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Remembering Hank Small: One of USC's best
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They had everything a baseball team could dream of, those 1975 South Carolina Gamecocks did.
Pitching? A darn-near invisible ERA of 2.00. Hitting? A .297 team batting average that produced 389 runs, a hefty 6.7 per game. Defense? Second-best in the nation with 54 errors in 58 games.
They had it all - including two All-American superstars who set the table for the future. They had Earl Bass to headline the pitching corps, and they had Hank Small, who introduced the long ball to the college game, as the offensive centerpiece.
Small died far-too-young at age 56 on Tuesday, the victim of a freak household accident that defies reason and leaves family and friends searching for answers.
In times like these, we realize the years pass all too quickly. Time often clouds reality. The home runs become longer, the pitches faster, the rallies more dramatic.
But even turning the calendar back more than two generations, the memories of Hank Small remain sharp. His feats required no embellishment. He stood 6-foot-3 and weighed 205 pounds, the picture of a perfect athlete whose performance matched his picture.
What better frame, what broader shoulders to use for one of the cornerstones to build one of the storied programs in college baseball?
The bat resembled a toothpick in his hands and, to borrow a cliche, he could hit the ball out of any park - including Yellowstone.
He set the bar so high in career home runs that almost 33 seasons passed before his school record fell. A question to ponder: how many more would he have hit had he used an aluminum bat throughout his career?
Any mention of his name conjured thoughts of the long ball, and the headline reporting his death correctly called him "USC's first HR king."
He was that, all right.
But he was more.
He won the team's triple crown both his junior and senior seasons, leading the Gamecocks in batting average, home runs and runs batted in. For good measure, he stole 53 bases in his career.
Perhaps apropos, his first hit at USC was a single and his last was a home run.
Hank Small introduced himself to the Carolina faithful in one of those fairy-tale performances. A separated shoulder suffered in a physical education class kept the highly regard recruit on the bench at the start of his freshman season. Despite the injury, he could still swing the bat, and coach Bobby Richardson called on him in the season's third game.
Mark the date: March 6, 1972. The Gamecocks trailed Louisville by a run entering the bottom of the ninth, and Richardson summoned his star-to-be. Small responded with a pinch-hit single and would score the winning run - a harbinger of things to come.
If there were ever any doubt about Small's abilities, the critics had ducked for cover by the end of that month. The Gamecocks played in the prestigious Riverside tournament in California and their one-armed outfielder stole the show.
With no designated hitter allowed, Richardson stationed Small, a first baseman by trade but still unable to throw well, in right field. The opposing teams never discovered his defensive liability, but they learned a lot about his bat. He hit safely in each of the seven games, went 4 for 4 against UCLA and finished the tournament with 13 hits in 27 at-bats.
He was a unanimous choice for the all-tournament team, the first of his many collegiate honors.
In the 1975 College World Series to climax his senior year, he hit safely in each of the Gamecocks' six games and batted .346.
Mark this date: June 14, 1975. The omega, the end of Small's USC career. In his final game, on the college game's grandest stage, the College World Series championship game, he said farewell with his 19th homer of the season and the 48th of his career, the latter a record for college players at the time.
That's Hank Small. First, last and always, he was a hitter - one of the rocks on which Carolina's storied program was built.
Thanks, Hank, for the memories. Rest in peace.
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