Alan Cockrell was an outstanding football and baseball player. For three years Cockrell successfully quarterbacked the Parkwood Bears offensive attack and led the Bears to a 31-3 record culminating in an undefeated (14-0) state championship season in 1980. He was named twice to first-team all state. Cockrell’s career statistics included 1,541 yards rushing with 36 touchdowns and 3,499 yards passing with 44 touchdown. He also converted on 154 of 172 extra point kicks and booted 8 field goals. Overall, he finished with a total of 396 points scored.
He originally received a scholarship offer to Oklahoma State, but signed a National Letter of Intent to play baseball & football at the University of Tennessee. Cockrell was a record-setting quarterback at Tennessee under head coach Johnny Majors and starred in the outfield for the Vols’ baseball team. Cockrell was the first ever true freshman to start at quarterback for the Vols in 1981 before suffering a major knee injury midway through the season against the Auburn University Tigers. After coming back from injury, Cockrell led the Volunteers to a record of 15-8-1 over the next two seasons including a 30-23 victory over former Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Boomer Esiason and the University of Maryland Terrapins in the inaugural Florida Citrus Bowl (now called the Vrbo Citrus Bowl). He chose to forgo his senior season at Tennessee and was a first-round draft pick (pick number nine) by the San Francisco Giants in 1984.
Cockrell's first love had always been baseball, and he was an even better outfielder than he was a quarterback. An All-American, he was named to the University of Tennessee All-Century Baseball Team in 2009. Cockrell played 13 years in the minor leagues with five different organizations, including five years with the Colorado Springs Sky Sox. He starred for the Sky Sox and eventually became a member of the Sky Sox Hall of Fame. At the end of the 1996 season he finally made is major league debut for the Colorado Rockies on September 7, 1996 with a pinch hit appearance. His first major league hit came three days later, a pinch hit double, off the Atlanta Braves' Tom Glavine at Coors Field. Cockrell made nine plate appearances for the Rockies before retiring at the end of the 1996 season.
His leadership skills and teaching ability, though, shone through and Cockrell spent the next few years working as a manager and hitting coach in various parts of the Colorado Rockies' development system. He returned to the MLB when he was named hitting coach for the Rockies on November 7, 2006 – his second stint, having previously served as hitting instructor the last five months of the 2002 season when Clint Hurdle was promoted to manager. Under Cockrell's guidance in 2007, the Rockies slugged their way to a National League Championship, leading the circuit in batting, on-base percentage, and total hits. On December 7, 2008, Cockrell was named hitting coach for the Seattle Mariners. On January 11, 2015, the New York Yankees hired Cockrell to be one of the two hitting coaches employed by them from 2015 through the 2017 season.
Cockrell was inducted into the University of Tennessee Athletics Hall of Fame in 2016.
