Broadcasting Rangers games since 1979, Eric Nadel reached his 70s fearing his legacy would be as the bearer of bad news. There had been so much of that to convey for a club with no World Series title to show for its time in Arlington (beginning in 1972) and the preceding 11 seasons in Washington, D.C.
John Blake, hired as the club’s lead publicist late in 1984, was haunted for years by those media lists showing the franchises that had never won a Series. When the Angels won in 2002, it left the Rangers as the oldest never to receive the Commissioner’s Trophy.
Things only got worse with the excruciating near miss of 2011, when the Rangers were within one strike— twice!—of defeating the St. Louis Cardinals in six games. It was too much for Chuck Morgan, hired as the team’s public address announcer in 1983. As the Cardinals closed in on their unlikely comeback in Game 7, he excused himself from Busch Stadium in the late innings for the solitude of the team bus.
The events of recent weeks have brought both baseball ecstasy and peace to these three longtime club employees, all members of the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame. Morgan had the privilege of putting it into words as emcee of the team’s victory reception outside Globe Life Field about 41 hours after Josh Sborz dropped a curveball into the top of the strike zone to handcuff Arizona’s Ketel Marte to give the Rangers the 2023 Series over the Diamondbacks in five games.
“I have been waiting 40 years to make this announcement,” Morgan said, wearing his navy Rangers Hall of Fame blazer. “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the world champion … Texas … Rangers!
“Our lives are now complete!”
There was irony when Morgan bolted from the stands in St. Louis that late October night in 2011. Growing up in nearby southern Illinois, he idolized the Redbirds. He saved the ticket stub from attending Stan Musial’s final game in 1963 and years later showed it to “Stan the Man” while working at The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.
In some of those most dreadful of Rangers seasons—a dozen with at least 90 losses—Morgan might have been the club’s most popular figure. His duties expanded from being the voice of the stadium to the fertile mind behind the full scope of ballpark entertainment. He’s the father of the Dot Race, which has begat offspring across the majors.
Morgan was naturally part of the organization’s traveling party for this latest Series. After the Rangers broke a scoreless tie in the top of the seventh of Game 5, he deviated from personal practice.
“Very rarely do I start counting outs,” he says. “But once we got to nine outs to go, I turned to my wife”—Starr, a club employee since 1997—”then I say, ‘Eight to go’ … ‘Seven to go.’ She says, ‘Be quiet.’
“Along about the seventh [out to go] or sixth, I just started crying.”
Late in his emcee duties last Friday, emotion got the better of Morgan again. His voice cracked multiple times as he told the boisterous gathering, “Now and forever, when we hear the names of the players on this team, when we talk Rangers baseball with our kids and our grandkids, we will tell them about one of the greatest Rangers teams ever! The 2023 Rangers!”
John Blake never saw that historic final strike in Phoenix. Such is the nature of his job. Blake had to be prepared to deal with a postgame media swarm. He stood in the tunnel between the dugout and the clubhouse with no TV monitor available. All he could do was go by the reaction in the visiting dugout. Then there was work to be done well into the late hours of the Arizona night.
And afterward?
“Relief is probably the biggest thing for me,” says the Georgetown University grad who’d planned to go into foreign service or work in the state department before being bitten by the sports-media bug. “When you’ve gone 63 years and you’re on that list, it was always tough. And it got tougher. The Angels won. The White Sox won [in 2005, for the first time since 1917]. The Astros won [for the first time, in 2017].”
The night before Game 1 in Arlington, Major League Baseball hosted its pre-Series gala. It included showing off the Commissioner’s Trophy, a favorite for people to pose with.
Blake would have none of that. Bad luck.
Now that the Rangers’ job is done, has he posed with the hardware yet?
“Not yet,” he says, “but I will.”
The season began with Eric Nadel’s voice figuratively silent. He informed via social media just before Opening Day that he wouldn’t be behind the mic as he dealt with anxiety, insomnia, and depression.
Nadel returned to the booth on August 4 to a team that had surprisingly occupied first place in the AL West since April 9. He’d done a handful of practice games at the ballpark and was ready to go.
“The Rangers were very understanding,” he says. “I can’t thank them enough.”
The Brooklyn-born Nadel majored in political science at Brown University looking at a law career but with sights more set on becoming the voice of the Rangers—the NHL’s New York Rangers. Instead, he came to North Texas to work minor league hockey and never left. In 2014, he received the highest honor of his profession—the Ford C. Frick Award presented by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
Nadel had scripted the call of a Rangers world championship in 2011 only to toss his notes to the floor when David Freese’s triple over the outstretched glove of Nelson Cruz near the right-field wall tied Game 6 in the ninth inning. Only to retrieve them with a two-run Texas lead in the 10th—and chuck them yet again after Lance Berkman tied the score.
In Arizona, Nadel was confident of Texas securing its first world championship following Game 4. “Although it is the Rangers,” he says with a grin. “Or I say, it’s what the Rangers used to be.”
His call of the final out: “He struck him out looking! It’s over! It’s over! The Rangers have won the World Series! Ranger fans, you’re not dreaming!”
Tears and hugs were then shared with broadcast partners Matt Hicks and Jared Sandler. Another broadcaster was there in spirit: longtime sidekick Mark Holtz, who died of leukemia in September 1997 and whom Nadel thought of “every single day” this postseason.
“He never got to do a single postseason game,” he says.
But Nadel has—six playoff runs’ worth. And now, a World Series run, too.
“I figured maybe the Rangers would win it in my lifetime,” Nadel says, “but I’d probably be well past the point of working anymore when they did.”
At least one person in the organization disagreed. Nadel says when current general manager Chris Young joined the front office in December 2020, Young urged him to stay on. “We’re going to win this, and it’s not going to take that long,” he says the GM told him.
“Every time I see him now,” Nadel says, “I hug him and tell him, ‘You’re a man who’s true to his word.’ ”
