The Rangers have failed to make deferred compensation payments for months

The biggest reason the sale of the Texas Rangers still hasn’t gone final is because the team’s creditors are angry that all kinds of cash is coming off the top of the deal to go to Tom Hicks and others, leaving less for them. One of the “others,” SBJ reports today, is a deferred compensation fund that the Rangers are required to maintain pursuant to the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Yeah, they’ve been defaulting on that:

The Texas Rangers have been in violation of baseball’s collective-bargaining agreement since at least last season for failing to pay $39.55 million into a deferred compensation fund, according to a letter sent on Oct. 22, 2009, by MLB executive vice president Rob Manfred to the bidders for the ballclub. The MLBPA is aware of the situation, Manfred wrote in the letter, and the union’s executive director, Michael Weiner confirmed, in response to SportsBusiness Journal questions.

Weiner confirms that the team has not yet defaulted on any specific deferred compensation obligation (i.e. all players who have such arrangements have gotten all of their checks) but a violation is a violation, and if and when Chuck Greenberg gets the team, he’s going to have to replenish that fund with a cash payment.

There’s that word again. “Cash.” The thing that some have reported this deal is short on. The thing that is still keeping the creditors from signing off on the sale. You read stuff like this and you can’t help but wonder whether Greenberg has enough on the table right now.