Baseball Community Grieves Death Of Retired MDC Coaching Icon

For more than 25 years, Steve Hertz made history as a head baseball coach at Miami Dade College. 

The baseball savant accumulated more than 900 victories and helped launch the Major League Baseball careers of talents such as Jamie Navarro, Placido Polanco and Orlando Palmeiro. 

“I met with him the first week I was here,” said Mike Balado, who took over as director of athletics at MDC more than two years ago. “He’s influenced me a lot, taught me the right way to do things and just gave his two cents on what it takes to be successful at the collegiate level.” 

 Now, Balado and hundreds of Hertz’s former players are mourning the passing of the renowned coach. 

Hertz died on Dec. 4 at VITAS Inpatient Hospice Center due to natural causes. He was 80.

His funeral and a celebration of life event was held on Dec. 9 at Temple Judea in Coral Gables. Family, friends, former players and students attended.

“We had speakers from all the schools he taught at and a friend that he had since kindergarten spoke,” said Hertz’s wife of 58 years, Frances “Fran” Sokol Hertz. “It was really nice because everybody was telling funny stories. He would have loved it.” 

Early Life

Hertz was born in February of 1945 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. He was the eldest son of David and Sara Hertz, natives of St. Louis, Missouri.

When Hertz was a toddler, his family moved to Miami, where he was raised in a conservative Jewish home. 

He began playing organized baseball at 11, and after almost being cut from the team, he managed to make the local All-Star squad and won the Florida Little League World Series.

At Miami Senior High School, the young phenom was an All-City infielder in 1962 and 1963 and made the All-State team as a third baseman in his senior campaign.

After graduation, Hertz signed with the Houston Colt .45s—the MLB team now known as Houston Astros. 

The 19-year-old made his debut on April 21, 1964. He was the eighth youngest player in the team’s history. His big league career lasted five games, but he bounced around in the minor leagues for the next six years between the Cocoa Astros, the Pompano Beach Mets and the Tidewater Tides.

Coaching Career

Hertz got his first taste of coaching in 1969 when he served as a player-coach for the Pompano Beach Mets. That interest intensified when he returned to Miami after his playing career ended.

“When he was going to college at the University of Miami working for his degree, he would come by Coral Park and see me,” said South Florida baseball icon Robert “Red” Berry, who started the baseball program at Coral Park Senior High School in 1963, and coached Hertz in an amateur baseball league that same year.

Berry was impressed with Hertz’s passion for America’s pastime, so when he took a job as  general manager for one of the Philadelphia Phillies minor league teams in 1970, he recommended Hertz to replace him at Coral Park. 

Hertz would serve as the Rams head baseball coach for the next nine years, capturing a State Championship in 1978. 

Two years later, he made a pit stop at what was then Miami Dade Community College, overseeing the baseball program at Wolfson Campus for one year. 

Then, from 1981 to 1986, Hertz coached at Miami Southridge Senior High School. In 1984, the team came within one win of a state title.

In 1986, he returned to Wolfson Campus, where he remained until 1997 when the College consolidated its three baseball teams.

The following season, he spearheaded the school’s college-wide baseball team, which played its games at Kendall Campus. He remained there until he retired in 2010.

While coaching at MDC, he taught health analysis and coaching principles classes at the Wolfson and Kendall campuses. 

“Those days were very long. I used to see him come home and almost fall asleep at the dinner table,” said Hertz’s wife, Fran. 

But no matter what, Hertz always had time for his players.

“He was always on the phone talking to them,” Fran recalled. “We never got through dinner. The players were always calling him. This one had a school problem, this one, their girlfriend problem, this one had a root canal. He was a father to all of those kids.” 

The dedication to his craft and his players would be acknowledged. Hertz was inducted into the Florida  College Athletic Association Hall of Fame and the National Junior College Athletic Association Hall of Fame. 

On Jan. 17, his legacy was remembered during an alumni baseball game at Kendall Campus. Before the game, the Coach Steve Hertz Scholarship Fund, which aims to help the College’s baseball athletes fund their academic journey, was announced. 

Hertz is survived by his wife Fran, their children, Jeffrey and Darre, and his grandchildren, Joshua, Micah, Brandon and Lexi.

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