Bobby Bragan Youth Foundation
www.bobbybragan.org
SR Bat Co. LLC
www.srbats.com
Known for hitting home runs in its work with young people, the Bobby Bragan Youth Foundation believes it has hit another out of the park with two big announcements recently.
First, it has formed a partnership with SR Bats, a wood bat company based in Keller. Moving forward, the foundation’s award for the top hitter in college baseball will now be known as the Bobby Bragan Collegiate Slugger Award presented by SR Bats.
Also, the award will be expanded to include NCAA Division I players in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and New Mexico as well as Texas. It was previously only for Division I Texas players in its first two seasons.
“We are very excited about our partnership with SR Bats, one of the premier bat makers in the country,” said Tracy Taylor, executive director of the foundation.
Taylor said the union is a great fit, not only from a baseball standpoint but also in sharing similar values as the foundation and its founder, the late Bobby Bragan, a former major league baseball player and member of the original Fort Worth Cats.
“Scott Rodges and Tony Rodges have put SR Bats on a great trajectory for success that is very similar to the growth and acceptance of the Bobby Bragan Collegiate Slugger Award. We have a great opportunity to continue the growth together,” Taylor said.
The first Collegiate Slugger Award was presented in 2017 to Hunter Hargrove of Texas Tech University. This year’s award went to Devlin Granberg of Dallas Baptist University.
The award takes into account performance at the plate, academics and personal integrity.
Hargrove, a first baseman from Arlington, was drafted by the Oakland Athletics and has posted a .284 batting average in 163 minor league games, most recently at the A level, with 10 home runs and 88 runs batted in.
Granberg, a first baseman from Hudson, Colorado, was drafted by the Boston Red Sox. He played in 61 games at the short A level, batting .300 with four home runs and 29 RBI.
“We’re an award for the best hitters in the college game, and they’re having to make the adjustment to wooden bats as they move into the professional game,” Taylor said. “We’re getting their name [SR Bats] out there in front of the best hitters in college baseball.”
SR Bats came to be after Scott Rodges was in Marble Falls a few years ago playing in a baseball league. He noticed that the bats were constantly being broken. Being a carpenter/cabinet maker by trade, he decided to make some bats himself, realizing the key was the wood.
When his bats didn’t break, his teammates and other players in the league began using them, saving themselves about $150 for each bat broken.
“Scott started making the bats in 2012 as more of a hobby. He called me in late 2014 — I’ve always owned my own company — and said, ‘I’ve got something here,'” Tony, now the company’s chief executive officer, recalled.
“My son-in-law and I ran the numbers, and we believed it could work. It’s been growing every day.”
In 2016 Scott Rodges moved to the Fort Worth area. By 2017 he and his brother Tony had built a 1,500-square-foot location in Keller. Scott Rodges is now the chief operating officer.
In January, the company received its major league baseball certification. Now, several major league players use SR Bats, including some Texas Rangers. SR Bats produces all standard wooden models, as well as custom models consisting of birch, maple or ash.
The slogan at SR Bats is “Skillfully crafted, designed for glory.”
As for the union with the Bragan Foundation, Todd said, “Their faith, their beliefs align with ours, and we’re all fans of baseball and Bobby.”
Taylor echoed those sentiments, saying, “It just seems to be a good connection. They’re good family guys, they’re spiritual. It just all seemed to fit.”
Taylor also praised the expansion of the Collegiate Slugger Award to a regional level, saying the decision stemmed from its overwhelming acceptance in Texas.
“The acceptance of the Bobby Bragan Collegiate Slugger Award by the D1 baseball programs in Texas and their participation and partnership in launching and growing this award has encouraged us to expand our reach,” Taylor said. “With this expansion we are bringing into the fold several additional storied baseball programs and conferences and raising the competition level for this unique award.”
With the expansion, the award can now include players from such elite programs as Louisiana State University, Oklahoma State, University of Oklahoma and Arkansas.
The Bobby Bragan Youth Foundation also reached a major milestone recently, surpassing $2 million in college scholarships since it began in 1991.
The foundation recognizes outstanding eighth-grade students in its annual scholarship competition each year with the promise of a college scholarship. By focusing attention on the availability of aid for merit at the middle school level, the foundation hopes to inspire students to plan for higher education, work hard to reach that goal, and push themselves to seek out additional aid at an earlier stage in their lives.
Taylor said that to date 800 students have been awarded scholarships of $2,500 each. Of those, 98 percent have gone on to graduate from high school and attend college.