Stanford’s Toi Cook is a Player for All Seasons : Senior Must Now Choose Between Hitting Home Runs or Wide Receivers as Pro

Coaches like players who can beat the opposition in a number of ways. Coaches like Stanford’s Toi Cook. He can beat you with a home run or a jarring tackle. He can beat you with a leaping catch at the wall or a leaping interception at the goal line.

But Cook, 22, must now decide which is his favorite way to beat the opposition--in the outfield or in the defensive backfield. Picked by the New Orleans Saints in the April 28 National Football League draft, the 6-foot, 180-pound senior is awaiting the June 2 major league baseball draft.

“I have no idea what’s going to happen now,” Cook said. “In the football draft, the teams were afraid to waste an early round pick on me because they were afraid I might end up playing baseball. Consequently, New Orleans grabs me in the eighth round, and even then, after they drafted me, they still asked me, ‘Well, what are you going to do about baseball?’

“As of right now, I’ve got to wait and see what happens with baseball, because you never know what they’re thinking. I just want to see what both sides have to offer.”

Cook has been juggling football and baseball since he was a freshman at Montclair Prep in Canoga Park, gaining All-CIF Southern Section honors in both sports. In those halcyon days, football did not stand in the way of Cook’s baseball career, it advanced it.

“It’s funny,” Cook said. “All my life I wanted to play baseball, (but) my football coach thought if I played football, I’d have a good chance of getting a scholarship. I played hoping to get a football scholarship so I could play baseball, because in baseball they usually only give half-scholarships.”

Stanford offered Cook a football scholarship but knew he would play baseball for the Cardinal as well.

Playing two sports meant compromising the development of some skills in each. Cook is in the outfield only from January through June and turns to football when other baseball players keep fit with summer and winter ball. In football, his strength suffers because he can’t spend as much time in the weight room as other players do.

Upon his arrival in Palo Alto, Cook’s two-sport juggling act was complicated by the academic burden placed on Stanford students.

“I think we’re the only school that will be playing in the regionals and going to the World Series and still be in school,” said Cook, a communications major. “That’s hectic, trying to take finals while you’re in the playoffs.”

Nevertheless, Cook’s coaches give his juggling act high marks.

“He did both and did both well,” said Jack Elway, the Stanford football coach who, as the father of Denver Bronco quarterback and former Stanford outfielder John Elway, is familiar with the two-sport athlete. “If anything, (Cook) competed and did great in both. He’s an outstanding competitor and very dedicated.”

Said Mark Marquess, Stanford baseball coach: “He’s done it for four years. It’s hectic, but it’s something he wants to do, and he’s been able to handle it.”

Elway and Marquess aren’t alone in their assessments of Cook’s abilities. His statistics tell the same story. In 502 at-bats in his first three baseball seasons, Cook hit .317 with 98 runs-batted in, stole 62 bases in 77 attempts and struck out only 39 times. Although he had only four career home runs midway through his junior season, Cook was moved into the cleanup spot and responded by batting over .400 the rest of the year.

After his elevation to the No. 2 slot in the Cardinal batting order this year, Cook cranked up his power, hitting 10 home runs in his first 54 games. Cook was hitting .324 going into the final weekend of the regular season with 59 runs scored, 54 RBIs and 14 doubles, all career bests.

“He can beat you in a number of ways,” Marquess said. “You can walk him and he’ll steal two bases. He can hit the ball for power, he can bunt for a base hit and he can make a great catch in the outfield. He can beat you with his bat, his speed and his glove. I guess that’s the ultimate compliment I could pay Toi--there’s not too many players one can say that about.”

As a cornerback, Cook led the Cardinal in interceptions as a sophomore and junior, and was among the nation’s leaders as a senior last fall when he fractured his left wrist against San Diego State Oct. 4. Doctors anticipated that he would be out for two months, but Cook returned to the team three weeks later with a soft cast on the wrist. He finished the season with a career-high eight interceptions and helped lead Stanford to the Gator Bowl.

“He’s productive,” said Bill Kuharich of the Saints’ scouting department. “We know he’s a good athlete because of the fact he plays baseball, and he knows how to play football. We were surprised he was on the board that late but felt that in the eighth round, he was too good to pass up.”

National Collegiate Athletic Assn.-mandated drug tests and reserved Stanford fans were about the only things Cook didn’t like to juggle in his Stanford act.

This month, a professor in a class on U.S. civil rights and civil liberties announced that he would be asking his students to provide urine samples in order to get a different perspective on the drug-testing process. Many of the students balked--a reaction that was not lost on Cook.

“I don’t think it’s fair that they drug test us and not the other students,” he said. “I guess it just came out here in the civil rights class, and all the students got upset. That’s the same point of view we, as athletes, take.

“I can understand it in the pros because you’re working for someone. They’re paying you for your performance. Drugs affect your performance. You’re a commodity, so therefore, I think they’re allowed to drug test you. You wouldn’t want somebody who is addicted to cocaine, whose performance is killing your team. You wouldn’t want them on your team.”

Cook said Stanford fans are not among collegiate athletics’ most vocal.

“When I think of good fans I think of Seattle,” he said. “At the University of Washington up in Seattle, those fans make a lot of noise. Here, it’s almost like the L.A. crowd, the real blase fans.”

However, when he graduates next month, Cook will leave with a favorable impression of Stanford, particularly of the people he has met there.

“Besides teaching me the baseball skill,” Cook said, “(Coach Marquess) has taught me a lot of stuff about being competitive, and how to win, and how to mentally prepare yourself for the game. . . . Most of the people that you meet here, you know later on in life are going to be successful, and that they’ll be your friends then.”

Whether Cook chooses football or baseball, one can be confident that, later on in life, he will be successful as well.