ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) -Dale Petroskey, who resigned earlier this year as president of baseball’s Hall of Fame, was hired Wednesday by the Texas Rangers to oversee their marketing.
Petroskey will be executive vice president of marketing and community development on the staff of Rangers president Nolan Ryan, the Hall of Fame pitcher who has been with the team almost three months.
In his new job, Petroskey will be in charge of marketing a team that went into Wednesday night’s game against Kansas City with the worst record in the major leagues (9-18). The club averaged only 24,174 fans – about half capacity – its first 11 home dates.
“I’m going to spend a little time assessing the situation,” said Petroskey, adding that he expected that evaluation to take several months.
Before nine years as president of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Petroskey served as an executive with the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C., from 1988-99, and in the White House as assistant press secretary to President Ronald Reagan from 1985-87.
Petroskey resigned from the baseball hall in March after its board’s executive committee found he “failed to exercise proper fiduciary responsibility.” The committee never detailed Petroskey’s actions, but a hall spokesman said that the committee felt the actions weren’t criminal and didn’t benefit Petroskey personally.
“I knew the first day that I took that job that I served at the pleasure of the board,” Petroskey said Wednesday. “I knew that anytime they wanted to make a change, they were going to make a change, and after nine years they decided to make the change.”
Petroskey, whose daughter is a student at nearby Southern Methodist University, attended the Rangers’ home opener this season as a guest of Ryan.
“He’s had a broad and impressive career at world-class institutions. From those experiences, he has a big-picture view of the world, lots of friends inside baseball and in other fields throughout the country, and understands what it takes to achieve quality,” Ryan said. “I’ve seen his passion for baseball. He has a natural way of getting other people excited about the game.”
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