An eerie sky hangs over The Dell Diamond, home of the Round Rock Express minor-league baseball team. Up in a second-floor media box, Hall of Fame pitching legend Nolan Ryan munches on a piece of pizza. For more than an hour, stormy weather has delayed the start of the Express’ 2007 season finale.

To the left of “The Ryan Express,” as Nolan was known in his glory days, sit his two sons, Reid and Reese. All three have a vested interest in what’s happening—or not happening—on the field. Nolan is one of the principal owners of the team. The eldest son, Reid, is CEO and co-owner, and Reese is chief financial officer and co-owner. (Reid and Reese’s sister, Wendy, isn’t involved in baseball.)

While his sons head down to the field to consult with the umpires and the team manager about the weather, Nolan appears relaxed. Though his boys don’t have his talent for the game, Nolan trusts his sons at the helm. “They both have a passion for the game,” their father says. “They’ve grown up around baseball, and they understand the game. They’ve been around enough stadiums and seen enough operations that did it right and ones that didn’t do it right.” The verdict from the field: Weather radar indicates it’s safe to play ball.

Reid and Reese appear to be doing it right. When it comes to the business of baseball, these two are as dependable as a couple of well-worn baseball gloves.

In 2007, the Express averaged 9,465 fans per game, placing its attendance among the top for minor-league baseball franchises. Two years ago, the Express was awarded the Larry MacPhail Trophy, given annually to recognize a minor-league baseball team’s outstanding promotional and community service efforts. In 2004, Minor League News named the Round Rock Express its Business of the Year. The Round Rock Express ownership group was chosen from among more than 600 professional franchises in minor-league baseball, basketball, hockey and football.

“Everything they do is first-class,” Nancy Yawn, director of the Round Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau, says of the Ryans. “They have exceeded expectations with the stadium and just with the way they operate.”

Reid says he and his fellow Express executives strive to be the “gold standard” for baseball ownership. “We want to be considered model owners who look out for everybody—the employees, the fans, the players, the sponsors,” he says.

Early innings
The Round Rock Express debuted in 2000, two years after voters in the Austin suburb approved spending $13 million in hotel-motel tax revenue to help finance a stadium for the baseball team. The Ryans, along with former Houston Astros owner Don Sanders and others, bought the minor-league baseball franchise in Jackson, Miss., and relocated it to Round Rock.

It was Reid’s dream to bring a team to Central Texas. Both he and Reese played baseball for their alma mater, Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. After graduation, Reid spent three rather unremarkable seasons as a minor-league pitcher. Reese didn’t want to pursue a post-college pitching career. The brothers moved on to other business ventures. Reid then decided he wanted to work for himself and hatched the idea of buying a minor-league franchise and moving it to the Austin area. Austin and Georgetown were in contention for the team, but the owners settled on the booming ’burb of Round Rock, home to computer giant Dell.

Reid drafted Reese for the Round Rock Express front office in 2000. The team needed a chief financial officer, and Reese fit the bill. “After being away from the game for two years, I really began to miss it and realized how special the game of baseball is,” says Reese, who graduated from TCU in 1998.

Reese’s mastery of money matters, Reid’s big-picture vision and the baseball operations know-how of Jay Miller, Round Rock’s president and chief operating officer, fuel the Express management engine. Miller says of the Ryan brothers, “They really complement each other well. They play to each other’s strengths.”

Nolan leaves day-to-day affairs to his sons and Miller, advising them only on major issues. Nolan says it’s not his nature to be a micro-manager. Miller, who’s been with the Express since the outset, calls Nolan the organization’s figurehead. Certainly, the 6-foot, 2-inch Hall of Famer has earned that title: the 61-year-old pitched from 1966 to 1993 with the New York Mets, California Angels, Houston Astros and Texas Rangers. After 15 years off the mound, Nolan was hired as president of the major-league Texas Rangers in February; he’s hanging onto his role with the minor-league outfit, though. The Rangers job represents “a unique opportunity. It’s probably the only time it would present itself in my lifetime,” Nolan says. “It’s another page in my baseball career.”

Unlike so many current big-leaguers, the pages of Nolan’s baseball book aren’t smudged. “Anything Nolan is associated with just automatically brings you instant credibility,” Miller says. “Just the Ryan name in general brings you instant credibility.”

That credibility aided the Ryans in landing a minor-league team for Corpus Christi in 2005. The deal came about after the Ryan-Sanders squad bought a Triple-A minor league franchise in Edmonton, Canada. Then, in a bit of business sleight of hand, the Triple-A team morphed into the Round Rock Express, and the Express transformed into the Corpus Christi Hooks. Both teams are affiliated with the major-league Houston Astros.

Double Play
These days, the Ryan brothers and Miller split their time between the Round Rock and Corpus Christi franchises. Reid and Reese hold the same positions with both teams; Miller is COO in Corpus Christi, but not president, as he is in Round Rock. Although the two teams are a fair distance apart geographically, they’re next-door neighbors when it comes to customer service. The Ryan brothers and Miller regularly greet and listen to the fans and employees; in fact, Reid presses the flesh better than most politicians. Their conduct reflects their mission of fostering a clean, fun environment for affordable family entertainment.

“I encourage people’s complaints as much as I do their praise. It’s feedback,” Reid says. “Whatever they want is what we need to do. Our goal is to be the best operation we can be. If we’re being the best operation we can be, then financially we’re going to have success.”

Could that success lead one day to ownership of a major-league team? The Ryans say it’s a possibility. They don’t envision Austin—the largest city in Texas without a major-league sports team—gaining a major-league club within the next five years. But if the right ownership opportunity arose somewhere, the Ryans say they’d explore it. For the time being, Reid and Reese, who are in their 30s but look almost like fresh-faced fraternity boys, have two minor-league franchises to run. Reese says they’re fortunate to be able to make a living by making people happy.

“Reid and I are both young guys,” Reese says. “We plan on being in baseball a long time.”
“We want to be in baseball not because we want to flip [a team] and make money,” adds Reid. “We’re in it because baseball has given our family everything we have, and we love the game of baseball.”