Local coaching legend Jack Cook was promised a new baseball park in 1967. In March the dream was finally fulfilled when the Herd opened the season at Jack Cook Field.
By Keith Morehouse
Photos courtesy of Marshall University
HQ 125 | SPRING 2024
Think of every great baseball movie you’ve ever seen — Field of Dreams, The Natural, Bull Durham. What happened on Friday, March 1, of this year — opening day at Marshall University’s brand-new Jack Cook Field — was worthy of its own mini screenplay. In the bottom of the last inning, Herd second baseman and leadoff man Tre Hondras had planted himself in the batter’s box. He was facing Manhattan pitcher Justin Solimine. The 6-foot-1 inch righthander came with a fastball on his first pitch and catcher Andreaus Lewis never got a mitt on it. Hondras lifted the pitch over the leftfield fence and made history.
One pitch, one swing, one homer. The score was 1-0, Herd.
“Honestly I totally blacked out on the bases,” Hondras told reporters after the game.
As Hondras crossed home plate he took off his batting helmet, tipped it to the crowd and waved his arms, whipping the 3,124 fans into a frenzy.
“I pumped the crowd up and I didn’t mean to do that,” Hondras explained. “That’s not normal in a baseball game, but today it felt like it was. It felt like this was the moment to do something like that, and it felt like everybody deserved a Herd ‘W’ and a great time at the ballfield.”
The weather was far from ideal. It was gray, and chilly, and a light rain fell at times during the game. But that had no bearing on a 3-0 Herd win for the ages. Finally, after some 57 years of talk, and a couple of stadium groundbreakings, Marshall baseball had a beautiful showplace to call home.
“I’m gonna remember this forever, and I’m just so lucky to be a part of it,” Herd catcher Owen Ayers said. “It’s really a dream come true to have all this for the team and for the community. It’s an amazing feeling and I’m so blessed to be a part of it.”
Oh, how Coach Jack Cook would have loved this day. The man who built this program out of dirt from St. Cloud Commons to various high school fields, to plenty of other diamonds in the rough, passed away in 2021.
“I’ve been here since 1967,” Cook told a crowd at a stadium groundbreaking on campus in 2019. “Whitey Wilson, who was a really good friend of mine, told me if I would come to Marshall they would get us a baseball field.”
It took nearly six decades, but Marshall finally made good on its promise; and, fittingly, Cook’s name and legacy are all over the new ballpark. What the longtime coach would like best about the $25 million facility is that it will give an immediate lift to the Herd baseball program. Instead of taking bus rides to some faraway home games, the players can utilize this on-campus complex that should help give them a chance to compete in the ultra-competitive Sun Belt baseball league.
“It starts with the name on the field,” Marshall Head Coach Greg Beals said. “Being a coach myself, I know the legacy Jack Cook left behind and what he meant to the players he coached. It’s been a real rewarding process for me being involved in the ballpark’s design, seeing blueprints for the stadium and watching it all come to life.”
The celebration of opening weekend actually began on Thursday night at the ballpark. Marshall allowed Herd baseball alumni to step onto the field and have a catch. Many ex-players brought family members and looked on as their kids and grandkids tested out the basepaths and enjoyed the night-game atmosphere. That included Larry Verbage, from the well-known Marshall baseball family, who made the trip to Huntington from Santa Rosa Beach, Florida.
“Thursday was a very special evening for all Herd baseball alumni,” Verbage said. “It was also particularly meaningful for the Verbage family. My dad Shag Verbage was best friends with Jack Cook, and my brothers Glenn, Tee and I all played for Marshall from 1968 to 1979. That evening was the fulfillment of a 57-year dream and there was no way I was going to miss being there. To mark the event, I brought along my dad’s 86-year-old first baseman mitt and used it to toss a few baseballs with my Marshall University teammate Tim Murphy.”
The ex-big-leaguers were on hand too. Two-time Major League All-Star pitcher Rick Reed grew up in the shadow of St. Cloud Commons on Huntington’s West End. He and his wife Dee gave a $1 million gift to the stadium project, and the Marshall bullpen down the left field line bears their name. He remembers well how difficult it was to practice his craft at Marshall.
“We would practice inside the Henderson Center when it was cold outside,” Reed recalled. “We even threw the ball around inside the concourses at the football stadium and tried to stay warm by popping in and out of the restrooms there. This is a big step forward for Marshall.”
Kansas City Royal and Marshall Hall of Famer Jeff Montgomery remembers the days at St. Cloud’s well. He still has memories of the spring rains coming and seeing live catfish swimming in rightfield. Not your average fish story, but it made opening day weekend all the more memorable for him.
“Back then, Coach Cook, Greg Rowsey (Marshall Hall of Fame pitcher) and all the players would grab rakes and shovels to try and get the wet field ready for a game,” Montgomery said with a nostalgic smile. “Fortunately, now we’ve advanced to a stage where it’s going to be a proud day for Marshall. To me it’s a footprint to grow and get this program to where it needs to be.”
The opening day overflow crowd was indicative of what college baseball can be in Huntington when there’s a quality ballpark that’s convenient to get to. For the Herd players, this is a long-term investment in the program. They plan to give back every time they step between the lines.
“I love this crowd,” Hondras said after the first game. “I came here for this community. I came here for this team. And everybody else in that dugout came here for Huntington. We want to bring baseball back here. We want to make it exciting and make it fun, and I think today was just the start.”
No one in the ballpark on opening day was beaming quite like Kim Cook. Jack Cook’s oldest daughter has been the unofficial project supervisor since Marshall broke ground on the project in October 2022. She’s been around the construction zone for so long that she now has her own hard hat. This was her day, too.
“Marshall has needed a ballfield for a long time, but it always seemed like it had been put on the back burner,” Cook said. “And now they’re going to be competitive. Anybody that comes to this ball field is going to see this field and say, ‘Wow!’”
Maybe Cook is just relaying signs from her dad. Jack Cook was a baseball purist, and he might have thought it unnecessary to have all this pomp and circumstance, or to have this field named in his honor. But it sure does make for a good story.
