ALPINE AVALANCHE
What is sure to become one of the best-loved-books-ever on local history will greet the bright light of an Alpine day at the Way-Out-West Texas Book Festival on July 31 at Sul Ross State University’s Espino Conference Center.
The book is called “The Amazing Tale of Mr. Herbert and His Fabulous Alpine Cowboys Baseball Club: An Illustrated History of the Best Little Semi-Pro Baseball Team in Texas” (University of Texas Press, 2010).
That lengthy but glowing title offers the first glimpse into author D.J. Stout’s abundant enthusiasm for his subject. As he tells it the story is amazing — and fabulous.
Stout’s joy in the project is partly his personality — he’s an accomplished graphic designer, ad man, concept man, storyteller. But it’s his personal history that made this book inevitable, and made the project so much fun for him.
His mother was a cowboy’s teen-aged daughter from Van Horn when she met a handsome Alpine Cowboys pitcher named Doyle Stout at a Sul Ross College social in the mid-1950s. Later, she came to Kokernot Field to watch the lanky lefty throw the ball.
Before long, Elizabeth Armstrong and Doyle Stout married, and D.J. (for Doyle Jr.) was their first child, born “in a little hospital just a long home run from the centerfield wall of Kokernot Field,” writes Stout in the book’s foreword.
“I have always said that I am the son of two cowboys: A cow-punching West Texas cowboy, my grandfather Pat Armstrong, and a baseball-playing Alpine Cowboy, my dad.”
As a small boy, D.J. would clomp around in his father’s red and white pointy-toed boots made by Tony Lama himself in El Paso and presented to team members by Herbert Kokernot Jr. They featured a pair of crossed baseball bats, the words Alpine Cowboys and the o6 brand.
“The legend of the Alpine Cowboys has been a major part of my family’s story for as long as I can remember,” Stout said. “Like air or water it’s always been there.
“The tale of the West Texas rancher with the funny name (‘Mr. Coconuts’ I and my two brothers called him when we were little) has been such a staple of my heritage, he has evolved into a kind of distant relative, like a beloved grandparent or a favorite uncle.”
The story of Herbert Kokernot Jr. and his Alpine Cowboys is indeed legendary among baseball fans, and this is the first time it has become the subject of a book.
In it, Stout (who also designed the book) presents a collection of photographs, memorabilia and reminiscences from Alpine Cowboys players, family members and fans that capture 15 years (1946-61) of baseball at its small-town finest.
The archives of the Alpine Avalanche provided a great deal of source material for the book, and Stout drew from photographic collections in the Archives of the Big Bend and elsewhere.
The late photographer Charles Hunter, who had a studio in the Holland Hotel for many years, left a treasure trove of images that Stout was able to access. Hunter’s widow, Irene, and daughter Mary Sue “Suzi” cooperated with the project.
Although “The Fabulous Alpine Cowboys Baseball Club” formally launches Oct. 2 at the historic Holland Hotel in downtown Alpine, through a special agreement, advance copies will be available at the Way-Out-West Texas Book Festival on July 31.
The Way-Out-West Texas Book Festival is a major literary and cultural event sponsored by the Alpine Rotary Club under its worldwide literacy initiative. It is a nonprofit event, and any proceeds this year will benefit the Alpine Public Library Capital Campaign.