By JACK WILKINSON
A lazy fly ball to center, and the game, like the moment, was history. The celebration, though, was just beginning. Just as the words came booming over the public-address system.
"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for visiting Bob Heck Field. Final score: Dayton 2...your Georgia State Panthers 8!"
And then...nothing. Nothing? Seemed so. Surely, the P.A. announcer hadn't forgotten the milestone. Surely. Finally, after the most
pregnant fast-pitch pause possible, the P.A. guy continued as the goodies appeared on the field. The props with which to give the man of the moment his props.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the announcer said as Georgia State's team physician, Dr. Letha Griffin, walked onto the grass carrying a big bunch of blue and white helium-filled balloons tied to strings. "Congratulations to Panthers head coach, and Georgia State University legend, Bob Heck!"
Most of the crowd of 75 or 80 people, all of whom had been sitting in blue stadium-back chairs behind the backstop and shivering in last Saturday's chill in Panthersville, stood to applaud and honor one Heckuva coach. His players were already gathered 'round Bob Heck as Carol Cohen approached.
Cohen, State's associate athletic director and senior woman administrator, was toting a big box. Inside was a large sheet cake, covered with chocolate frosting, decorated with blue-and-white icing balloons, and this inscription in cursive white:
Congratulations Coach Heck
600 Wins
Cohen handed the cake to Catherine Lee, the freshman catcher kneeling in the front row. Lee held the cake for the photographer and, like everyone else, smiled for the camera. Over the P.A. floated Jack Johnson's "Better Together," including these happily apt lyrics: "It's always better when we're together."
In the back row, in the right-hand corner of the team photo, Heck stood with his arms on the shoulders of two other freshmen. Like Lee, winning pitcher Alicia Mills and outfielder Lauren Jones are much younger than their coach. Forget granddaughters. These teenagers are young enough to be Bob Heck's great-granddaughters. At 82, he is likely the oldest coach in Division I-A, if not in all of college sports.
Heck is older than Joe Paterno, older than Bobby Bowden, younger than springtime and forever the heart and soul, founder and chief benefactor, coach and backbone and heartbeat of Georgia State women's fast-pitch softball.
He's also as modest and unpretentious as an octogenarian legend can be. Indeed, the man who literally built GSU's program and its fabulous softball facilities at Panthersville with his own hands, vision and hundreds of thousands of his dollars, had hoped that after the on-field celebration of victory No. 600, he could hop on his beloved tractor for a joyride: dragging the all-dirt infield. Instead, assistant coach Laura McGirr beat Heck to the driver's seat.
So he accepted on-field congratulations from several admirers _ including former GSU baseball coach Mike Hurst, then walked slowly, limping slightly, toward the Robert E. Heck Teamhouse. The $300,000 indoor practice facility, which Heck conceived, funded
and built, houses the team's locker room; coaches' offices for Heck, McGirr and associate coach Kelly Van Houten; a training room, umpires room, several indoor batting and pitching cages; and a full artificial-turf, practice infield.
There's also a team lounge and gameroom for the players, complete with a big-screen TV, ping pong table and foosball game. Heck sat in a folding chair, wearing a black warmup suit, an old GSU ballcap and muddied rubber cleats. His cake sat atop the ping pong table, beside a card signed by every player with each one's congratulatory message. Including this from Lee, the kid catcher who likes exclamation points nearly as much as fat fastballs:
Way to Go Mr. 600!
Georgia State is super proud of U!
Keep it up, Coach Heck!
You're the Man!
Then Lee drew a heart, and signed beside it: Cat
"Well, when you've got 600 wins, all it means is you've been around a long time," said Heck, who first coached one season of slow-pitch softball at Georgia State in 1984, then moved the program to NCAA-sanctioned fast-pitch in the spring of '85. "I guess it is," he replied to the notion that 600 victories is, well, alot of victories.
"Especially when you've got 500 losses."
Heck's 21-year record now is 602-523-2, and counting. Later that afternoon, the Panthers lost to Tennessee State before beating the Tigers and Dayton Sunday. Georgia State resumes play Saturday at Panthersville in this weekend's GSU Spring Showdown with Evansville, Western Carolina and Kennesaw State.
Immediately after win No. 600, what made Mr. 600 particularly happy was this: "Of course, we're having a good season. We're 9-0 [now 11-1]. I'm really pleased with that. That's the biggest thing."
Just then, Mary McElroy burst into the team room, all congratulations and apologies.
"Congratulations, Bob!" said Georgia State's peripatetic athletic director and superior mother. "I'm sorry I'm late. My son had a lacrosse game."
Not to worry. It didn't bother Bob Heck a bit. "Most important, Mary, we're 9-0," he said. "That's more important than 600."
"He's the oldest Division I coach," McElroy said proudly. "He's got Paterno by two years. But we don't keep Bob around because he looks good. We keep him around 'cause he is good.
"People ask me, 'Why do you have a coach who's so old?' That's why: 600."
A brief Bob Heck biographical sketch: Born in Charleston, W.Va. Grew up in Wheeling. A World War II Navy vet. A discharge from
the service in 1946, then an undergraduate degree at Georgia. A masters from Emory University, then another master's in business from Georgia State.
A teacher at Druid Hills High for five years, as well as head coach of the track team and a football assistant. In 1957, began a 10-year stint as a national bank examiner with the Controller of the Currency office. Moved up to the Federal Reserve. Never forgot his real passion during a 35-year career: Coaching and officiating high sports, as a football referee for a quarter-century and basketball ref for five years.
A lifelong bachelor, Heck, who lives near Emory, is devoutly religious and an active member of the First United Methodist Church in Decatur.
In 1981, he began as a volunteer assistant with Georgia State's slow-pitch softball team. He became the head coach in '84, then helped usher the program into NCAA-sanctioned fast-pitch status in '85.
"I had coached a summer team," Heck said. "A girl on my team played here. So I helped the fellow coaching here. He [later] left, and I took over. And that's the story."
Hardly. The program, the facilities, are slightly better now than then.
"Oh, yeah," Heck said, smiling. "It was just...we had nothing. We really started from scratch."
Heck literally built the program and facility. He and his tractor took it all on. He's been a groundskeeper, landscaper and life-changer. He's planted all those shrubs beyond the stadium's permanent outfield fence, maintained and manicured 'em, too. He's cut the grass, chalked the lines, rolled out the tarp and dragged the infield.
"He built everything here except that," Dickie Hightower said, pointing toward right-center field. "Just so you don't think he's
proud of himself." Hightower, once a 10-year assistant to Heck and now the head softball coach at Heritage High, was pointing toward the scoreboard and the words above it.
"He," Hightower said, "did not buy the part that says, 'Georgia State Softball Bob Heck Field.'"
"Coach Heck IS Georgia State softball," continued Hightower, who was a student at Druid Hills high when Heck taught there. "His ability to recruit quality athletes is unparalleled. He can spot talent, he can coach it and his generosity is unparalleled, too.
"His whole life is softball and the church," he said. "He's an avid recruiter. He spends his whole summer going to softball tournaments, watching people play."
"If you've known Bob Heck for any period of time, he's helped you in some way," said Mike Hurst, the ex-GSU baseball coach. He smiled.
"He's also as hard-headed as anybody I know."
Carol Cohen knows. "I can't get him off the tractor," said the associate AD. "I tell him, 'Coach, we have a maintenance crew to do
the field.'
"He's just a great man," she said. "A great person and a wonderful man, probably the best man I know, besides being a great coach."
"This," Cohen said, pointing left-to-right across the field, pointing to everything, "is Bob Heck."
The complex is widely-regarded as the best in the Colonial Athletic Association. The latest addition: A building that includes men's and women's bathrooms _ each tiled in white and blue Georgia State colors _ and a full laundry room. Cost: $78,000, funded by the coach.
Heck, he has even donated his modest salary back into the program and school.
Heck is one of eight Founding Life Members of the Georgia State athletic department, contributing at least $100,000 to the department over three years. That's relative pocket change, however; school officials' estimates place Heck's total giving at approximately three-quarters of a million dollars. If not higher.
"And he's not a real, real rich man," Hightower said. "But that's what he wants to spend his money on.
"Now, he's not poor either," Hightower said, smiling. "He's comfortable."
He's also generous beyond compare, and devoted to his team and school.
"I appreciate the fact that Georgia State has given me the opportunity for this length of time to accomplish this," Heck said. "They've been good to me. It's been a pleasure to work with all the good kids who've come through here. They're my family, and I appreciate the opportunity to coach them.
"I try to teach our kids to play every game the same: Don't get up too high for one game, or take anyone for granted. That's how you get beat."
Heck paused. Asked about his latest team, the man who guided GSU from the New South through the TAAC, to Atlantic Sun and now into the Colonial, who actually retired for three years in the mid-'90s before the school officials convinced him to return, who won three TAAC titles and the 2006 CAA regular-season championship, smiled.
"Good team," Heck said. "Great group of kids. Best group of kids we've had in awhile."
With that, Heck excused himself for one of his favorite activities: Lunch.
"He loves to eat," said McGirr, and the young assistant coach smiled. "Loves his vegetables. No fast food. On the road, we try to go to places that have vegetables. He loves Picadilly. He eats at Joel's downtown, right near campus.
"He walks 30 minutes, every day," said McGirr, 26, in her third year at State. "He always walks, whether we're here [at Panthersville], at school, on the road, out recruiting. On road trips? He sleeps." She laughed. "Never seen him read a book on a road trip."
When McGirr, who played at Columbus State, first came to work for Heck, "I didn't quite realize he'd been here for as long as he had. That's a long career to be in one place. But he's committed to the sport of softball. He built all the facilities, committed his own
finances. The whole nine yards out here, he's built that himself."
How to describe Heck, the coach? "He's not a yelling coach," McGirr. "He's very honest with the girls. He has an open-door policy, they can come and talk to him. He's very patient with the girls. "He's very much a players coach," McGirr said of her boss, who
primarily coaches the Panther pitchers. "He pretty much does what the girls want. Obviously, being as old as he is, he can be a little more laid-back.
"He's older than my grandparents," McGirr said, smiling. "Well, actually the same age. He's big on grades, big on being on time, big
on being at practice. During games, he's very laid-back, almost quiet. I don't think I've ever heard him yell."
Wherever GSU and McGirr go, people ask her about her boss. "They all ask his age," she said, laughing. "Everybody asks how old he is? And when is he going to retire? Honestly, I didn't know his age until a little while ago. When people ask, 'Is Coach Heck still coaching?, I tell them, 'He's still here. He's still the head.'"
On Wednesday night, at halftime of the Georgia State-Towson men's basketball game, there was a brief on-court ceremony. It was Senior Night at Georgia State, and seniors Justin Billingslea and Deven Dickerson were honored before the game. Then the university honored the most senior Panther of all.
At halftime, Heck stood on one foul line beside McElroy. As the P.A. announcer gave the audience the details, the AD presented the old coach with the game ball from win No. 600. It was signed by each player and both assistant coaches. The crowd at the GSU Sports Arena roared.
And Bob Heck, a white-haired, humble man of few words and great accomplishment, smiled and waved and said...nothing. He didn't have to.
