Published: July 10, 2008 12:10 pm         

Cooke County sweeps into tournaments

No other Cooke County baseball organization has done it.

Not the PONY (Protect Our Neighborhood Youth) League. Not the Texas Teenage Baseball League. Not anybody.

This years Boys Baseball of Cooke County playoffs teams all made the Dixie League state tournament. Every one of them made it as a first place team.

“I am really proud of all the coaches and players,” long-time Boys Baseball of Cooke County officials Phillip Stockwell said Wednesday.

“We have had some teams make the tournament as second place teams before,” the president of the organization said Wednesday afternoon.

“But, we have never swept the championships before,” he said.

The local organization has two five and six year old teams, a seven and eight year old team, one nine-year old team, one nine and 10-year old team, one 11-and-12 year old team and two 13-and-14 -year old team either headed for the state tournament, or already through with the state tournament.

“I have be associated with boys baseball in the county for 19 years,” Stockwell said, “and this is the first time this has every happened.”

Always in the past, Stockwell said, Cooke County would lose out to a Pilot Point team. “They have such a strong program over there,” Stockwell said, “they are always tough.”

This year, the Cooke county teams took care of Pilot Point in most of the tournaments.

The one thing that makes the Cooke County All-Star teams so good is their depth of pitching.

“One pitcher can only throw 13 innings in a state tournament,” Stockwell said. “It is possible to play seven or eight games in a tournament. So if you want a single pitcher to pitch the entire tournament, he can only throw two or three innings a game.

“When you get to the higher levels of play, where the pitcher is actually a player and not a coach (of the game is not in a T-ball league) pitching becomes very important.”

Stockwell said he likes the chances of all of the local all-stars teams, because of the depth of pitching they have.