It's history now, but Ian Kinsler made some pretty inflammatory remarks in an ESPN The Magazine article earlier this month regarding his trade away from the Texas Rangers to the Detroit Tigers and the bitterness he still holds toward Rangers GM Jon Daniels, along with other comments about the way the organization is being run.
Former Rangers CEO Nolan Ryan, who is now a front office employee of the Houston Astros after stepping away from the Rangers on Halloween, said he can relate to Kinsler's feelings as a former player who was forced from the Astros and felt the same way.
"I told my wife, Ruth, 'People are going to miss the point of that article,'" Ryan said in an article by ESPN.com's Jerry Crasnick. "The real point of the article was that Ian was hurt by the trade. He was mad, and he just vented, but he was truly in his heart a Texas Ranger and he wanted to retire as a Ranger. I understand reactions like that because I played for the Astros and I wanted to retire in Houston and wasn't looking to leave. You say things when you're mad that you regret later."
Ryan is now enjoying his time back with the Astros, where he's working with his son, Reid, who runs the Astros on the business side. He hasn't vented quite like Kinsler, but did express the thought that things could've been handled better between he and Daniels in Arlington.
"I haven't really commented on that," Ryan said. "But when I came into that situation, I was dropped in J.D.'s sandbox. He had his organization and his group of people, and all of a sudden — boom! — Nolan Ryan was there. It was a dimension they didn't anticipate. It probably wasn't handled properly with my coming in."
