Both Marshall and Huntington lost a sports icon in November when former Coach Jack Cook passed away.
Rick Reed spent 16 years in Major League Baseball. He was a two-time All-Star and pitched in the World Series. He has hundreds of stories about his time in pro baseball, but the tales he tells about former Marshall Coach Jack Cook are as entertaining as any.
“I was a junior at Huntington High School in 1981 and Coach Cook’s son Chipper was a senior,” Reed said. “Coach would pick us up after school in his old Maverick and take us to Prindle Field next to Fairfield Stadium. He would open his trunk with hundreds of used baseballs and he’d pitch batting practice to Chipper. We’d chase those baseballs all over those streets for him.”
Sadly, the man whose name was synonymous with Marshall baseball passed away on Nov. 24 at 95 years of age. While Reed only played one year for Cook at Marshall, his affection for the coach is effusive.
“In my mind he was Huntington and Marshall’s version of Sparky Anderson,” Reed asserted. Anderson was the former Cincinnati Reds manager and member of Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame. Jack Cook and his son Chip are in the Marshall Athletics Hall of Fame.
His love of the game — the only major sport without a clock — made him a timeless treasure in and around Huntington’s baseball community.
“He was the kindest, gentlest and as good a man as I’ve ever known,” said Rod Butler, one of the stars of Marshall’s legendary 1978 NCAA tournament team. Cook’s impact on him is still very fresh all these years later. “He was a great coach and mentor. The entire baseball family have lost a great one.”
“He is Marshall baseball,” said Jeff O’Malley, interim athletics director at Marshall University. “I think whenever you talk about Marshall baseball, the first person that comes up is Jack Cook. The same can be said for baseball in Huntington.”
Cook is the all-time winningest coach at Marshall in any sport with 422 wins. He took his 1973 and 1978 teams to the NCAA Tournament. That ’78 team still ranks as Marshall’s most accomplished. The Herd beat Clemson and Florida State in its NCAA regional but lost two in a row to the Miami Hurricanes to narrowly miss a chance at the College World Series. That year Cook was a finalist for National Coach of the Year.
All of this without a true baseball stadium to call home. In baseball it’s a time-worn skill for a hitter to be patient at the plate, but few coaches have been asked to display patience like Jack Cook. When he became Marshall’s head coach in 1967, he remembered Whitey Wilson promising him a new baseball stadium. There were more promises and more plans, yet nothing ever materialized. But like all good hitters, Cook kept his head down. He kept coaching and winning baseball games wherever the Herd was playing that day.
In October of 2019 he stood at a podium inside the Chris Cline Indoor Athletic Complex for a long-awaited announcement — Marshall was finally breaking ground on a baseball stadium. With dignitaries looking on, Cook’s humility shone bright.
“I want to thank all the players who have played for me and gone through all these things and still have shown a lot of desire to make this a great baseball program,” Cook said to the crowd.
Marshall officials are still trying to settle on a site for the baseball stadium. It will no doubt have Jack Cook’s name emblazoned somewhere on the facility.
“His name has to be in big block letters,” Reed said. “Maybe even his face on display. The man was Marshall baseball.”
———
About the Author: Keith Morehouse is the sports director at WSAZ NewsChannel 3.