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Hess was meant for baseball

There was a tendency to look right over Herb Hess. He was, after all, just an inch or two over 5 feet tall, and he didn't bring attention to himself by being loud, either.

Hess was simply a white-haired gentleman who loved baseball and spent his final days resting comfortably in Hospice care battling diabetes. He died Friday afternoon.

Hess was 85, and there were few people I associate more with the green grass of the game that used to be called our national pastime.

For Hess, baseball never lost any of its appeal. That's why he spent 50 years as a part-time scout for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Cincinnati Reds and Cleveland Indians while holding down full-time jobs along the way.

Hess came from a long line of baseball lovers -- his son, Marty, has a photograph that shows Hess' father, Ben, in uniform for a B&B Tobacco team that played near Cleveland around 1890. Two of Hess' uncles, Tice and Lewis, also were on the team.

Marty, 55, still plays senior baseball and his son, Chris, played through high school.

"Even if my dad was becoming scattered about other things in his life, my dad has always been a walking encyclopedia when it comes to baseball," Marty said. "There have been so many times when a guy who was a little older came up to dad and told him he was a second baseman back in 1985 or something. Dad would say, 'Yeah, yeah, I remember you. You could hit a little bit, but your arm wasn't very strong.' "

Hess watched games through a scout's eyes. He noticed the little things, and they stuck with him.

"Herb enjoyed baseball more than anybody I've ever met," said Steve Abney, the Indians' Midwest area scouting supervisor who lives in Lawrence.

Hess had the human touch that can take ages to develop in a young scout.

Abney remembers assigning Hess to watch a young pitcher the Indians had drafted but not yet signed in a Wichita summer tournament a couple of years ago.

"At that time, Herb's radar gun wasn't very accurate and his stopwatch wasn't accurate, but those weren't the important things," Abney said. "This kid, Mike Pontius, threw the baseball 96-97 miles per hour. And when Herb got through talking to him that day, the kid called me and said he wanted to sign. Herb just sat him down and talked to him about the ins and outs of pro baseball and it had an effect."

Pontius is currently pitching at Class A Lake County in the South Atlantic League, and Abney thinks he'll be a big leaguer.

Hess was a gunner's mate in the Navy and had three ships shot out from under him in the Pacific Ocean during World War II.

"Dad was always a good swimmer," Marty Hess said.

After the war, Hess got his first scouting job with the Pirates. He relished his role as a bird dog and almost everybody who has put on a baseball uniform in Wichita and the area during the past several decades has talked to Hess.

He never told a player he didn't play well but would offer subtle suggestions for how to improve.

"Every time I saw Herb, we talked," said David Chadd, who played at Bishop Carroll in the 1980s and now is the director of scouting for the Detroit Tigers. "I remember Herb talking to me when I was in high school and telling me I wasn't ready for pro baseball and that I should go to college."

Chadd, who still lives in Wichita, took Hess' advice and went to Kansas State, where he led the Big Eight in hitting one season.

"It wasn't what I wanted to hear at the time," Chadd said. "But what he said gave me some incentive, and I think probably Herb knew it would."

Hess was a switch-hitting shortstop when he played, a pesky type who usually got the bat on the ball and was difficult to pitch to. He grew up in Arkansas, on a farm, and hunted frequently with his father.

"He was always a good shot," Marty Hess said. "That's why he was put into gunnery training in the Navy."

But once the war ended, Hess didn't like to talk about it. Baseball, on the other hand, was something you couldn't get him to stop talking about.

"That was his whole life," said Anna Hess, Herb's daughter-in-law. "He would eat and breathe baseball. And he never knew a stranger. He could talk to a little kid, and he could talk to the president of the United States."

It's that comfort level, in anyone's presence, that allowed Hess and his son-in-law, Mike Freund, to sneak into a party for opera singer Luciano Pavarotti a few years ago in Oklahoma City. He didn't care about opera -- his wife, Marie, and daughter, Sherry, did.

"They picked up a couple of drinks off a tray, and the drinks were in glasses that apparently allowed entrance into the party," Anna Hess said. "They got to meet Pavarotti and everything."

Hess had a prankster streak in him, too. On an April Fool's Day years ago, he called all the women living in his neighborhood and told them he was a telephone service man. Then he said the phone company was getting ready to blow out all the lines and that they should put a pillow case or sheet over their phones. He found out later they all did. It made his day.

"He could make a joke and make fun of himself," Abney said. "The humility in this guy is second to none."

Two years ago, Hess stopped taking his radar gun to games. That's when Abney knew something wasn't right.

Hess would later call Abney and tell him he was resigning, that he had become a burden. Abney would have none of it.

"I told him, 'Hey man, you have a lifetime contract,' " Abney said."... I told Herb we were going to bury him with that damn radar gun."

Hess, in his part-time, low-pay role as a scout, had become as much a part of the Indians as Chief Wahoo.

"He'll be one of the only guys who, when they die, people won't have anything bad to say about," Abney said. "What a terrific guy."

Eagle sports columnist Bob Lutz co-hosts "Sports Daily" from 9-11 a.m. weekdays on KFH, 1240-AM and 98.7-FM. Reach him at 316-268-6597 or blutz@wichitaeagle.com.