Bobby Bragan Collegiate Slugger Award Goes National
The Bobby Bragan Collegiate Slugger Award (BBCSA) presented by SR Bats announced today that it is expanding and will become a national award beginning with the 2020 collegiate baseball season. The BBCSA will be open to nominations from all Division I baseball programs in the country. The award, created by the Bobby Bragan Youth Foundation, is based on performance at the plate, academics and personal integrity.
"We are very excited about taking the Bobby Bragan Collegiate Slugger Award national", said Tracy Taylor, Executive Director of the Bobby Bragan Youth Foundation and the Bobby Bragan Collegiate Slugger Award. "The acceptance of the award and its criteria of athletic achievement, academics and integrity has been outstanding at every step along the way. It is a tribute to Bobby Bragan and his vision and values that this award continues to grow and make its mark on the college baseball landscape. We have had three outstanding winners so far and look forward to seeing what the 2020 season holds. As always, we would like to thank our sponsor SR Bats for their continued support."
“This is exciting news for all of baseball, not just college baseball,” said TCU baseball coach Jim Schlossnagle. “Bobby Bragan was a very near and dear friend of mine. He advised me on many occasions over the years. The Bobby Bragan Collegiate Slugger Award embodies everything that Bobby was about - integrity, passion for the game, and the all around development of the player, on and off the field.”
The BBCSA originally started out in 2017 as an honor going to the top college hitter in Texas. In 2019, the BBCSA expanded becoming a regional award covering Division I programs in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico and Oklahoma.
The winner of the BBCSA will be announced in June and honored at a gala in the fall at the Fort Worth Club.
Texas Tech’s Hunter Hargrove won the initial BBCSA in 2017. Dallas Baptist’s Devlin Granberg took home the honor in 2018 with Texas Tech’s Josh Jung winning the award in 2019.
Paul Rogers is this year's BBCSA Selection Committee Chairman. Rogers is the former Dean of the SMU Law School and has been the long-time president of the Dallas-Fort Worth Chapter of the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR). He is also the author of numerous baseball books, including one on former major leaguer Eddie Robinson, who is on the Advisory Committee of the BBCSA.
“We are very excited about the future of the Bobby Bragan Collegiate Slugger Award as we expand to make it a national award this year,” said Rogers. “We believe it’s a unique award because the selection committee looks not only at how the top collegiate players perform at the plate, but what they do off the field, in the classroom and in their communities. Our goal is to annually celebrate all that is positive and good about college baseball."