Inspired by our governor, we’re having fun with counterfactuals.
1. Randy Galloway says Nolan Ryan would have been out as team president if Tom Hicks had succeeded in partnering with Dennis Gilbert to buy the Texas Rangers from himself. Where would the team be without the Ryan Express? Imagine that the Rangers hadn’t signed him as a free-agent pitcher in 1989. The most exciting moment in franchise history never would have taken place.
2. What if Plano-based Frito Lay’s Tostitos brand hadn’t supplanted IBM as sponsor of the Fiesta Bowl in 1996? You think the fellows over at Big Blue spring for a flag football game for our troops in the Persian Gulf? Hardly. IBM probably sets up a fantasy football league for the brave soldiers instead.
3. And if Sarah Palin had been elected vice president of the United States in November 2008, I know there’s one counterfactual that we can — all of us, from across the political spectrum — agree upon: Legacy Books wouldn’t sell nearly as much today.
