As the WLJ reports, it just so happened that the Aug. 4 auction date also served as the seventeenth anniversary of Ryan’s famous on-field fisticuffs with former Chicago White Sox third basemen Robin Ventura. A 46-year-old Ryan was pitching for the Rangers at the time, and after being hit with a pitch, Ventura, 20 years his junior, made the ill-advised decision to charge the mound. Ryan promptly put the young whippersnapper in a headlock, landing several punches to the top of his head that have been memorialized as “noogies” in baseball lore.
The story of that brawl galvanized the Foley team representing Greenberg. “That had become sort of a rallying point for us,” Braza told the WLJ. “We found some significance around that date and thought we’re going to use this.”
At one point in the team’s Chapter 11 proceedings, Greenberg, who recently defected from Pepper Hamilton to Reed Smith, estimated that the legal bills for his efforts to acquire the team had risen to nearly $10 million. And that was before the marathon, late-night auction concluded that put the Rangers in Greenberg’s and Ryan’s grasp.
White & Case global financial restructuring and insolvency chair Thomas Lauria, who advised Greenberg in bankruptcy hearings, told USA Today last month that as much as $1 million in legal fees could have been racked up on that last day alone.
While Braza said she couldn’t remember another transaction being as complicated, she and Schulz told the WLJ they would welcome a similar challenge in the future.
“There wasn’t a lot of precedent for something like this,” she said. “But now I think we feel like there isn’t much we haven’t seen.”
