Roger Williams, left and BBYF Board President Chris Lewis.
The Bobby Bragan Youth Foundation honored Roger Williams, U. S. Representative and former Texas Christian University baseball player, at the 25th anniversary of its Lifetime Achievement Award Gala on November 2 at the Fort Worth Club.
Williams has been the U. S. Representative for Texas’s 25th Congressional District since 2013. Previously, he served under Gov. Rick Perry as Secretary of State of Texas from November 2004 to July 2007.
Williams played baseball at TCU from 1968 to 1971 and was an All-Southwest Conference selection as an outfielder his freshman year. His stellar play led him to be named to TCU’s 1960s All-Decade Team. Williams was selected by the Atlanta Braves organization in the 1971 Major League Baseball draft and played three years of minor league baseball. He returned to Texas to coach TCU’s baseball team before he embarked on a career in business and public affairs.
Following TCU coach and athletic director Frank Windigger as coach for one season in 1976, he soon learned how different coaching the game then is from coaching today, where the Horned Frogs play in one of the top ballparks in the country, Lupton Stadium.
“Those were big shoes to fill,” Williams said, last year when he received the George H.W. Bush Distinguished Alumnus Award presented by the Lubbock-based National College Baseball Hall of Fame. “I remember [Windigger] told me to be tight on the budget and not spend much money. I first found out if foul balls went on [the roof of] Daniel-Meyer Coliseum, you had to go get them. I also found it that even if a ball was used, you still had to play with it, all you had to do was put shoe polish on it and go play. We played with the heaviest balls of anybody in the Southwest Conference.”
The Bobby Bragan Youth Foundation was established in 1991 by former Major League Baseball player and manager, Bobby Bragan. Since its creation, BBYF has awarded more than $1.8 million in college scholarships in $2,500 increments to 732 deserving students across the metroplex.
BBYF is unique in that it chooses to award college scholarships – not to high school seniors – but to deserving students when they are in the 8th grade, just prior to their entrance into high school. These scholarships are redeemed once students have graduated high school and enrolled in college. – This report includes information from the FWBP archives.
http://bobbybragan.org/