It started in 2021 as a routine business proposition: Abilene Christian University had an interest in becoming a sponsor of the Texas Rangers. At the onset, the partnership seemed destined to be similar to any other number of others — a company pays money for its logo to be emblazoned on the outfield wall or on signage around the ballpark. But where most might see a routine transaction, Ben Baroody thought he might be seeing a missing puzzle piece.
Baroody, whose full title is “Director, Leadership, Organizational Development, & Mental Performance,” took on the role before the 2022 season, implementing a completely new initiative that dealt not only with “peak performance” but providing resources to help the team ensure the mental health of their players at the big-league and minor-league levels. What we didn’t know at the time that story was published was that the next step of the process was already in the works: the continued education of both players and coaches as part of a new partnership between the Rangers and ACU.
Baroody had already been working to create that next step when the opportunity with ACU presented itself. The idea was to create courses for the players that would — in addition to bolstering their performance — educate them on off-field skills that would help them beyond their time on the diamond. He reached out to Steven Johnson, the chief administrative officer at ACU, and pitched the idea: What if the two sides partnered to create a program that would allow players to earn college credit?
Johnson said yes, and an idea that was once fodder for clever satire was born in earnest.
The university began creating the online courses in late 2021. Near the end of the 2022 minor-league season, Baroody traveled to each affiliate to inform players of the upcoming opportunity, then made another push during Instructional League. In October, the program was officially launched.
On Thursday, the Rangers officially announced “Rangers U” — a program that allows players and coaches to earn college credits by taking online courses taught by faculty and staff of ACU. The courses are offered in both English and Spanish, allowing for a more equitable availability to the program in a sport that features a large Latin American contingency.
Currently, the program features two offseason blocks, each consisting of two courses. The first block, which runs from October through December, consists of Leadership Development and Mental Performance. The second, running January through February, is made up of Multicultural Communication and Baseball History and Culture. Each course is worth three hours of college credit, for a total of 12 credit hours, which may then be transferred to other universities as players continue their education. Additionally, as part of the program, the university provides “dedicated advisors to ensure credit transfers, ease of application, and course selection.”
In some cases, ACU faculty were able to create baseball-centric versions of courses they were already teaching. But when it came to Baseball History and Culture, Johnson called on Suzie Macaluso, whose areas of expertise are sociology, religion and aging. An interest in sports led her to teach a Sociology of Sports class at Pepperdine before moving to Abilene, where she teaches occasional colloquia on the sociology of baseball.
“There are a lot of similarities between baseball and religion — sports and religion in general,” Macaluso said. “A lot of the same theories apply; there are a lot of similar concepts. And so when they started to put together the baseball class, Steven reached out to me because he knew that I taught that class, and he said, ‘Hey, would you be interested in working with us on this?’”
Macaluso had never taught a history course before, but her background allowed her a unique perspective on the game.
“I’m super-interested in the way that the social context or the cultural context has shaped baseball and the changed the rules of baseball, but also how changes in baseball have changed culture,” Macaluso said. “Think about the integration of baseball — that happening in the 1940s really lays some groundwork for the civil rights movement in some ways. Or women playing in the (All-American) Girls Professional Baseball League, and then that kind of leading to some of the women’s rights movement. And so I love that interplay between history and baseball and the way that they kind of interact.”
Preparing a course is a challenge, regardless of the circumstances, but in the case of the ACU professors tasked with the creation of these modules, there was an added level of difficulty. The pool of potential students included 16-year-olds from Latin America and domestic players in their mid-20s. The broad scope of backgrounds required a careful plan for engagement.
“We set this as a 100-level class, which means kind of an entry-level class,” Macaluso said. “So we’re not assuming any background knowledge. We’re not assuming that you’re coming in with anything. So we tried to create a course where it’s largely based on discussion. So we’ve got videos that they watch, from both the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown and then also a video that we filmed in Arlington with (Rangers Executive Vice President of Communications) John Blake.
“We’ve got discussion questions built in where they interact with one another and where I interact with them,” Macaluso said. ‘Their primary assignment is really just to connect themselves with the historical events in baseball. So we go through these different time periods and they’re picking events from that period in history, and they’re saying ‘This event is meaningful to me, because this is what happened.’ … It is a challenge to write a curriculum that is accessible to everyone, but that’s really what our goal was. So I spent time with a couple of instructional designers to go through and make sure that we were hitting those marks and making sure that it would be accessible.”
More than 30 players participated in the first block, which ended in December.
“One of the reasons that I got into ACU was (that) I wanted to kind of expand outside of baseball and find something to challenge me outside of what we do on a daily basis as far as getting better on the field,” said 21-year-old pitching prospect Tekoah Roby. “Part of developing in the baseball world and in real life is finding your identity outside of baseball, and one of those things that I’ve been able to add to my identity is (I’m) a student again. I hadn’t really taken classes since high school.”
In addition to the players, two coaches — minor-league coach Henderson Lugo and roving coach (and baseball oracle) Roy Silver — are taking the courses. Silver already has his degree, but says he wanted to take on the challenge. He also points out that the program makes an existing resource more accessible to players.
“For years we’ve been providing our draft picks with a little side bonus … there’s this money that’s put into a kitty for their education,” Silver explains. “So if a high school kid gets drafted, and he had a full ride to the University of Texas. You’re asking this kid not to go to college … Well, in order to protect the players — or for the player to protect themselves — years ago, they started giving out this allotted bonus for education. So if I was going to go to the University of Texas and Texas was going to cost me $30,000 a year for four years, this money is $120,000.
“I can go back to college in the offseason, or when I get released, or I don’t play in the big leagues,” Silver said. “I can start studying and that money goes towards my education and my education only. But what happens is, the season ends too late for them to start in August, so they lose the fall (semester). And then in the spring, you gotta go to spring training. So it’s almost impossible for a lot of these guys to use their money towards education until they actually get released. And maybe by then, they’re 25 years old, they’re married, they have kids and it’s too late to start school — they don’t have time.”
With Rangers U, that problem is at least partially solved.
“This was pretty much the start of my degree,” said 22-year-old infielder Jonathan Ornelas. “I was supposed to take courses at (Grand Canyon University) but my offseason got super busy … it was a little tough because I could take (classes) in person, because it’s right by my house, but it would be kind of tough to kind of work around my schedule, especially if I had to go to in person at a certain time where I had workouts. So being able to have the flexibility to be able to take these courses whenever I have free time and complete them. This is beautiful.”
There are plans in the works to expand the program in the coming years to feature more classes, and a few Rangers staff members have used the partnership to pursue their master’s degrees. A group of eight staff members participated in an eight-week MBA-level organizational development course this offseason that could be used for college credit if they so choose.
While there are third-party and player alumni organizations aimed at helping professional athletes earn college credit, Rangers U might be the first such team-affiliated program among the four major sports in North America. It’s the sort of people-first initiative that has defined the Rangers’ front office for quite some time now.
“I think our primary focus was our people, and what we felt was the best resources and opportunities for our players for our staff,” Baroody said. “It was not inspired externally, it was based on the opportunistic conversations that we had. (But) to our knowledge, we’re not aware of any similar programs. Obviously there’s English Premier League and they have their academy system that enrolls guys in education — more to finish high school. But (is there another program like this) on this level, where it’s secondary courses in education (or) the MBA course that our staff went through? Not to our knowledge.”
(Top photo of Steven Johnson and Ben Baroody courtesy of the Texas Rangers)
Levi Weaver is a staff writer for The Athletic covering the Texas Rangers. He spent two seasons covering the Rangers for WFAA (ABC) and has been a contributor to MLB.com and Baseball Prospectus. Follow Levi on Twitter @ThreeTwoEephus
