A tall, right-handed pitcher, Bass attended Miami University in Ohio, where he was named to the All-Buckeye baseball teams during his junior and senior years.

After winning 19 games with the Chattanooga Lookouts of the Southern Association in 1939, Bass got the call to the majors, starting for the Washington Senators on September 21, 1939.

Bass and the Cleveland Indians' Al Milnar battled through six scoreless innings, before Washington's Charlie Gelbert hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the seventh, giving the Nats a 2–0 lead.

(Instead of heading overseas, however, Bass remained in Ohio, employed as a purchasing agent by an aluminum company in Dayton.

In 1948, when Bass was fired by Kingsport, he took another managerial job, coaching not men but women: the Fort Wayne Daisies of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.