Tom Hicks' Greatest Hits

Whatever else you want to say about Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks, and we'll probably say it a couple of paragraphs from now, the man can blast his former players. When asked about some of his biggest mistakes as owner of the Rangers, Hicks said this:

"Juan Gonzalez for $24 million after he came off steroids, probably, we just gave that money away."

Aside from the "ZING!" we all immediately thought after reading that quote, this is the kind of honesty fans love out of people intimately involved with professional sports. It's so refreshing to hear an owner throw potentially slanderous comments out there for everyone to hear, especially when many people would agree.

Juan Gonzalez is an interesting case from the "steroids era" in baseball. He was an extremely productive player for about ten years, but every single good season he had came before he was 32 and then he completely broke down physically. In fact, he was one of the more feared hitters of the 1990's, but almost never stands out because his career ended so prematurely. Imagine if he'd been able to keep adding on to his 432 career home runs for eight more years. We'd be discussing his Hall of Fame credentials. Check out his stats. We had kind of forgotten how good he really was, despite all the injuries.

But Hicks' comments got us thinking. There have been a heck of a lot of bad personnel moves in the Rangers' recent history. Like a lot, a lot. Here's what we came up with just off the tops of our heads.