Court: Cuban's bid for Rangers higher

Fort Worth, Texas -- An ownership group that includes Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban made the highest bid at a Wednesday auction for the Texas Rangers, court officials said.

U.S. Bankruptcy Court officials in Fort Worth, Texas, announced that Cuban and his partner, Houston businessman Jim Crane, had submitted a bid $25.3 million higher than that of a group composed of Rangers President Nolan Ryan and Pittsburgh sports attorney Chuck Greenberg, the Dallas Morning News reported.

The announcement elicited an angry response from attorneys for the Ryan-Greenberg group, who complained they hadn't seen the details of the Cuban-Crane bid and so couldn't counter it.

Earlier in the day, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Russell Nelms had declared the Cuban-Crane bid legitimate and allowed it to be presented over objections that had been raised.

The Morning News said the two sides disagree on the value of the bid, which includes discounts calculated by the drop in the team's value in between the time of the bankruptcy and the future sale closing, which must be approved by Major League Baseball.

"It's the grand Cuban strategy ... to slow this down and kill our financing," Greenberg told the newspaper.

Copyright 2010 United Press International, Inc. (UPI).

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