Nearly 15 hours after this supposed auction begun, Mark Cuban and Crane have apparently thrown in the towel, accepting a winning bid from Chuck Greenberg and Nolan Ryan.
The auction seemed destined to carry over into Thursday's business hours when, in the first 5 hours on Wedensday, the court could not effectively determine how to value the initial bids, rendering the whole process moot until such a ruling came down. The "bidding" did not heat up until evening time, but drama persisted throughout the day.
What started off as a series of tweets about who was entering the court house, who was sitting, standing, and what side of their mouth their gum was sitting, quickly turned into a frantic account of discord and venom amongst the attorneys for each side initially, and eventually the main players themselves, who were said to openly shouting at each other in court.
The Cuban group felt in control for most of the day. After Greenberg tried to get their initial bid thrown out of court first thing this morning, Cuban came in with the apparent high bid to start the proceedings at over $25 million more than Greenberg/Ryan. After they countered with a minimum raise, he added another $15 million on top, but his bids were soon to be devalued thanks to the immediacy of the Greenberg cash in comparison to a long drawn out approval of Cuban/Crane money.
That difference would prove to be too much in the end, and Greenbergs' cash portion bid of $385 million ultimately beat Cubans cash portion of $390 million because of it.
There could still be fallout from this, and legal battles to fight, but as for right now it appears Chuck Greenberg and Nolan Ryan will VERY soon be the owners of the Texas Rangers.
Via Twitter, Greenberg claims they will be going after Cliff Lee to stay.
How does this all affect the Dallas Stars? We'll examine that tomorrow, trust me. For now, I must go to sleep. 15 hour auctions are not good for the digestive system.
For right now, we'll tally one franchise down in the eliminate Tom Hicks campaign. The Stars are yet to come later this summer/fall.