the assumption that simply swapping Bob Nutting out for Random Rich Local Guy X will immediately fix all of the Pirates’ problems.
But hey, who really does that anymore?
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