Gordo baseball mourning loss of longtime assistant coach

By WVUA 23 Sports Reporter Jack Hutchens

Gordo baseball is coming to grips with continuing on with the game they love without longtime assistant coach Newell Moss, who died in April. He was 76.

Moss, who graduated from Gordo High School, served as a volunteer assistant for 33 years.

“The biggest thing with coach Moss was stability,” said Gordo head coach Jonathan Pate. “He was a soft-spoken man that when he did tell you something, everybody paused to listen. A man of few words but at the same time he had a big presence. He was always here. Nothing kept him from coming to baseball, unless it was family or sickness.”

Pate got to know Moss first as a player before later coaching with him. Although Moss spent most of the season off the field, he was able to attend a final game.

“April 4, he got to come to his last game here,” Pate said. “The kids got to go out there and see him. They knew he wasn’t doing good, and that spending time with him was valuable. They’re going to play well because of the type of men he helped mold them in to.”

Moss was inducted into the Gordo High School Sports Hall of Fame and in 2008 the West Alabama Softball Hall of Fame. He was also named Gordo Citizen of the Year by the Gordo Area Chamber of Commerce in 2012. Moss graduated from Gordo High School in 1965 and went on to attend Livingston University, now the University of West Alabama, on a baseball and football scholarship. After graduating from the University of South Alabama Banking School of the South in 1984, Moss worked for 43 years at the Bank of Gordo.

Gordo baseball will honor coach Moss in the near future, Pate said.