SABR 53: Listen to highlights from Texas Rangers Ballparks Panel with Tom Schieffer, Fred Ortiz, Rob Matwick, and Chuck Morgan
On Thursday, June 26, 2025, the Texas Rangers Ballparks Panel was held at SABR 53 at the Westin DFW Airport Hotel in Irving, Texas.
Panelists included Tom Schieffer, former Texas Rangers president; Rob Matwick, Executive Vice President of Public Affairs for the Texas Rangers; and Fred Ortiz, the Global Practice Director, Sports & Entertainment, and Partner at HKS, the design architect for Globe Life Field and The Ballpark in Arlington in Texas. The moderator was Chuck Morgan, Texas Rangers public address announcer since 1983.
- Audio: Click here to listen to the SABR 53 Texas Rangers Ballparks Panel (57:17; MP3)
Here are some highlights:
ON BUILDING THE BALLPARK IN ARLINGTON IN 1994
- Schieffer: “That was part of the incentive to buy the team. The city of Arlington had allowed anyone to buy the land for it. You were getting a team, but you were also getting an opportunity, a big piece of property, to build a ballpark. … That park changed the Texas Rangers. … It was as if we had finally joined the major leagues. When we bought the team, the Rangers were 24th or 25th out of 26 teams in revenue. And you can’t compete at the bottom. The revenues at that point were about $30 million. We bought the team in 1993, which was the last season in Arlington Stadium, and we had doubled the revenues to $60 million. And when we moved into the Ballpark, we doubled them again to $127 million. Those are quaint numbers today, but it had a huge impact. … And then we began to win.”
ON DESIGNING THE NORTH PLAZA ENTRANCE OF GLOBE LIFE FIELD
- Ortiz: “When we looked at the whole development at macro scale, we said we needed a window large enough to actually represent the park and relate to what’s going on out there. You had Six Flags to the north, Nolan Ryan Expressway coming down, the old ballpark to the right, AT&T Stadium, Texas Live, the convention center. All that stuff was popping up. And we said, ‘What if we turned those arches and create a large window?’ One of the coolest things the Rangers were pushing for was to create a backyard feel, so that families and friends could come and enjoy the ballpark. So why not open your windows up to the district? When you’re in the ballpark, it’s a great experience because a lot of that natural daylight comes in.”
ON WORKING WITH THE CITY OF ARLINGTON
- Matwick: “I think it goes back to Mayor (Richard) Greene and the formulas the city of Arlington came up with to fund the Ballpark in Arlington, the same mechanism they used on AT&T Stadium and on Globe Life Field, with sales tax revenue. As the mayors will tell you and the city manager will tell you, it’s other people’s money. I don’t make my home in Arlington, but any time I spend a dollar in Arlington and sales tax is taken out of that dollar, it’s helping to contribute to the city’s portion of the payment for those facilities. And it’s a formula that’s worked extremely well for Arlington.”
ON THE RETRACTABLE ROOF AT GLOBE LIFE FIELD
- Matwick: “We had to solve the weather issue. You don’t spend $1.2 billion when you’ve got a beautiful building (and not letting people go to the game.) … And we needed more premium products. Being able to use the building 365 days a year, which this building allows us to do. We’ve booked probably 200 non-baseball events into Globe Life Field over the past few years. I think those are the drivers, in addition to the development that takes place around it. Now that we have the ability to have a retractable roof and play indoors and outdoors, I don’t see Globe Life Field being replaced for a long, long time.”
ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF NUMBERS AT GLOBE LIFE FIELD
- Ortiz: “It’s more exciting to design a baseball park than a football field because of its geometry, and it can be quirky. We took a diagram of every single major-league ballpark and overlapped it, and it was a zig-zag of stuff. Whether you’re shoehorning a ballpark into a downtown environment, it’s going to create some unique experiences out there. The fence heights, the wall heights, the distances: 334 for Nolan Ryan, 407 for Pudge (Iván Rodríguez), 372 for the year the Rangers came to town. And behind home plate was 42 feet in honor of Jackie Robinson. So there are some really cool stories there.”
For more coverage of SABR 53, visit SABR.org/convention.
Originally published: July 14, 2025. Last Updated: July 14, 2025.