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Welcome to homepage of Alpine Cowboys Professional Baseball Team!!
We will play home games at Kokernot Field in Alpine Texas against other teams from Pecos League...
The Alpine Cowboys are a professional baseball team based in Alpine, Texas, in the Big Bend region of West Texas.
The Cowboys are a franchise of the Pecos League, which is not affiliated with Major or Minor League Baseball.
They play their home games at historic Kokernot Field, a 1,200 seat stone and wrought-iron replica of Chicago's Wrigley Field that dates from 1948.
Contact
Alpine Cowboys
301 North 5th Street
Alpine, Texas 79830
General Manager: Kristin Cavness 432-386-3402
 Alpine Letter
Donation Pledge
The Current
Pecos League of Professional Baseball Clubs 2011-Present
The Past
Alpine and the Big Bend region have a long baseball history. From 1947 to 1958, the Alpine Cowboys, owned by West Texas rancher and philanthropist Herbert L. Kokernot, Jr., won a dozen regional semi-pro championships and were national runners-up. The team featured future major league stars, including Norm Cash, Gaylord Perry, and Joe Horlen. At the end of championship seasons, Kokernot presented each team member with a pair of handmade red cowboy boots emblazoned with the brand of his "o6" Ranch—a tradition that continues with the current Cowboys' cap insignia.
In 1959 the Boston Red Sox moved their minor league affiliate, the Lexington Red Sox of the Nebraska State League, to Alpine, and took the traditional name "Cowboys" for the team.[1] The new Cowboys immediately won the Class D Sophomore League title and set the record for the highest winning percentage (88-35, .715) of any Red Sox minor league team.[1] The 1959 champion team was managed by future Red Sox manager Eddie Popowski and featured three future major leaguers, rhp Don Schwall) (who two years later won the American League Rookie of the Year award) 2b Chuck Schilling (who finishing fourth behind Schwall in the same balloting), and lhp Guido Grilli. The 1960 team featured future L.A. Angels hall-of-famer [(Jim Fregosi)]. In 1962 the Sophomore League folded and the team moved to Idaho, becoming the Pocatello Chiefs of the Class C Pioneer League.
Professional baseball returned to Alpine in 2009 with the Big Bend Cowboys of the Continental Baseball League. The team was founded by Frank Snyder, a Fort Worth law professor, who had previously founded the CBL's Texarkana Gunslingers and who brought several local investors from the Alpine area into the new team. It was successful on the field, losing in the league finals in 2009 to the Alexandria Aces, and winning the Ferguson Jenkins Trophy in 2010 as CBL champions. The CBL folded at the end of the 2010 season. The Cowboys were reorganized as a nonprofit corporation and along with another CBL team, the Las Cruces Vaqueros, became part of the new Pecos League for the 2011 season.
The Big Bend of Texas is rich in baseball heritage. Early pictures show a baseball field surrounded by wagons over a hundred years ago in Alpine.
Herbert Kokernot, Jr. built a fabulous field in 1947 for his Alpine Cowboys team as a replica of Wrigley Field. The field and many famous players who appeared there have been chronicled in books, national magazines, newspapers, and even "Baseball Times" in Japan. A semi-pro team, the Alpine Cowboys played here from 1947-1961.
An effort to re-introduce professional baseball at Kokernot Field in 2009 marked the first professional baseball played at Kokernot Field in 48 years. The 2009 season heart-stirring but financially unsustainable with its for profit model. It did, however, create regional interest in re-invigorating the unique baseball heritage belonging to the Big Bend.
The Big Bend Region is about 20,000 square miles in area with a total population of around 20,000; it contines a handful of small towns (Alpine at 6,500 inhabitants, is the largest). The economy is weak and disjointed by the distances between the towns. community sports are one of the few unifying dynamics of the region. Tourism is at the heart of the regional economy.
Local business, sports, school and community leaders have decided to build our baseball heritage, weaving it into the fabric of life throughout the region as a non-profit community and tourism development tool. Big Bend Community Baseball and Softball (BBCBS) is the result: a collaboration including the people of all ages, with multiple ethnicities and varying incomes, united by the sports of baseball and softball.
Regional corporate sponsors are needed to help fund our non-profit organization. The Alpine Cowboys staff will have only expense allowances, as will managers, coaches and trainers for the Alpine Cowboys team. Volunteers will do promotions, run concessions and clean up the facilites. A paid general manager is necessary as funds become available.
The Alpine Cowboy team players receive an opportunity to compete publicly, a venue to build stats that reflect their skills. Their goal is to get the attention of pro scouts and get an opportunity to be drafted to major league organizations. They will be provided housing by host families and a small stipend. A new regional minor league entitity, The Pecos League of Professional Baseball Clubs welcomes the Alpine Cowboys as an independent team.
Big Bend Radio
Be sure and check out feature of this month's Texas Monthly on news-stands now...Kokernot Field and the Alpine Cowboys from 1947 are featured in this October 2010 edition of Texas Monthly. This is a great guide to see how things were and are in West Texas/New Mexico Baseball. The Pecos League is essentially a throw back to the West Texas/New Mexico League of the 1947.
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Alpine’s Kokernot Field may be the prettiest little baseball stadium in the country. But it’s the story behind the stadium of a wildly generous rancher and his legendary semipro baseball club that makes it a real field of dreams...(full article)
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