FALLBROOK ---- Nature was calling, and the center fielder decided he just couldn't wait for the inning to conclude. So Herm Reich hopped the outfield fence and took care of business.

Imagine the surprise for future Hall of Famer Bob Lemon when he was informed between innings in that Mexican winter league game some 70 years ago that he had just pitched to several batters without a center fielder.

It's one of local baseball historian Bill Swank's favorite stories concerning Reich, a longtime Pacific Coast League star who is considered one of the game's most colorful characters of the time.

"Herm was a childhood friend of Lemon's and he told him in the dugout that he just couldn't have waited any longer,'' Swank said this week, still laughing even though he's told the story many times.

Reich was good-looking enough to be labeled "Handsome Herm,'' gregarious enough to be popular with teammates and fans, and talented enough to reach the big leagues, if even for only one season.

"Every kid's dad is his hero, and my dad was mine,'' said Ted Reich, 40, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army who teaches at West Point, where he once played football. "He was a great athlete, a great outdoorsman, just very good at all the guy stuff.''

Herm Reich, a Fallbrook resident for more than 40 years, died Oct. 22. He was 91.

Handsome Herm spent more than 22 years in professional baseball as a player, manager and scout, including a season (1949) in the major leagues in which he played first base and right field for the Washington Senators, Cleveland Indians and Chicago Cubs.

His son said he recently suffered a mild stroke but lived an active life virtually to the end. After Reich's baseball career ended in 1965, he moved to Fallbrook, where his parents owned property, and worked as an avocado rancher for many years. He loved the outdoors and made an annual salmon fishing trip to British Columbia for more than 50 years until his health denied him this year.

Reich, a rarity in that he threw left-handed and batted right-handed, consistently hit above .300 in the minors after giving up on being a pitcher.

But his path to the big leagues was hindered by his lack of power ---- and World War II. He hit .306 for the PCL's Portland Beavers in 1941 and then served in the Army for four years before returning to the Beavers to hit .302 in 1946.

After posting a .323 batting average in 1948, he made it to the majors the next year at age 31. Reich played most of the season with the Cubs and batted .279 to earn a spot on the Sporting News' all-rookie team, which also included current Padres broadcaster Jerry Coleman.

"It bothered him a little bit that he didn't play longer in the majors,'' his son said. "Around the time the war started, he was in his prime. He used to always say his 'timing was bad.'"

Reich returned to the minors in 1950 with Sacramento of the PCL, was traded back to Portland in 1953 and retired as a player in 1957. He managed Idaho Falls in the Pioneer League in 1961 and later scouted Southern California for the White Sox and San Francisco Giants.

"He enjoyed life,'' said Lemon Grove's Walter McCoy, a veteran of the Negro Leagues who was a teammate of Reich with the Sacramento Solons and played with and against him during the winters in Mexico. "He was always smiling. It was natural to him. Don't get me wrong ---- he was a fierce competitor, but smiling was just a way of being for Herm."

Reich was a regular participant in old-timers games. His son remembers attending one in the late 1970s when a group of former Beavers played a group of traveling Hall of Famers.

"The Hall of Fame team had Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Bob Feller, Ernie Banks, Mickey Mantle, guys like that,'' said Ted Reich. "They shared a clubhouse, and I was in there after the game. My dad put a baseball in my hands and said to just walk around the room and tap these guys on the shoulder.

"Aaron was coming out of the shower with a towel around him and looked enormous. He looked down at me and said, 'Hey, little man,' and his hand just swallowed my hand. Then he signed my ball.''

Herman Charles Reich was born on Nov. 23, 1917, in Bell, Calif., and graduated from Bell High School.

He was drafted by the Army immediately after the close of the 1941 season and continued to play baseball for military teams.

In 1945, he embarked on a tour of the Pacific Islands as a member of Buster Mills' 73rd Bombardment Wing Bombers, who played a series of games to boost morale against Birdie Tebbetts' 58th Bombardment Wing Wingmen and Lew Riggs' 313th Bombardment Wing Flyers.

The three teams played a round-robin series of 27 games on Saipan, Tinian, Iwo Jima and Guam, before large groups of soldiers, sailors and Marines.

"The places we played were pretty primitive," Reich is quoted as saying on the Web site www.baseballinwartime.com. "They'd throw down a home plate, make a pitcher's mound and we'd go at it."

Reich was interred at Fallbrook Masonic Cemetery. He was preceded in death by his first wife, Jane Reich, in 1977. He is survived by his wife of 13 years, Victoria Reich of Fallbrook; sons Ted Reich of West Point, N.Y., and Chris Reich of Etna; daughter Joan Fleming of Huntington Beach; and three grandchildren.