(Walnut) Denny Book had an extremely successful run during his time in the Walnut dugout. In a 20 year span the Warriors appeared four times at the state baseball tournament.
Book says he got his start coaching youth baseball and moved his way up to the high school ranks. It was Mike McCabe who initially talked Book into becoming a high school coach and for that, Book is very grateful. He fell in love with coaching right away. “Yes I did. I liked it and after listening to different coaches and so forth we started going to camps and I’d try and get as many as kids that were able to go, have them go to camps. That made our program good.”
One of the more enjoyable stretches of his career was when he got to coach with his son Jason. “That was really, really a lot of fun. Jason was coming back from college and had learned different things about the game which was good. I taught him some of the old ways that still worked. We gelled really good.”
The coach he’ll always be linked together with though is Bob Gross with whom he shared a dugout for many years. “Right now if someone said you and Bob need to go coach this or we want you to coach that we’d probably talk it over and very likely could be there. It was just that much fun.”
Book’s love for baseball started when he played with his dad and six other brothers out on the farmyard in Portsmouth. Little league and high school coaches helped add to his passion for the sport.
Previous Coaches
Eric Maassen, (AHST grad) Sheldon
Jerome Hoegh, Atlantic grad (West Sioux)
Gaylord Schelling, Atlantic and Tri-Center
Trevor Gipple, (Griswold grad) SW Valley
Eric Stein (Harlan grad) Iowa Central
Darrell Burmeister, Nodaway Valley
