Gamecock great Earl Bass has jersey retired. His ‘numbers will frighten you’
One of the first things teammates and others around South Carolina baseball remember about Earl Bass was his confidence.
The Gamecock pitching great became the first player in program history to have his jersey retired in a ceremony Saturday at Founders Park, and he oozed self-belief on the mound.
“The most confident player I’ve ever been around,” former teammate and current USC radio analyst Tommy Moody said of Bass. “He knew when he crossed that line to get on the field … he knew he was better than you. He was cocky, but he wasn’t overly brash or anything like that.”
Off the field, Bass was just as self-assured. The Cayce native helped lead South Carolina to its first ever College World Series in 1975 with a perfect 15-0 record, and ahead of the final stage of the tourney, Bass and the Gamecocks went to a banquet celebrating the teams.
“They had a College World Series Queen from Omaha, and before the night was over they were going out on the town,” said Teddy Heffner, who played with Bass in summer leagues and currently hosts a radio show on WGCV. “So that’s pretty confident.”
His confidence was well-founded. Bass’s career ERA of 1.34, winning percentage of 0.918 and 10 shutouts remain program records more than four decades later, and he is tied for the most wins and strikeouts in a season in program history. From 1974 to 1975, he won 23 consecutive decisions, an NCAA record at the time that still ranks second today. He was also a solid hitter, batting .291 as a junior.
“The numbers will frighten you,” current athletic director and former baseball coach Ray Tanner said. “Sometimes you say I’d like to grab a bat today. I don’t think when Earl Bass was on the mound you wanted to grab a bat. … He was almost untouchable at times.”
Bass’s only loss in that 1975 season came in the national title game against Texas, when he was pitching off just two days of rest. After that, he was drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals and immediately was placed in Class AAA of the minor leagues, one step short of Major League Baseball.
He never made it to the majors — injuries derailed his progress.
“He told me he was in Mexico, pitching in the Mexican League, when he got up one morning and couldn’t lift his arm to shave, and that’s when he decided to hang it up,” Heffner said.
The end of his baseball career was difficult for Bass, and he didn’t often speak about it, his daughter Kayla Bass-Cornelius said. As a result, she grew up not fully realizing the extent of her father’s athletic prowess.
“My dad was very, very modest, and I never truly understood what an amazing athlete (he was), all of his accomplishments, I never truly understood how incredible he was until I met my husband,” Bass-Cornelius said. “And my husband met my dad and was talking to him, and even my dad wouldn’t open up a ton about how good he was to him, so when my husband started diving deeper, he said, ‘Babe, do you like realize he’s like one of a kind?’ I was like, ‘Well, yeah, kinda,’ and he was like, ‘No, no, no, you don’t understand. This type of athlete is so rare.’”
Despite that, Bass still took deep pride in his hometown team and raised his children to be Gamecock fans, Bass-Cornelius said. And up until his untimely death from cancer in 2018, he remained passionate about South Carolina baseball. That led to a moment Tanner recalled during an alumni game when he first met Bass and witnessed a flash of that famed confidence.
“He was in great shape, he looked like he could still pitch, and I was reminiscing a little bit, and I said, ‘Earl, I’ve heard stories that when you took the mound, the Garnet and Black had a pretty good chance to win,’” Tanner said. “And he said, ‘That would be accurate.’”
Tanner is the only other person in program history to have his jersey retired, and he has led a charge to retire more across all Gamecock sports over the past few years. When it came to baseball, there were no shortage of options from the team’s 11 College World Series appearances, but Bass was the clear choice, Moody said.
“I think if you took a survey of all the people that have been around all this time, I think they’d say the No. 1 baseball player at South Carolina was Earl Bass, not just because he set the standard and got South Carolina going from a national perspective,” Moody said. “But just look at the numbers. … If you’re gonna start it with someone, it’s gotta be Earl.”
And for the Bass family, his selection as the first player and the ceremony Saturday before the Gamecocks play Vanderbilt also marks a special moment to honor his legacy as both a pitcher and a father
“It’s pretty incredible … I honestly can’t even find the words to describe what this means to me, to my family and what it would have meant to him,” Bass-Cornelius said. “It’s an incredible honor and I’m just so, so, so fortunate and lucky that he was my dad and that I’m along for this ride with him.”
EARL BASS CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
Career wins: 34 (Tied for fourth in program history)
Career winning percentage: 0.918 (1st, min. 15 wins)
Career ERA: 1.34 (1st)
Career shutouts: 10 (1st)
Career strikeouts: 392 (2nd)
Season wins: 17 (T1st)
Season ERA: 1.10 (3rd)
Season shutouts: 4 (T1st)
Season strikeouts: 168 (T1st)
Season innings pitched: 148.0 (2nd)
This story was originally published May 4, 2019 at 11:53 AM.
