Alpine’s Field of Dreams fills a void
ALPINE — “So, where’s Alpine?” Jonathan Moroney asked his dad as they examined a contract the young Texas A&M grad had just received via email from the Alpine Cowboys baseball club.
Houston businessman Ryan Moroney has oil and gas clients in the Permian Basin, so he knew the answer: “You know where the middle of nowhere’s at? Well, Alpine’s in the middle of the middle of nowhere.”
The younger Moroney, 23, had given up on baseball, a game he’d been playing since age 4. After TCU, for the second season in a row, slammed the door on an Aggie trip to the 2016 College World Series, he decided the agony of defeat was too much to bear. “I was tired of the heartbreak,” he said — so tired, in fact, he spurned a freeagent contract with the Pittsburgh Pirates.
It didn’t take long for the St. Pius X product to realize how much he missed the game. “My life was empty,” he said, recalling that both his parents and his fiancé urged him to think about whether, years from now, he’d wonder if he’d quit too soon.
He took their advice and is now the starting left fielder for the Cowboys, a member of the Pecos League, an independent league with teams from Colorado to California. Its players are 26 and under, and most, like Maroney, are still nursing big-league dreams. They make between $50 and $100 a week for a 70-game season lasting through July.
Alpine, population about 7,000, is the smallest town in America with a professional baseball team. Its storied Kokernot Field, in its 70th season, has been called “the best little ballpark in the country.” That’s an exaggeration, since the