Wherefore The Name: Hall-Ruggles SABR Chapter
This article was written by Larry Swindell - Tom Simmons
This article was published in Texas is Baseball Country (SABR 24, 1994)
The movement to bring the 1994 SABR 24 Convention to the Arlington area and the new Ballpark at Arlington actually might have started with the memories of two gentlemen who loved the game of baseball and who lived in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
They were Flem Hall of Fort Worth and Bill Ruggles of Dallas.
Flem Hall was a near and dear friend of retired Tarrant County (Fort Worth area) Judge and earlier state legislator Howard Green. When Howard Green called an organizational meeting of interested baseball partisans in early 1991, more than 50 persons responded. Several had been members of SABR chapters in other locales, but the DFW chapter quickly mushroomed under Green’s steady guidance.
Obviously, when it came time to name the budding chapter, Hall and Ruggles were natural choices.
Hall, a nonagenarian when he passed away recently in April 1994, and retired sports editor of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, was a pioneer in the solid coverage of Texas League and famed Dixie Series as well as major league baseball within the state of Texas. Ruggles, formerly secretary of the Texas League and its premier historian during his days with the Dallas Morning News, was a driving force in the documentation of the state’s rich baseball heritage.
And in honor of their legacies, Hall-Ruggles Chapter meetings have included guests as wide-ranging as Texas Rangers President Tom Schieffer to local historians with an anecdote from their own baseball memory bank. Local SABR Secretary-Treasurer John Blake, Vice President for Public Relations for the Rangers, immediately found a home for SABR meetings at old Arlington Stadium and in recent weeks at the Ballpark at Arlington. His assistance at gaining top-notch monthly programs for the membership has been invaluable.
But getting back to the Hall-Ruggles tandem, one has only to turn to opposite ends of the Metroplex to find two monuments to baseball in Texas.
Hall (1901-April 22, 1994), one of the early presidents of the Football Writers Association of America and noted sports editor-columnist for the Star-Telegram, covered baseball aspects from the World Series to the signing of the early bonus “babies.” Though his health failed in recent years, he was a willing conversationalist on baseball in general and particularly Texas diamonds.
William Brush Ruggles was a man with distinguished careers in many fields. He was an editorial writer for the Morning News, and his Labor Day 1941 editorial became the basis for federal and state right-to-work laws, including the Taft-Hartley Act.
He served with distinction in both World Wars — on the battlefront as an infantry lieutenant in Germany in 1918, the Pacific Theater (including the Luzon campaign) in World War II, and the occupation of Japan through 1945. Ruggles (1891-1988), many observers note, might have been most proud of having his name on the Hall-Ruggles Chapter if he had lived to see the group’s local organization.
Bill was a baseball statistics junkie in addition to being the editor of the Dallas Morning News’s editorial page until his retirement in 1960. He began, modestly enough, as sports editor of the Houston Post in 1910 and then the Galveston News. After returning from World War I, Ruggles became sports editor of the old Dallas News and started a 42-year connection with Class A Texas League. He was official statistician of the league from 1920-62, secretary from 1921-25, acting president in 1929, and author of History of the Texas League: 1888-1952. That volume in a cherished “collectible” of baseball historians far and wide.
Yes, Flem Hall and Bill Ruggles are true legends, immortalized in Texas sports lore through the SABR chapter which bears their names.