Tom Hicks’ Rangers Ownership Changed Face of MLB Free-Agent Spending

Former Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks died on Saturday, more than a decade removed from owning the franchise.

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There may be no more polarizing owner in Texas Rangers history than Tom Hicks. No owner changed the trajectory of the franchise or baseball spending, either.

Hicks, a private equity businessman who owned the Rangers, the Dallas Stars and Liverpool FC, died on Sunday at 79 years old, according to his spokesperson and a statement released by his family. The Associated Press was the first to report his passing.

His first sports acquisition wasn’t the Rangers. It was the Dallas Stars, which he bought from Norm Green for $82 million in 1995. Three years later he bought the Rangers from a group led by George W. Bush and pushed the franchise into competition with the major market teams of baseball with one contract.

Tom Hicks as Rangers Owner

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Hicks inherited a team that had won its first AL West crown in 1996 and was set up to win two more in 1998 and 1999. But the Rangers went no further than the divisional round. During the 2000 winter meetings, Hicks made one of the most seismic decisions in baseball history — signing Alex Rodriguez.

It was just an ordinary contract. He signed Rodriguez to a 10-year, $252 million deal, the largest in baseball history. It pushed baseball spending into a new national spotlight one it hadn’t been in since signing Nolan Ryan to a one-year deal at the 1988 winter meetings. Hicks later admitted he came to regret the deal, but it changed the face of the franchise and polarized those that followed baseball.

It was a significant overpay that required the rest of baseball 15 years to catch up to. Per ESPN, Giancarlo Stanton’s $13-year, $325 million deal signed with the Miami Marlins in 2014 was the first to exceed Rodriguez’s contract in years and total value. The deal nudged the rest of baseball forward and today the 10-year deal is becoming the norm for position players in their prime.

Per Spotrac, 20 MLB players have deals of 10 or more years. Additionally, 19 contracts surpass the total value of Rodriguez’s deal. The top of the market is Juan Soto’s $765 million deal with the New York Mets which is a 15-year contract. Hicks opened a gateway for MLB teams to spend big — eventually.

Hicks owned the Rangers until 2010, when his sports company fell into bankruptcy and he had to auction off both the Rangers and the Stars to other owners. But his impact is still felt in baseball today, every time a team like the Mets signs a player like Soto. Those deals happen, in part, because of the bet Hicks made on Rodriguez in 2000, and ultimately lost when Texas traded him three years later.

But, in that way, the former Rangers owner changed the game of baseball.