Radio Play-by-play/Color
The 2014 recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award, Eric Nadel is in his 28th year as the lead voice on the Texas Rangers radio broadcasts. It marks his 45th year broadcasting Rangers baseball, the longest tenure of any announcer in the history of the franchise and the third longest continuous current stint with one team among the 30 Major League clubs, second in the American League to Kansas City’s Denny Matthews (55th year in 2023).
The Ford C. Frick Award is presented annually for excellence in broadcasting by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Nadel was the first primary voice of the Rangers to be honored with the Frick Award, which was first presented in 1978. He was a finalist for the 2011, 2012, and 2013 Frick Awards. Nadel was honored at the Hall of Fame’s Awards Presentation on July 26, 2014 in Cooperstown, New York, along with 2014 J.G. Taylor Spink Award winner Roger Angell and Buck O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Joe Garagiola.
Nadel is an eight-time selection of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Texas Sportscaster of the Year Award (1999, 2001, 2002, 2006, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2015) and was twice honored by the Associated Press for best play-by-play in Texas. He was inducted as the 15th member of the Texas Rangers Baseball Hall of Fame on August 11, 2012.
Nadel joined the Rangers in 1979 and called games on television and radio in his first three seasons. Beginning in 1982, he began a 13-year run with Mark Holtz as the radio team on WBAP while returning to the television booth for one year in 1984. Nadel became the team’s lead radio voice on KRLD Radio when Holtz moved to television in 1995.
Nadel is a graduate of Brown University, where he called football and hockey on the college radio station. He had Minor League hockey play-by-play stints in Muskegon, MI, Oklahoma City, Dallas and Fort Worth, and was also the radio voice of the Dallas Diamonds of the Women’s Professional Basketball League. Nadel spent several off-seasons learning Spanish and has taken part in Spanish game broadcasts in numerous Latin American countries.
He is also the author of four books, including his latest work, LIM-ERIC!, an illustrated book of limericks published in November 2018. A portion of the proceeds from the sales of that book is going to the Texas Rangers Baseball Foundation. Nadel also wrote Texas Rangers: The Authorized History, which was released in 1997. In November 2020, the Texas Rangers Baseball Foundation, UNT’s Mayborn School of Journalism and UNT’s Department of Media Arts announced the creation of the Eric Nadel Excellence in Sports Broadcasting Scholarship. The $30,000 scholarship provides two students “with a passion for sports broadcasting” $15,000 each over two academic years.
Eric is very active in the local music scene, annually presenting a Birthday Benefit Concert at Dallas’ Kessler Theater. The 2023 Concert, the 11th to take place, is scheduled for May 18, 2023 and will benefit the Grant Halliburton Foundation. He also stages a monthly concert series at Dallas’ Cafe Momentum, for which he is the Music Director. He is very involved in numerous mental health causes and has served as a spokesman for the national Campaign to Change Direction and for Texas State of Mind. Eric is a longtime animal activist and raised the funds for the construction of the first leash-free dog park in North Texas at Mockingbird Point in Dallas.
In January 2023, he received the Shalom Award for his lifetime community efforts from the Temple Shalom Brotherhood in Dallas.
A 1991 inductee in the Texas Baseball Hall of Fame, Nadel and his wife, Jeannie, reside in Dallas and Durango, CO with their dog, Kirby, a terrier mix.
