For the love of the game: Law professor shares his passion
As an 11-year-old boy in Casper, Wyoming, Paul Rogers played shortstop and pitcher for a Little League baseball team and rooted for a faraway professional ball team – the Philadelphia Phillies.
“To me, that team was on another planet,” says Rogers, a member of the Dedman School of Law faculty since 1980 and dean from 1989 to 1997.
His distant heroes became real to him one day when a personal letter arrived from Phillies pitcher Robin Roberts encouraging him in his baseball career. Rogers’ Philadelphia grandfather had initiated the letter.
The letter is part of Rogers’ extensive baseball collection, which will be displayed with DeGolyer Library’s upcoming exhibit “The Old Ballgame: Baseball in American Life,” April 17 – June 30. The exhibit also will include baseball books and photographs from sportswriter Blackie Sherrod’s collection at DeGolyer.
Rogers gave up his baseball aspirations to pursue a distinguished career as an antitrust lawyer and scholar in Philadelphia and Dallas, but he never lost his love of baseball – becoming a baseball historian, author and collector.
“Baseball is a complex game with many nuances,” he says. “The geometry of the game is spectacular. I love the sound of the bat hitting the ball, and I still get heart palpitations when I step into a ballpark and see the green field.”
Rogers met Robin Roberts in 1992 at a baseball old-timers exhibition game. The two became friends and soon agreed to collaborate on The Whiz Kids and the 1950 Pennant (Temple University Press, 1997) about the legendary Phillies team that beat all odds to take on the New York Yankees in the 1950 World Series. Then age 23, Roberts was a Phillies starting pitcher. The two later collaborated on another book, My Life in Baseball (Triumph Books, 2003).
Rogers’ interest in baseball history drives his collection. He collects baseball cards, World Series and All-Star programs, historic photographs, autographed photographs, gloves, press pins, pennants and original baseball art.
His extensive baseball library includes one of his favorite items, The Hungry Hurler (Grosset & Dunlap, 1965), the hard-tofind final volume of the 23-book Chip Hilton sports series.
“I found it at an antique mall in Kalispell, Montana,” he says. “I felt a little guilty about buying an $800 book for $4, but not guilty enough to leave it for someone else.”
Rogers also is author with Bill Werber of Memories of a Ballplayer: Bill Werber and Baseball in the 1930s (SABR, 2001) and is editor of the SMU Press book series, Sport in American Life. In addition, he has served as president of the Dallas chapter of the American Society for Baseball Research since 2000 and chairs the Larry Ritter Book Award Committee, which selects the best baseball book each year that focuses on the Deadball Era from 1900 to 1920.
“My baseball collaborations have been a labor of love,” he says. “The stories are the part of baseball I like best.”
