A BUSH-LEAGUE PLAY

SPATS It started with a gracious act of charity and ended in a needless slight and a smoldering feud. Months before anyone knew that August 22 would be the day NOLAN RYAN went for his 5,000th strikeout, Ranger owner George W. Bush gave away his choice tickets to the game to be raffled off for charity. Someone bought them and sold them to a ticket broker, who in turn sold them to Dallas attorney GILBERT ARANZA, who didn’t know Bush was the original owner. As the date neared and the Ryan milestone loomed ahead, interest in the game-and demand for tickets-reached fever pitch.

So imagine Aranza’s surprise when he showed up for the historic event, tickets in hand. He was let in but was stopped and questioned by a security guard who wanted to know why the attorney had the boss’s tickets. Aranza then discovered that Bush, apparently acting on the 500-pound gorilla theory, was occupying the seats with a very important out-of-town friend-baseball commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti. One of Aranza’s friends says the guard “hinted very strongly that Gilbert stole the tickets.”

In the second inning Aranza, still steaming, approached Bush and Giamatti and tried to explain what had happened. Bush brushed him off and had an usher escort him to some cheaper seats. But before Aranza was hauled away, he got both men’s autographs-as a souvenir and as “evidence” of what had happened.

In the days following the game, Aranza fired off several letters to Bush. “All I’m looking for is an apology,” he told D, but as late as mid-October he had gotten no satisfaction from the First Namesake. Finally, on October 23, Aranza said he had resolved the problem. And did he get the apology? Or, perhaps, a guarantee of box seats for Ryan’s 6,000th whiff?

’”No comment,” Aranza said. “Part of the resolution is that I’m not allowed to make a comment,”

Bush, trying to put the best face possible on the matter, had a kinder, gentler comment: “The Texas Rangers are sorry about the misunderstanding, and we hope that Gilbert remains a Rangers fan.”