Coupeville — where strikeout kings are born and bred. (David Svien photo)
Someday I will learn to stop speaking in absolutes.
Some day…
Piecing together the sports history of Coupeville is a hit-and-miss adventure, with a little nugget of info around every corner, but often buried under a pile of dust.
This morning, I felt pretty confident hailing Ray Cook as being the greatest strikeout pitcher in CHS history.
As I pointed out, he dropped 21 K’s over 13 innings in 1976 on the afternoon he won the district championship game and sent the Wolves to state.
Impressive, in every way.
But not the record, it turns out.
Yep, as unlikely as it is, there’s actually at least one other Wolf hurler out there who bettered Cook in both innings tossed and strikeouts notched.
I turn you over to my favorite pen pal, legendary former CHS coach/teacher Bob Barker, as he drops some knowledge about a pitcher from the Class of 1965:
David,
I happened to tune into your Coupeville Sports this morning and noticed your nice write up on Raymond Cook.
Under then head baseball coach Jim Hosek, Coupeville High School had some very fine baseball teams and one of the reasons was a young hurler by the name of Raymond Cook.
I have watched Ray pitch on many occasions and he was a top notch pitcher; however, he does not hold the Coupeville High School record for strikeouts in a single game.
As I mentioned to you earlier, I coached baseball at Coupeville High School for five years.
I did not keep the baseball score-book for the particular game that I am going to relate to you and in retrospect I am sorry for that mistake, but it is a game that I will never forget.
The year before I quit coaching baseball, I had a young man by the name of Bob Rea.
I had started Bob out in pitching as he had such a competitive nature, much like the competitive nature of Ray Cook.
Bob had a blazing fastball and also had developed a sharp curve.
In the game I refer to we had traveled to Darrington.
Darrington also had a very good pitcher of whose name I am unable to remember at this time.
At the end of seven innings the score was tied at 1-1. We continued into extra innings and eventually won the game 2-1 in 16 innings.
The amazing thing about this game was that both pitchers went the whole 16 innings.
The Darrington pitcher had recorded 30 strikeouts while our pitcher, Bob Rea, had recorded 27 strikeouts.
Another particular I remember about that game was that in our half of the 16th inning we had a man on base.
Our batter at the plate had a count of 3-0 so I gave him the take sign.
Either he missed the sign or the pitch was too inviting as he hit a double and drove in the winning run.
So much for coaching strategy.
Bob Barker
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