The small town of Alpine, Texas has always been big on baseball.  Since the days of buggies and the first model T's, and even before Sul Ross existed, Alpine has loved the game.  But there are a few select citizens that are true fans, and one in particular has made a massive impact in Alpine and Baseball history. 

 

Baseball in Alpine, 1919. Photo courtesy Sul Ross University.

 

When your father, Herbert L. Kokernot, owns over 320,000 acres of cattle country in Brewster and Fort Davis Counties in West Texas and has assets that include banks, hotels, a railroad, Lone Star and Pearl Breweries-for starters- it would seem rather natural for the son, Herbert L. Kokernot Jr., a wealthy young baseball player and enthusiast of the game, to not necessarily worry himself with cattle drives but to do what he wanted to do-and he did. He rode the popularity wave of the 1950's -baseball's "hey day" in the United States- and in so doing wrote a new page in history-not yet properly written- for baseball in West Texas. 

 

1953 Championship Alpine Cowboys - Photo courtesy of Doyle Stout  

In 1946, Herbert L. Kokernot Jr., a rich, handsome, quiet and debonair West Texan picked up a ragtag semipro team called the Alpine Cats dressed them in better uniforms and new equipment and renamed them the Alpine Cowboys. With the new support and money, the newly named Alpine Cowboys became the upstart and most successful team in the region- a region where in the 1950's- almost every community big enough for two gas stations had a semi professional baseball team. Herbert and the Cowboys took on all comers and with a touch of class and investment established Alpine Texas as a dominant, affluent, although most unlikely center for semi professional baseball over the next several years in the most unusual setting of Alpine Texas-a community of less than 5,000 people. 

Not satisfied with just providing new uniforms and equipment the new baseball powerhouse owner promoted his families immense cattle spread, the "06" ranch and it became widely known and envied. He promised his rejuvenated baseball players and supporters a new baseball stadium that would be "second to none"- and he delivered on that promise.

In 1947, Kokernot Field was opened and indeed it was "second to none". "Mr. Herbert", as he was known, spent over in US$1,500,000 for a hand-made new stadium. A stadium considered by many as the finest ball park in the United States at that time and folks this was 1947, a scant 2 years after WWII. It was a grand baseball stadium with a wonderful grandstand with individual and numbered folding seats, a rose garden entrance, trophy cases that started empty and soon were filled with trophies and awards from around the country. A 10' granite wall surrounded the stadium with huge 3 meter letters denoting the "06" ranch. World-class infield dirt was purchased in Georgia and brought to Alpine by train. Every touch of the stadium was "hand made" with lamps topped with handmade baseballs to include the detail of the stitches and painted accordingly. He indeed delivered a baseball stadium without a peer and he delivered the players that would make it famous. 

Photo courtesy of Doyle Stout   

The stadium was obviously made with the assumption that when a baseball game was being played in Alpine, the city should close their businesses until the game was over-and that was basically what happened. That was a good assumption and indeed most businesses closed when a game was in progress and the wonderful ambience of Alpine, almost a mile high and surrounded by mountains, captured the sound of a game in progress, and the City and the wonderful people of Alpine stopped and paid tribute to their new love and unbelievable new asset- for a city of less than 5,000 people. 

From 1947 through 1958, the Alpine Cowboys fielded the best in semi professional baseball, winning a dozen regional titles and the runner up to the national championship. Hundreds of ball players, primarily from major Universities were offered the opportunity of a life time to travel to Alpine Texas and join the famous Alpine Cowboy baseball organization. Almost two dozen of the players went directly to professional baseball, one as a GM for Los Angeles, one as a Hall of Fame inductee, one as the Texas A&M baseball coach for 26 years and inducted into the Texas A&M Hall of Fame and most of them on to successful careers in a variety of fields. 

Perhaps one of the enduring and indeed concurrent contributions of Herbert Kokernot was his total support to the small Texas State College of Sul Ross State University in the same community of Alpine Texas. Starting in the early 1950's he brought in highly touted high school graduates, placed them on the Alpine Cowboy roster and for some he placed them on scholarships at universities and many of them at Sul Ross, with a promise of playing each summer until matriculation. He totally supported the local College with scholarships, a new and expensive bus, uniforms, one of the world's finest stadiums and the result was a national intercollegiate competitor that won the NAIA national championship in 1957. Of course the story goes on and on.

 

The most recent chapter in the story begins over 50 years later, when a new team of professional players will again call Kokernot Field "home" and will take up the name of "Cowboys".   

 

Majority of Article and Photos by: Doyle Stout