The select levels of pitching proficiency (and salary) begin below the 3.00 line; in fact, an E.R.A. Blass is a modest man, both in temperament and in background, and his success and fame were quite sudden and, to some degree, unexpected. Joe Morgan is strictly a fastball hitter, so I want to throw him a bad fastball to start him off, he said. The booing from the fans, at first scattered and uncomfortable, grew louder. We sure missed it., For the final three innings of the game, Blass and I moved upstairs to general manager Joe Browns box. Hes really developed as a hitter. Then there was an error by Richie Hebner, at third, on a grounder hit by Ken Reitz, and Blass said, Did you notice the batter take that big swing and then hit it off his hands? $2.75 shipping. Sport is no longer a release from the harsh everyday American business world but its continuation and apotheosis. He has the arm of a twenty-year-old. A Southwest Florida golf legend died Sunday. He threw fifty-one pitches, but only seventeen of them were strikes. All rights reserved. 1. One of the teams always had to be the Indians. This is before the rest of the squad arrives, you understand, so youre just pitching to the other pitchers. (Blasss brother-in-law, John Lamb, suffered a fractured skull when hit by a line drive in spring training in 1971, and it was more than a year before he recovered, but Blasss real pitching triumphs all came after that.). He told Joe Brown that Steves problems might be over. They had also been generous, refusing to cut his salary by the full twenty per cent permissible in extending a major-league contract. ), The Pittsburgh organization signed Steve Blass right out of Housatonic High in 1960, and he began moving up through the minors. Click, click, click. Professional sports have a powerful hold on us because they display and glorify remarkable physical capacities, and because the artificial demands of games played for very high rewards produce vivid responses. Well, the day before that first workout I woke up at four-thirty in the morning. I feel real bad about it. and an M.A. 5 (3). You know, this thing thats happened has been painted so bad, so tragic, he said. All three of her brothers were superior ball players and two were signed by major league teams. He felt that the Pirates and Joe Brown had been extraordinarily patient and sympathetic in dealing with a baffling and apparently irremediable problem. He looked much more like a commuter than like a professional athlete. Steve Blass, noticing my confusion, explained that, in order to avert a parade of walked batters in these games, any strike thrown by a pitcher was considered to have wiped out the balls he had already delivered to the same batter; a strike on the 30 count reconverted things to 01. Johnny Oates walked. On a wall opposite a long sofa there was, among other things, a plaque representing the J. Roy Stockton Award for Outstanding Baseball Achievement, a Dapper Dan Award for meritorious service to Pittsburgh, a shiny metal bat with the engraved signatures of the National League All-Stars of 1972, a 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates World Champions bat, a signed photograph of President Nixon, and a framed, decorated proclamation announcing Steve Blass Day in Falls Village, Connecticut: Be it known that this twenty-second day of October in the year of our Lord 1971, the citizens of Falls Village do set aside and do honor with pride Steve Blass, the tall skinny kid from Falls Village, who is now the hero of baseball and will be our hero always. It was signed by the towns three selectmen. Most of the action, or inaction, took place around home plate, since there was not much bat-and-ball contact, but there was shrill non-stop piping of encouragement from the fielders, and disappointed batters were complimented on their overswings by a small, chilly assemblage of mothers, coaches, and dads. "It was under siege," Blass. They can bury you before you even get started. His body is tilting toward the center of the picture, his mask is held in his right hand, his big glove is still on his left hand, and his mouth is open in a gigantic shout of pleasure. They urged him to cut loose with the fastball. Morgan, I decided, eventually singled to right on a curve in on the handlea lucky hitbut then Blass retired his next Cincinnati hitter, Dan Driessen, who popped out on a slider. But the moment a batter stood in against him he became a different pitcher, especially when throwing a fastballa pitcher apparently afraid of seriously injuring somebody. Steve Blass was with the team through this stretch, but he took no part in the campaign, and by now he was almost silent in the clubhouse. Dave Giusti (He is one of the great relief pitchers in baseball. Famous Baseball Player Steve Blass was born on April 18, 1942 in Connecticut. The Blasses place in Falls Village included an old barn with an interestingly angled roof, against which young Steve Blass played hundreds of one-man games (his four brothers and sisters were considerably younger) with a tennis ball. I think he felt he didnt need any of thatthat at any moment hed be back where he was, the Blass of old, and that it all was up to him to make that happen.. Young kidsmaybe three or four years old. CELEBRITY GOSSIPY BIO. Their fastball comes in high, their curves hang, the rest of their prime weapons desert them. Davey Johnson singled, scoring another run. He never talked in any detail about his different treatmentsthe psychiatry and all. Karen Lamb, 53, was driving . He had another pretty good outing against the Cardinals, for no decision, and then started against the Mets, in New York, on September 21st, but got only two men out, giving up four instant runs on a walk and four hits. In this business, you bet on character. He won a complete game against the Padres, but in his next two appearances, against the Dodgers and the Expos, he survived for barely half the distance; in the Expos game, he threw three scoreless innings, and then suddenly gave up two singles, a double, and two walks. He wont want to take the bat out of Benchs hands. He released another cloud of cigar smoke, thinking hard. (202) 225-7084. Tony Bartirome, the Pirate trainer, who is a close friend of Steves, thought he was pitching as well as he ever had. share to facebook . In the end, it was talking to people that did it. No one, including Blass himself, can cure or explain it. I talked to everybody, but mostly to Joe Brown and Danny and my wife. Ive never been a goal-plannerIve never said Im going to do this or that. All that matters is his performance, which will be measured, with utter coldness, by the stats. You may leave a message for the family by clicking here. It was a horrendous disappointment for the Pittsburgh Pirates and their fans, for which no blame at all could be attached to Blass. He pitched well in spring training in Bradenton, which was unusual, for he has always been a very slow starter. mark of 2.28 and Catfish Hunters 2.49 in the A.L. . I mean real hell. I dont think anybody will ever understand his decline. Nobody knows, but some speculation is permissibleindeed, is perhaps demanded of anyone who is even faintly aware of the qualities of Steve Blass and the depths of his suffering. The frustrating, bewildering part of it all was that while working alone with a catcher Blass continued to throw as well as he ever had; his fastball was alive, and his slider and curve shaved the corners of the plate. But decades from now he'll still be remembered in Pittsburgh for the prior. or. Roberto Clemente, of course, is dead; he was killed on December 31, 1972, in Puerto Rico, in the crash of a plane he had chartered to carry emergency relief supplies to the victims of an earthquake in Nicaragua. 3. Advertisement. For three innings, he escaped serious difficulty. The pitcher goes into a slump. See Photos. Pitching, it sometimes appears, is too hard for anyone. He won nineteen games for the Pirates and lost only eight, posting an earned-run average of 2.48sixth-best in the National Leagueand being selected for the N.L. The summer of 1972the year after his splendid World Serieswas in most respects the best season that Steve Blass ever had. My Work. Youre afraid to lose a friend, and you want to go easy on him because he is your friend. Blass, who had not pitched in six weeks, was extremely anxious about this test; he walked the streets of Chicago on the night before the game, and could not get to sleep until after five in the morning. There should be a feeling of Lets go! His eight-year-old brother, Chris, played second, and their father, Steve Blass, in old green slacks and a green T-shirt, coached at third. He has a tendency to go after that kind of pitch. His salary at the beginning of 1971the year of his two great Series winswas forty thousand dollars; two years later, it was ninety thousand, and there were World Series and playoff checks on top of that. But it was talking that did it, and my point is that Steve cant talk to people that way. This is one reason that athletes are paid so well, and one reason that fear of failurethe unspeakable chokingis their deepest and most private anxiety. He earned a B.A. You know, I can almost see that fastball to Perez, and I can see his bat going through it, swinging through the pitch and missing, he said. We had moved along by now to the Blasses house, a medium-sized brick structure on a hillside in Upper St. Clair, which is a suburb about twelve miles southeast of Pittsburgh. The low, low minors. When Chris Blass went down swinging in the fourth, his father came over and said, The sinker down and away is tough. Steve Blass has a longish, lightly freckled face, a tilted nose, and an alert and engaging expression. No wonder its so hard to play this game right., In the Pirates seventh, Bill Robinson pinch-hit for Ed Kirkpatrick, and Blass said, Well, that still makes me wince a little. It was a moment or two before I realized that Robinson was wearing Blasss old uniform number. No, I couldnt do that., After the end of the 1973 season, Blass joined the Pirates team in the Florida Instructional League (an autumn institution that exists mostly to permit the clubs to look over their prime minor-league prospects), where he worked intensively with a longtime pitching coach, Don Osborn, and appeared in three games. Steve Blass Disease. close to or above the 4.00 level will always be brought up by management. Just the other morning, he was out working on the lawn, and a couple of the neighbors children came over to see him. He suddenly laughed. At that point, he said, I was looking for even a little bit of successone good inning, a few real fastballs, anything to hold on to that might halt my negative momentum. But sometimes, of course, what is happening on the field seems to speak to something deeper within us; we stop cheering and look on in uneasy silence, for the man out there is no longer just another great athlete, an idealized hero, but only manonly ourself. We have a custom in the early spring that calls for all the pitchers to throw five minutes of batting practice every day, he told me. I was totally unnerved. There was no game there, or anythingI just had to see how it looked.. PITTSBURGH -- Steve Blass sat in the press conference room at PNC Park on Tuesday morning with a piece of paper in front of him. The Blass homestead included a barn with an interestingly angled roof, against which a young Steve would play hundreds of one-man games with a tennis ball. We tried everythingI didnt know anything else to do. He could do rat soundsthe noise a rat makes running. He tried pitching from the outfield, with the sweeping motion of a fielder making a long peg. There are Oedipal elements here, of course, that are attractive to those who incline in such direction. Results focussed and relationship orientated sales leader and business development professional. (719) 200-8191. Well, Ill start him out with a good, tough fastball outside. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Roland Hemond, the general manager of the White Sox, was at Bradenton that day, and he said, It was the most heartbreaking thing I have ever seen in baseball.. O.K., he said. Steve was startled by the unfamiliar view. He lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. There is no doubt that during the past two years he didnt react to a bad performance the way he used to, and you have to wonder why he couldnt apply his competitiveness to his problem. In a very brief time, his earned-run average and his bases-on-balls record were the worst in the league Blass got along well with his teammates, but there were other problems. The catcher is Manny Sanguillen, of the Pirates, and his leaping teammate is pitcher Steve Blass, who has just defeated the defending (and suddenly former) World Champion Baltimore Orioles by a score of 21, giving up four hits. Write Karen Blass' 1st recommendation. Im not bitter about this. Steve Nobel. A person lives on, he said more than once, smiling. 111 books | 680 friends Kirsty. Blass, it should be understood, was not the same kind of pitcher as a Carlton or a Gibson. Steve Blass, who is now thirty-three, is out of baseball, having been recently driven into retirement by two years of pitching wildnessa sudden, near-total inability to throw strikes. Steve Blass, the longtime Pittsburgh Pirates broadcaster and former pitcher, will retire at the end of the 2019 season, he announced at a press . The third result is Stephen M Blass age 40s in Summerland, CA in the Summerland neighborhood. 1:52. Tom Seaver went through such a slump last summer. Bill Blass. Following his rousing success in 1972, Blass was inexplicably bad in 1973. Somehow, he didnt show any emotion at all. He sulks or rages, according to his nature; he asks for help; he works long hours on his motion. The child in him is a great thingweve all loved itand maybe he was suddenly afraid he was losing it. He was awarded the sports car as the most valuable player of the Series, but Steve Blass was not far out of the running for the prize. Swinging strike. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Suddenly, a New York cop remembered a long-ago murder. The enormous alterations of professional sport in the past three decades, and especially the prodigious inflation of franchises and salaries, have made it evident even to the most thoughtless fan that the play he has come to see is serious indeed, and that the heart of the game is not physical but financial. He tried pitching with his left foot tucked up behind his right knee until the last possible second of his delivery. Near the end of an article I wrote about that 1971 World Series, I mentioned watching Steve Blass in batting practice just before the all-important seventh game and suddenly noticing that, in spite of his impending responsibilities, he was amusing himself with a comical parody of Clemente at the plate: Blass. First of all, Im going to try to keep him off base if I can, because they have so many tough hitters coming up. 4929 Wilshire Boulevard. He and Karen Lamb were married in the fall of 1963, and they went to the Dominican Republic that winter, where Steve played for the Cibaeas Eagles and began working on a slider. A pattern pitcher, whose slider works because of its location. He makes you play his game.. Karen Lamb 10 likes. He fell into a slump, which led to an irreparable loss of confidence. Family (1) Spouse I am not a Pittsburgher, but looking at this photograph never fails to give me pleasure, not just because of its aesthetic qualities but because its high-bounding happiness so perfectly brings back that eventful World Series and that particular gray autumn afternoon in Baltimore and the wonderful and inexpungible expression of joy that remained on Steve Blasss face after the game ended. I had always wanted to hear a pitcher say exactly what he would throw next and why, and now I invited Blass to throw against the Cincinnati Reds, the toughest lineup of hitters anywhere. ER 2002-12, 2014-16. Tony Bartirome (He is forty-three years old, dark-haired, extremely neat in appearance. The phone numbers for her are (712) 273-5345 (Frontier Communications of Iowa, Inc), (712) 320-3324 (United States Cellular Corp.Frontier Communications of Iowa, Inc). Every accomplishment, every stage of the gameyou have no idea how much he loved it, how he enjoyed the game.. Ill throw it in the dirt to show it to himget him geared to that kind of speed. Being good up here is so toughpeople have no idea. I would call the balls and strikes and hits. Slow-motion films of his delivery were studied and compared with films taken during some of his best games of the past; much of his motion, it was noticed, seemed extraneous, but he had thrown exactly the same way at his peak. I can still recall how Blass looked that afternoonhis characteristic, feet-together stance at the outermost, first-base edge of the pitching rubber, and then the pitch, delivered with a swastika-like scattering of arms and legs and a final lurch to the leftand I also remember how I kept thinking that at any moment the sluggers of the Big Red Machine would stop overstriding and overswinging against such unintimidating deliveries and drive Blass to cover. Not just the stars but all the guys on the bench, like George Strickland and Wally Westlake and Hank Majeski and the backup third baseman, Rudy Regalado. With me, everything was just a continuation of what had come before. He is friendly and informal, with an attractive smile. The photograph shows a perfectly arrested moment of joy. PITTSBURGH . 2d 17h. It was the worst experience of my baseball life, Blass told me. How old is Steve Blass? He gave up two runs in the second, but he seemed to throw without much tension, and he even struck out Bill Melton, the Chicago third baseman, with a fastball. Blass knew that his case was desperate. Then baseball suddenly stopped being fun for him. The gamethe White Sox vs. the Orioleswas a close, 31 affair, in which the winning White Sox pitcher, John McKenzie, struck out seventeen batters, in six innings. Well, this early in the game I wouldnt try to throw him that slow curvethat big slop offspeed pitch. 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