George W. Bush Interview With Mark K. Updegrove (Audio) 
Swing for the Fences 
Team Player
How he ran the Texas Rangers and became, finally, a successful businessman.
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Behind the scenes, George W. set to mending fences, improving the team’s image, and winning over critics like Jim Reeves of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, who covered the sale of the Rangers and had few kind words for the Bush group. “I had an early built-in grudge against George in particular,” says Reeves. “I thought he was a failed politician and obviously a guy who was playing off his dad’s name because he wasn’t putting much money in.” Bush went out of his way to win over Reeves, even inviting him to play a round of golf, and the reporter gradually came around. “I found him to be a very personable, direct, very informed general partner. The more we were around him, the better the team’s relationship with the press would be. You could believe what he told you.”
He was good at other things as well: He was instrumental in neutralizing the agendas of various personnel, marketing Ryan aggressively, and broadening the team’s appeal by instituting Spanish-language broadcasts. Baseball details, however, were left to the baseball people. “They went out of their way to let us know they weren’t going to be hands-on owners,” said Tom Grieve, then the Rangers’ general manager. “They made it clear from the start they did not buy the team because they wanted to brag to their friends that they owned a baseball team. They told me, ‘We’re business people and expect to be profitable, and we expect our baseball people to be accountable.’ But never did they come in and say, ‘When are you gonna get rid of this guy?’ ”
By the end of the first year the initial plan that had been in the back of everyone’s mind was formalized. If the Rangers were going to make the transition from a have-not franchise to one of the haves and maximize their value, they would have to play in a new stadium—ideally, a state-of-the-art facility that looked old and traditional but had all the requisite sky boxes and other modern bells and whistles. The partners looked around for someone who could manage a large public project, considering both Tom Luce and Bush himself at one point before designating Schieffer the stadium czar in July 1990. He was charged with selecting a site, developing a strategy, and getting the project under way despite a seemingly impossible obstacle: The partners didn’t want to have to pay for the new park themselves.
Schieffer looked around the Metroplex for a few months before concluding that Arlington was the best site and that a half-cent local sales tax was the best way to pay for it. He then got busy winning over voters to raise the $135 million in bonds it would take to build a new home for the home team. Tarrant County judge Tom Vandergriff, who was instrumental in luring the Rangers from Washington, and Arlington mayor Richard Greene were enlisted to spearhead the three-month effort. Both Schieffer and Bush were actively involved. At one point both men spoke from the pulpit of the Mount Olive Baptist Church in Arlington, with Bush declaring, “A vote for the tax would be a vote for contracts for African American businesses.”
With minimal opposition—Arlington’s economy is based on tourism and entertainment, and a large percentage of its sales taxes are paid by out-of-towners—the bond issue passed in January 1991 by a two-to-one margin. Nearly 34,000 voters went to the ballot box—more than in any election in Arlington’s history. Under their agreement with the city, the Rangers would chip in $30 million from revenues of ticket sales, surcharges, and luxury-box leases, and pay for any additional costs, which added up to an another $26 million. The team would assume full ownership of the stadium when the bonds were paid off. “This eventually will give us the ability to compete on a payroll level that will put us with a whole new echelon of ballclubs,” Bush said after the referendum passed. “We’ll be able to pay the market price to keep our talent and, at the same time, keep ticket prices down.” Following the vote, Schieffer shifted his focus to the Texas Legislature, which passed a bill that would ratify the arrangement, then he took the lead in getting the park built, soliciting designs from architects—nineteen submitted bids—before hiring David Schwartz of Washington, D.C., a Bass family favorite.
Back home, two flaps surfaced around the construction of the stadium. The first involved the condemnation of thirteen acres of land owned by the Curtis Mathes family, for which the city offered $1.375 million and the Matheses wanted $2.1 million. A state district court eventually declared the condemnation illegal and ordered that the Mathes group be paid the full amount they asked for, plus damages, which ultimately came to more than $11 a square foot, far higher than the $2.67 per square foot maximum that the city paid for any other single parcel during the land acquisition. The Rangers eventually worked out a payment plan to pay off the difference. The second snag was the awarding of minority contracts. The Rangers were criticized by the Arlington chapters of the NAACP and LULAC, the Arlington Hispanic Advisory Council, and even one of their own partners, Comer Cotrell, for not throwing enough business to black and Hispanic firms.
In the end, of course, the problems got resolved and the Ballpark got built. Much of the credit went—correctly—to Schieffer, who demonstrated he could orchestrate and delegate and was rewarded by being named the team’s president. But Bush’s behind-the-scenes involvement—in managing Schieffer, troubleshooting, and going public when necessary—was crucial, people familiar with the situation say. “The bond election, the ballpark, the financing technique, that was all George’s deal,” says Mike Reilly. “He quarterbacked the whole thing, but he never took the credit.”
BUSH TOOK A LEAVE OF ABSENCE FROM THE TEAM before the 1994 season to run for governor, missing much of the Ballpark’s inaugural season. The venue’s classic lines and distinctively Texan look—from the native granite and red brick to the Longhorns in the facade—were an instant hit, drawing almost 3 million fans. A museum, sports bar and restaurant, luxury boxes, and a four-story office building outside the outfield fence bumped up the final cost to $191 million, but those additional revenue streams led Financial World magazine to rate it as the most profitable facility in baseball. During the election, Ann Richards tried to make the public-private arrangement for financing the stadium an issue in the governor’s race, a means of showing Bush as a beneficiary of corporate welfare, but it didn’t take. After he won, Bush put his assets—including his share of the Rangers—in a blind trust and resigned as managing general partner. (His timing couldn’t have been better: A players’ strike cut short the 1994 season, caused the World Series to be canceled, and alienated many fans.)
Bush’s official parting with the team came four years later, in June 1998, when buyout king Tom Hicks snapped it up for $250 million. By the time of sale, Bush’s 1.8 percent share of the ownership had ballooned to 11.3 percent, and he pocketed almost $15 million: $2.7 million as a return on his investment and a $12.2 million “general partner interest”—his 10 percent “promote fee” for putting the ownership group together back in 1989. Not surprisingly, he was widely criticized by the usual suspects—the Texas Observer among them—for earning so much while seemingly doing so little, but his fellow owners sprang to his defense. “To me and to everyone in the partnership,” Schieffer says, “it was not unusual to get a percentage on the back end like that for putting the deal together.” In any case, what Bush really got out of the deal was something more important than money: After years as Junior, he finally became his own man. “Before the Rangers, I told him he needed to do something to step out of his father’s shadow,” says Roland Betts. “Baseball was it. He became our local celebrity. He knew every usher. He signed autographs. He talked to fans. His presence meant everything. His eyes were on politics the whole time, but even when he was speaking at Republican functions, he was always talking about the Rangers.”
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