Hi. Could a fellow wrodforger from across the pond please find this chap pictured below and give him a smack in the mouth for me? Or maybe something more vigorous and fatal? His name his Tom Hicks and he owns a baseball team in America somewhere. No need to go to the trouble to wrap something up and post it across the Atlantic as Big Stall would have you do, just a simple thrashing meted out that would rearrange his face to make it even less pleasant than it already is. Cheers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Hicks American billionaire owns half of Liverpool FC - that's probably it. Lives in this neighborhood
Tom Hicks is part owner of Liverpool Football Club. The Reds are having a somewhat disappointing season, and people are blaming the owners. Hicks is also the owner of the Texas Rangers, the other Liverpool owner is George Gillett, who owns the Montreal Canadiens. There is constant speculation about the owners intentions. They are seen as investors who don't really love football. And there isn't much else to talk about.
Ah, Tom Hicks. Dumb as nails with lots of money. Signed Alex Rodriguez to a heavily front-loaded 10 year deal, played him for three years, then traded him, in the process paying $120,000,000 in salary for three years and trading away 7 years at $130,000,000. That's got to be the worst extraction of value on a sports contract ever for a player who actually lived up to the contract, although it turned out not to be quite as monumentally bad as it looked at the time when Rodriguez opted out of his contract after his forth year with the Yankees. Not to mention that Hicks is one of the biggest culprits in the ascendancy of George W. Bush. Hicks bought out Bush's shares of the Rangers in an absurdly corrupt sweetheart deal that overpaid Bush by some $10,000,000 compared to a pro rata allocation of purchase price according to shares of ownership. Having in effect conspired with Bush's Rangers co-owners--who obviously went along with the faked purchase price allocation--to obliterate ethics and corruption laws by paying a $10,000,000 bribe to a sitting governor gearing up for a Presidential run, Hicks then proceeded to become one of Bush's biggest campaign donors, propelling him to a second term in the governorship of Texas and beyond. Hicks' bribe was paid back with interest--Hicks is a muckety-muck in Clear Channel Communications, and Bush's regulatory changes allowing increased media consolidation made Hicks many times the $10,000,000 that Bush pocketed. Just the kind of guy you want involved with your favorite team. Think Rupert Murdoch without the brains, but even less likable and charming. Good luck with that.
That scares me. I just can't see the bastard selling out to a bunch of A-rabs. Wish he'd just fuck off and stick to running baseball teams.
Ethics aside, how does one who is "dumb as nails" not only get rich in the first place but pull off the sort of double switch that you describe in order to get even richer? Hicks may be a corrupt sleaze, but your post provided no evidence he was "dumb"...other than the fact that his baseball people sold him on a bad deal (either the original A-rod contract, or the trade)
