Tom Hicks, former owner of both the Texas Rangers and the Dallas Stars, died on Saturday at the age of 79.
In his 16 years owning the Stars and 12 owning the Rangers, there were, no doubt, some high points and some low points. Perhaps because of the way Hicks’ tenure in Dallas ended, you only remember the low points.
But there were highs too — in fact at one point, Hicks, stepping in with his unbridled enthusiasm and giant bag of cash, was the toast of Dallas sports at a time when the Cowboys were bottoming out at 5-11 for three straight seasons after their run in the ‘90s, and the Mavericks were still a couple years away from drafting a tall, skinny German kid.
Check out some of the highest highs and the lowest lows from Hicks’ run in Dallas below, from helping bring Lord Stanley to the Lone Star State, to the crumbling of his reign in the early 2010s.
Rangers
The Highs1. Stars win their first Stanley Cup
Between the two, Hicks’ tenure at the helm of the Stars went much, much better than his time with the Rangers.
In 1999, four years after Hicks bought into a sport he barely knew anything about, the Stars won their first Stanley Cup championship. At the time, it was the only non-Cowboys championship Dallas’ pro sports teams had won.
Hicks was elated. Stars’ legendary broadcaster “Razor” Reaugh said during Sunday’s broadcast: “He loved that era’s Dallas Stars. [They were] his boys. He worked to understand the game better; he gave us every tool to win.”
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Stars owner Tom Hicks receives assistance from broadcaster Ralph Strangis to put the Stanley Cup back on the pedestal on the stage at the victory celebration at Reunion Arena Monday afternoon June 21, 1999. hickschron
NGUYEN, Huy
2. American Airlines Center
Hicks played a senior role in the development and planning of American Airlines Center, which opened in 2001. The new arena not only provided a home to both the Stars and the Mavericks (and still does), it also reshaped Uptown Dallas into one of the city’s most active areas.
“It’s changed the whole personality of downtown Dallas, Uptown,” Hicks told The Dallas Morning News in 2010. He remained proud of the arena’s success even after his ownership of the team ended.
3. Rangers go back-to-back
Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks is drenched by his baseball players during the post game celebration in the clubhouse after the Rangers clinched the A.L. West outright by defeating the Oakland A’s 10-3.
1999 File Photo / Tom Fox
Hicks got to Arlington just in time — after buying the team in June of 1998 from an investment group managed by George W. Bush, the Rangers would go on to win the AL West division crown in back-to-back seasons.
Unfortunately, the team ran into the buzzsaw that was the New York Yankees in the first round of the postseason, both times.
Those failures vs. the Yankees would help push Hicks to dole out what was perhaps the most damaging contract in Rangers history. More on that later.
4. Credit for the Silver Boot series
This was a good call then, and has only improved with time.
Hicks was responsible for making the Rangers vs. the Houston Astros an annual series, at a time when the teams were in different leagues and interleague play was set up much differently than it is now.
Hicks turned down an offer for the Rangers to be realigned into the Central Division for the chance to play Houston every season. The six-games-a-year series would jump up to 19 when the Astros joined the AL West in 2010.
Since then, Rangers-Astros has become one of the most heated rivalries in MLB, culminating in an American League Championship Series that the Rangers won in 2023.
5. Leaving the Rangers in good hands
Though things between Hicks and the Rangers would get very, very sticky, he no doubt left the club in a position for success.
Aside from selling the team to a group led by the beloved Nolan Ryan, Hicks also took a big risk in hiring a 28-year-old Jon Daniels as the club’s general manager in 2005. At the time, he was the youngest GM in MLB history.
It led to the most successful string of seasons in the team’s history, which included two World Series appearances and four division titles.
“Tom had vision few do,” Daniels told The News on Sunday. “He wasn’t afraid and was an eternal optimist. He encouraged us all to think big. Tom believed in me when few did, and changed my life.”
The Lows
Texas Rangers new short stop Alex Rodriguez, left, tries on the team’s ball cap after being introduced to the Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas, media, Dec. 12, 2003, by team owner Tom Hicks, right, after Rodriguez signed a record $252 Million contract on Monday. (Brad Loper/The Dallas Morning News via AP)
Brad Loper / AP
1. The Rangers sign Alex Rodriguez
It was a high at the time of the signing, at least.
Hicks, the eternal optimist who liked to think big, certainly went huge with a record-breaking contract for the 25-year-old Alex Rodriguez, a 10-year, $252 million deal to bring a legitimate superstar to Arlington.
It quickly went awry. Though he hit 156 home runs and won a Most Valuable Player award during his time in Texas, he’d spend just three of those 10 years with the Rangers before being traded to the Yankees. The Rangers never won more than 73 games in a season with Rodriguez on the roster.
Hicks dialed the team’s payroll back substantially post-A-Rod, down from $103 million to just $55 million in 2004. That’s $12 million less than the extra $67 million the Rangers sent to New York in the deal.
2. Ameriquest Field
On May 6, 2004, the Rangers would reach a 30-year, $75 million deal to sell The Ballpark in Arlington’s naming rights to Ameriquest Mortgage Co.
That turned out to be very bad timing.
Not even three years later, the two sides ended their naming-rights deal in the wake of the collapse of the subprime mortgage market. The ballpark was renamed to Rangers Ballpark in Arlington and eventually, well after Hicks’ tenure, Globe Life Park.
3. 2009
It was an eventful year for the Hicks Ownership Group, hardly any of it good.
In March of 2009 the Hicks Sports Group defaulted on $525 million in loans from a group of lenders based in New York. Two months later, Hicks publicly confirmed that he was taking offers to sell the Rangers.
In the following months, front-office staffers would be laid off and the Hicks Sports Marketing Group would be dissolved. The Rangers were so low on money that it was widely speculated MLB was controlling the team’s finances and supplying cash to make payroll.
The drama continued through the end of the year until, in January of 2010, Hicks sold the team to a group led by Nolan Ryan and Pittsburgh attorney Chuck Greenberg.
To add to the sting for Hicks, the Rangers would go on to clinch the franchise’s first World Series appearance just 10 months later.
4. Stars, Liverpool follow
In charge of three professional sports teams amid a financial crisis, the Hicks group was simply spread too thin and was unable to service its debt.
Things went south with the other two clubs as well, starting with Liverpool. Hicks’ sale of the club in October 2010 put an end to years of protests from Liverpool fans over Hicks’ and partner George Gillett’s running of the team.
The Stars were sold a year later. Hicks, however, apparently remained interested in “his” teams even after they weren’t his anymore. Stars owner Tom Gagliardi, who bought the team from Hicks in 2011, said in a statement after Hicks’ death, “From Day 1 of my ownership, he was always willing to help me however he could.”
5. Things get messy with the Rangers
The Rangers’ sale wasn’t as amicable as the Stars’, which wasn’t all that amicable, either.
The bankruptcy saga of the late-2000s Rangers led to a cavalcade of complaints, claims and lawsuits, with everything from Hicks hoarding the parking lots around the Rangers’ ballpark to the Rangers suing Hicks alleging he “enriched himself at the expense of the club.”
Even still, Hicks was watching in the stands for both of the Rangers’ 2010-11 World Series appearances.
SportsDay writers Evan Grant and Tim Cowlishaw contributed to this article.
More on Tom Hicks
— Tom Hicks, former owner of Stars, Rangers, dies at 79
— Without Tom Hicks, there would be no Stanley Cup championship for the Dallas Stars
— Watch: Dallas Stars broadcaster Daryl Reaugh honors Tom Hicks: ‘A titan of D-FW sports’
— Ted Cruz, others share reaction to death of former Rangers, Stars owner Tom Hicks
— Tom Hicks’ ownership of the Rangers: A timeline
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