SABR 53: Featured Speakers
Learn more about our featured speakers and panelists at SABR 53 below.
Elvis Andrus spent 15 seasons in the major leagues, 12 of them with the Texas Rangers. He was a two-time American League All-Star at shortstop and helped lead the Rangers to back-to-back World Series in 2010 and 2011. He was selected as the club’s Rookie of the Year in 2009 and Player of the Year in 2017. He is the Rangers’ all-time leader in stolen bases and the franchise’s all-time postseason leader in games played, hits, and stolen bases. He is now working in the Rangers’ broadcast booth and as a pregame and postgame host.
Bob Baillargeon, a native of Montreal, Quebec, signed with the Philadelphia Phillies at age 18 and spent seven seasons pitching in the minor leagues from 1959 to 1965. He moved to Texas in 1962 and finished his playing days with two seasons in the Texas League with the Fort Worth Cats and the Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs. He then entered the automobile industry and with his wife Margaret opened a successful Ford dealership in 1980 that they ran together with their children for 20 years. He has served on the boards of the Richardson Chamber of Commerce, The Catholic Foundation, and several other organizations.
Dr. James Beckett earned his PhD in statistics from Southern Methodist University in 1975. In 1979, he published his first Sport Americana Baseball Card Price Guide, and in 1984, he published the first issue of Beckett Baseball. With Beckett at the helm, Beckett Publications eventually grew into the largest sports and entertainment collectibles publisher in the world. In 2022, SABR’s Baseball Cards Research Committee honored Beckett with the Jefferson Burdick Award for significant contributions to the hobby of baseball cards. Topps has printed two different cards for Beckett.
Buddy Bell was a five-time All-Star third baseman who spent 18 years playing and nine years managing in the major leagues. He is the son of outfielder Gus Bell and the father of Mike and David Bell, making them one of six families to have three generations play in the major leagues. Buddy made his debut at 20 years old with Cleveland in 1972 and was traded to the Texas Rangers in 1979. With the Rangers, he won six consecutive Gold Glove Awards and a Silver Slugger Award in 1984. He finished his playing career with 2,514 hits and 201 home runs before going on to manage the Detroit Tigers, Colorado Rockies, and Kansas City Royals. He has also worked in the front office for the Cincinnati Reds and Chicago White Sox.
Bruce Bochy is in his third season as manager of the Texas Rangers, a team he came out of retirement to lead to a World Series championship in 2023. Since he began his illustrious managerial career in 1995 following nine seasons as a major-league catcher, Bochy has won four World Series titles and five league pennants with the San Diego Padres, San Francisco Giants, and Rangers. He is the only major-league manager to win 900 games with multiple franchises. In 2010, he led the Giants to their first title since moving to the West Coast and followed it up with two more championships in 2012 and 2014.
Bradford William Davis is an editorial writer and columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Previously, he was an investigative reporter for Business Insider and a columnist for the New York Daily News, where he won the 2021 SABR Analytics Conference Research Award for Contemporary Baseball Commentary. He was featured in the 2022 History Channel film After Jackie, about the first wave of post-integration Black players in Major League Baseball.
Ed Edmonds is Professor Emeritus of Law at the University of Notre Dame Law School. He is the former law library director at William & Mary, Loyola New Orleans, St. Thomas in Minnesota, and Notre Dame. In 2017, he co-authored the book Baseball Meets the Law. He taught sports law for 35 years, and he has published law review articles on labor and antitrust issues involving baseball and salary arbitration.
Don Fehr served as the MLB Players Association’s general counsel starting in 1977 and executive director from 1983 to 2010. During that time, the league’s minimum salary went from $35,000 to $400,000. Renowned as a tactician, Fehr successfully fought ownership collusion in a years-long battle in the late 1980s and held the union together through the 1994 strike. From 2010 to 2023, he led the NHL Players’ Association.
Evan Grant is a reporter with the Dallas Morning News and he has covered the Rangers since 1997. Last year, he was honored with the Robert W. Decherd Award for Civic Journalism. He has twice been named one of the top 10 beat writers in the country by the Associated Press Sports Editors. He is a graduate of Georgia State University.
Rick Herrscher spent seven seasons in professional baseball, including three years in the Texas League with the Milwaukee Braves organization. He was traded to the New York Mets in 1962 — the first player-to-be-named-later in Mets history — and made his major-league debut on August 1. He hit his only MLB home run four days later. In college, he was a multi-sport star at Southern Methodist University, helping to lead the Mustangs basketball team to the NCAA Final Four. He was inducted into the SMU Hall of Fame in 2013 and the Southwest Conference Hall of Fame in 2015. After baseball, he ran a successful orthodontics practice in the Dallas area for many years.
Jack Hill is the former Senior Vice President of Project Development for the Texas Rangers. He spent more than three decades working in construction and development. He first joined the Rangers in 1991 to serve as the principal development manager for The Ballpark in Arlington, and he went on to oversee notable construction projects such as Miller Park in Milwaukee (now American Family Field), the American Airlines Center, AT&T Stadium, and Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara. In 2016, he rejoined the Rangers and oversaw the construction and development of Globe Life Field.
Charlie Hough is one of just two pitchers in major-league history with at least 200 career wins and 60 saves. He threw his dancing knuckleball from the mound for 25 seasons from 1970 to 1994. He appeared in three World Series with the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1970s, made his first All-Star team at age 38 with the Texas Rangers in 1986, and started and won the first game in Florida Marlins history in 1993. In 1995, he became the namesake and first winner of the Charlie Hough Good Guy Award, given out annually by the Miami chapter of the BBWAA. He was an inaugural member of the Rangers Hall of Fame class in 2003 and his 139 wins with the team are a franchise record.
Ferguson Jenkins became the first native of Canada to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991. He spent 19 seasons in the major leagues, recording 284 wins and 3,192 strikeouts and winning a National League Cy Young Award with the Chicago Cubs in 1971. He won at least 20 games in each of his first six full seasons, and won a career-high 25 games with the Texas Rangers in 1974. SABR members voted him as one of the top 100 baseball players of the twentieth century in 1999.
Rich Klein has been a SABR member since 1985. He has worked for more than 25 years in the baseball card industry. In his current role, he is a sports card identification specialist for COMC. He also spent nearly two decades working as a price guide editor for Beckett Media. He has written for Sports Collectors Daily and other websites.
Colby Lewis spent 11 seasons in the major leagues from 2002 to 2016, helping lead the Texas Rangers to four American League West Division titles and two World Series appearances. He went 3-0 with a 1.71 ERA in four postseason starts for the Rangers in 2010, including a dominant eight innings in the pennant-clinching ALCS Game Six against the New York Yankees. He also pitched for the Detroit Tigers, Oakland A’s, and Hiroshima Carp in Japan. He is now working as a Special Assistant to the General Manager in the Rangers’ front office.
Rob Matwick is the Texas Rangers’ Executive Vice President of Public Affairs. He is in his 39th year working in Major League Baseball. After working for the Houston Astros and the Detroit Tigers, he joined the Rangers in 2008. He was instrumental in the construction of both Minute Maid Park (now Daikin Park) in Houston and Globe Life Field in Arlington. In 2001, he won MLB’s Robert O. Fishel Award for Public Relations Excellence. He was inducted into the Texas Baseball Hall of Fame in 2005 and was named MLB Professional of the Year in 2012 by the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security.
Chuck Morgan started his career as a public address announcer with the Nashville Sounds in 1978. He joined the Texas Rangers in 1983, and although he spent the 2002 season with the Royals, he has never missed a home game. The microphone he used to call his 3,000th game in 2020 is at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. He is also an accomplished radio and television host, and during his time in Nashville he served as an announcer for the Grand Ole Opry. He was named the Country Music Association’s Major Market Disc Jockey of the Year in 1982, and The Sporting News named him the best PA announcer in Major League Baseball in 2001 and 2003. In 2017, he was inducted into the Information Display and Entertainment Association Hall of Fame. He was inducted into the Rangers Hall of Fame in 2021.
Eric Nadel has been a Texas Rangers broadcaster since 1979, the longest tenured broadcaster in franchise history. He was the 2014 recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame. He is an eight-time selection of the Texas Sportscaster of the Year Award and he was inducted into the Texas Rangers Baseball Hall of Fame in 2012.
Tim Purpura is the former President and Treasurer of the Texas League from 2017 to 2021. He spent 14 years in the Houston Astros front office, including a stint as General Manager from 2004 to 2007. During his time as GM, the Astros made their first World Series appearance in 2005. He also served as the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Minor League Baseball and the Senior Director of Player Development with the Texas Rangers. He holds a J.D. from the Thomas Jefferson School of Law and now offers professional negotiation, mediation, and arbitration services.
Iván Rodríguez was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2017. Born in Manati, Puerto Rico, he made his major-league debut at age 19 and ended his career 21 years later with the all-time major league record for games caught. One of the greatest defensive catchers in the history of the game, he earned 13 Gold Glove Awards, 14 All-Star selections, and the 1999 American League MVP Award. He also won a World Series ring in 2003 with the Florida Marlins.
C. Paul Rogers III is the president of Ernie Banks-Bobby Bragan DFW Chapter, the host chapter at SABR 53. He is co-author or co-editor of several baseball books including The Whiz Kids and the 1950 Pennant Race with boyhood hero Robin Roberts and Lucky Me: My 65 Years in Baseball with Eddie Robinson. Rogers is a frequent contributor to the SABR BioProject, but his real job is as a law professor at the SMU Dedman School of Law, where he served as dean for nine years. He has also served as SMU’s faculty athletic representative for nearly four decades.
Steve Rogers is a Special Assistant in the Player Benefits & Career Development Program with the MLB Players Association. He spent 13 seasons as a pitcher in the major leagues from 1973 to 1985 with the Montreal Expos. He won a team-record 158 games and posted a 3.17 ERA. He was a five-time National League All-Star and he led the NL in ERA in 1982 while winning a career-high 19 games.
Tom Schieffer served as president of the Texas Rangers for nine years. A Fort Worth native, he was elected to the Texas House of Representatives at the age of 25, got his law degree from the University of Texas, and built a leading oil and gas practice. An original investor in the ownership group that purchased the Rangers in 1989, he became club president in 1991, helping to build The Ballpark in Arlington, which opened in 1994. President George W. Bush named Schieffer as United States Ambassador to Australia in 2001 and to Japan in 2005. In 2011, MLB appointed Schieffer to oversee the operations of the Los Angeles Dodgers. To go with his numerous awards for achievements in diplomacy and national security, Schieffer was inducted into the Rangers Hall of Fame in 2014.
Chris Young is President of Baseball Operations for the Texas Rangers and in his third full season as the club’s top baseball decision-maker. He joined the organization as Executive Vice President and General Manager in December 2020 and, after luring manager Bruce Bochy out of retirement, the Rangers won the first World Series championship in franchise history in 2023. Young spent 13 seasons as a major-league pitcher, beginning with the Rangers in 2004 and making the American League All-Star team in 2007. He helped the Kansas City Royals win a championship in 2015, picking up wins in the AL Division Series, Championship Series, and the World Series.
For more information on SABR 53, visit SABR.org/convention.