Davidson head baseball coach Dick Cooke has been named an auxiliary coach for the USA Baseball Team that will compete at the 2007 International Baseball Federation (IBAF) World Cup in Chinese Taipei Nov. 6-18.
Cooke joins field manager Davey Johnson, hitting coach Reggie Smith, pitching coach Marcel Lachemann, bench coach Rick Eckstein and auxiliary coach Rolando de Armas on the Team USA staff.
Among the 24 players selected to the roster by USA Baseball are Chicago White Sox (Triple-A Charlotte) pitcher Heath Phillips (Lake City, Fla.) and Toronto Blue Jays (Triple-A Syracuse) pitcher Lee Gronkiewicz (Justin, Texas), both of whom played for the 2006 squad that qualified for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.
Sixteen countries will begin IBAF World Cup competition in two groups of eight teams, with the top four of each group advancing to quarterfinals after seven days of round-robin play. Joining the U.S. in Group A will be Chinese Taipei, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Panama, South Africa and Spain. Group B features Australia, Canada, Cuba, Germany, Korea, Netherlands, Thailand and Venezuela.
As a tune-up for the IBAF World Cup, Team USA will spend more than a week in Arizona at the Arizona Fall League (AFL). Along with the Chinese National Baseball Team, the U.S. will compete as part of an International Division against the traditional six teams of the AFL. The U.S. will begin the schedule Oct. 25, and play its final game in the AFL Nov. 1, before leaving for Chinese Taipei.
Cooke is entering his 18th season as the head coach of the Wildcat baseball program. This will be his sixth coaching stint for USA Baseball. He was a member of the staff for the 2006 Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Havanna, Cuba, where Team USA finished first and qualified for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
Cooke also coached for Team USA in the 2000 Olympics, where the U.S. took the Gold Medal, and the 1999 Pan Am Games, where the U.S. won the silver. He served as the pitching coach for the College National Team that went 27-2 and won the Silver Medal at the 2003 Pan Am Games in the Dominican Republic.