Liverpool fans have recovery guide in Rangers rise

Liverpool football supporters seeking a revival after the ouster of former owner Tom Hicks have a roadmap to recovery in the success of another club Hicks recently owned, baseball’s Texas Rangers.

Two months after exiting bankruptcy, the Rangers have reached the World Series for the first time in their 50-year history and will play host to San Francisco on Saturday in game three of the Major League Baseball final.

“It definitely has a very positive impact on your organization and just on recognition,” Rangers president Nolan Ryan said.

“What I’ve seen is how much Texas memorabilia I see around the country now. Our fans didn’t even wear it to the ballpark when I came in 2008.”

Only two weeks ago, Hicks was in a Texas court fighting to keep Liverpool after team officials struck a deal for the debt-ridden football club to be purchased by owners of another Major League Baseball club, the Boston Red Sox.

Hicks lost the fight and the purchase was completed, giving Merseyside supporters new hope despite the 18-time English championship side’s worst start since 1953.

Rangers baseball fans could relate. Few would have imagined when the season began that the World Series would be played in North Texas before the Super Bowl, American football’s championship spectacle that debuts there in February.

A Rangers club that Hicks bought for 250 million dollars in 1998, from a group that included then soon-to-become US President George W. Bush, was floundering and went into bankruptcy last May.

But former Rangers star pitcher Ryan led a group that bought the team for 591 million dollars in August and a team that had never won a playoff series pulled an October surprise, ousting Tampa Bay and the reigning champion New York Yankees to reach the World Series.

“It puts us on the map with a lot of people that we have made it to this level,” Ryan said. “We were more of a North Texas-type of franchise in the past because of the lack of success that we’ve had.”

Now the Dallas Cowboys, a perennial gridiron power, are the ones struggling, off to a 1-5 start in the National Football League season while the Rangers feel their time has come after half a century of waiting.

“Sports fans in the Metroplex are really excited we’re in the World Series and they are very supportive,” Ryan said. “They are somewhat disappointed with the season so far with the Cowboys because they had great expectations and looked at them as a potential Super Bowl team this year.”