Rangers’ Hall of Fame announcer Eric Nadel turns a bit into a book

It started out as a promotional line reading with a rhyme and now it’s a book.

Texas Rangers’ Hall of Fame radio announcer Eric Nadel and partner Matt Hicks joked on air about how the promotion would be made better with a limerick. You know limericks, right? The five-line pieces of technically specific poetry often finish with an off-color bit of humor, or at least the ones you remember. The first, second and fifth lines contain seven to 10 syllables while also rhyming.

The third and fourth lines typically only have five to seven syllables and must rhyme with each other.

They’re like the sabermetrics of poetry.

Nadel, a limerick lover from way back, rewrote the ad copy into a limerick and a bit was born. Nadel and Hicks began writing and reading a different limerick during the eighth inning of every game beginning in early May.

Nadel has compiled 175 limericks, most written by him, but also the best sent in from listeners and fans who joined in the poetic fun, and turned them into a self-published book with dazzling illustrations by local artist Arthur James. It’s called “Lim-Eric!” and is available exclusively on Amazon. A portion of the proceeds go to the Texas Rangers Baseball Foundation.

The first original limerick Nadel wrote and read on air was inspired by something Hicks said during a broadcast about a minor league player from Pawtucket.

“The Rangers were already nine games out of first,” Nadel said. “I said I could write a limerick about that and he said, ‘Yeah, but you can’t use it on the air.’”

Nadel offered to write a clean one.

“A young hitting star at Pawtucket,

Each time up would step into the bucket.

If he got this corrected,

He’d soon be selected,

For Cooperstown, like Kirby Puckett.”

How did this get started?

We were looking for something at that point to help hold the audience because it looked like the season was not going to be a great one. We introduced the Limerick of the Day and we did that every game from that point on. We read it in the 8th inning in a desperate attempt to hold the audience.

Did you get immediate feedback from listeners?

Yeah, people really got into it. And it was really fun for me

You do a lot of work promoting the Focus On Teens charity but have decided to donate proceeds to the Rangers Foundation?

I love the Rangers Baseball Foundation and I’ve never done an event or a project specifically for them and I wanted to do it. I love what they do. I figured this would bring a lot of attention to them as well as money. It’s a natural tie in.

Are all of the limericks about baseball or the Rangers?

No, I wrote a lot of limericks about music and other sports, specifically with the book in mind. A lot of them never got read on the air. We started encouraging listeners to send in limericks and we got a lot of them. The best ones we read on the air and the best ones are in the book. There’s about 40 limericks written by fans. We have four chapters. Baseball. Not Baseball (other sports), All-Stars (various celebrities), Pinch-hitters (limericks sent in from fans).

Have you always been a limerick fan?

From the time I was a little kid. We learned about them when I was in the eighth grade and I thought they were really coo. And I was really good at writing them from the start. I didn’t really continue writing them until I was doing minor league hockey [in the 1970s]. Sometimes, to kill time on the bus rides, I would write limericks about guys on the team. They loved it.

This is your fourth book. How was self-publishing?

I did some investigating and realized I could put a book together on Amazon and promote it myself. It turned out to be a bigger project than expected. I had to hire a page designer and an editor. And I started a publishing company, which is called Principito Publishing, which means the little prince in Spanish. That’s what we call our little dog Kirby, because he’s our little prince.

Eric Nadel book signings

Dec. 5, Kessler Theater book release concert, 7 p.m.

Dec. 7, Frisco Roughriders Winter Wonderland at Dr Pepper ballpark, 5-9 p.m.

Dec. 15, Legal Draft Brewery, Arlington, 1-4 p.m.

Dec. 15, Rangers Team Store, Globe Life Park, 5-6 p.m.

This story was originally published November 28, 2018 at 11:24 AM.