28 . 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. Home Real Estate, LLC. 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. You could argue in 1971 that he could have topped Roberto Clemente for the World Series MVP awardhe pitched a four-hitter in that famous final game. He hit Willie Stargell and Manny Sanguillen in batting practice; both players told him to forget it. Innumerable other remedies were proposed by friends and strangers. (719) 200-8191. What pleased him most that year was his consistency. He tried pitching from the outfield, with the sweeping motion of a fielder making a long peg. Im going to try to throw strikes and not get too fine. 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. Bill Virdon, the Pirate manager, was patient and told Blass to take all the time he needed to find himself; he reminded Blass that oncein 1970he had had an early record of two and eight but had then come back to finish the season with a mark of ten and twelve. 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. He is a member of famous Actor with the age 80 years old group. The first half of the season, I was atrocious, and I lost all my confidence, especially in my fastball. Virdon remained calm, although he was clearly puzzled. One of my personal favorites involves Chelsea captain John Terry and his former teammate Wayne Bridge. 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. He was out of baseball for good. But Seavers problems were only relatively serious (his record for 1974 was 1111), and were at least partly explicable (he had a sore hip), and he has now returned to form. He has a tendency to go up the middle, and Ill try to keep it a bit away.. The training period made it clear that nothing had altered with him (he walked twenty-five men in fourteen innings in exhibition play), and when the club went North he was left in Bradenton for further work. I feel real bad about it. By early August, Blasss record with Charleston was two and nine, and 9.74. Blasss best friends in baseball are Tony Bartirome, Dave Giusti, and Nelson King (who, along with Bob Prince, is part of the highly regarded radio-and-television team that covers the Pirate games). The distance between the minors and the majors, always measurable in light-years, is probably greater today than ever before, and for a man making the leap in the wrong direction the feeling must be sickening. Karen L Blass Phone Number (412) 835-2786 Landline phone by Verizon Pennsylvania, Inc, four persons associated Ads by BeenVerified Background Report Click here to view details Persons Associated with Address 1756 Quigg Dr Stephen R Blass Details (412) 835-2786 Kelly M Fabian Details Age ~41 (412) 854-1986 Todd E Fabian Details Age ~42 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. He and Karen had agreed that the family would go back to Bradenton for spring training, and that he would give it one more try. He says he hated the idea of hitting and possibly sidelining one of his teammates, but he is convinced that this anxiety was the result of his control problems rather than the cause. He was, in short, an extremely successful and useful big-league pitcher, and was understandably enjoying his work. My next view of Steve Blass on a baseball diamond came on a cool afternoon at the end of April this year. 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. Three days later, the Pirates held a press conference to announce that they had requested waivers from the other National League clubs, with the purpose of giving Blass his unconditional release. The child in him is a great thingweve all loved itand maybe he was suddenly afraid he was losing it. I didnt know how to solve my problem, but I knew I had to solve it. Strikeouts are of no particular use in defining pitching effectiveness, since there are other, less vivid ways of retiring batters, but bases on balls matter. Ive had the greatest moments a person could ever want. Ive had my own ideas about Steves pitching, about the mystery, but they havent made much difference. Bill Blass. It went on and happened to me. I tried to imagine what it felt like for him not to be down in the dugout. We sat behind home plate, down near the screen, and during the first few innings a lot of young fans came clustering down the aisle to get Steves autograph. Known as. Everybody has been great to me, all through this thing, Blass said. In the summer of 54, when they won that record one hundred and eleven games, I managed to find every single box score in the newspapers and clip it, which took some doing up where we lived. Pitcher Ron Reed singled, driving in two more runs, and was wild-pitched to second. See full bio Born: 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. He worries about his stuff. Tom Seaver went through such a slump last summer. The sun will come up tomorrow. Most of all, perhaps, he sustained his self-regard by not taking out his terrible frustrations on Karen and the boys. There is no other player in recent baseball historyat least none with Blasss record and credentialswho has lost his form in such sudden and devastating fashion and been totally unable to recover. He told me he did not enjoy brushing back hitters but had done so when it was obviously called for. Tony Bartirome, the Pirate trainer, who is a close friend of Steves, thought he was pitching as well as he ever had. Douglas D Blass and Randall Cheney are also associated with this address. He was always up, always agitating. By early June, his record was three wins and three losses, but his earned-run average suggested that his difficulties were serious. He finished the 1973 season with one of the worst records ever compiled by a major league pitcherwon three, lost nine, a 9.81 earned run average, 84 walks in 89 innings . Some pitching mechanics were discussed and worked on: Blass was sometimes dropping his elbow as he threw; often he seemed to be hurrying his motion, so that his arm was not in synchronization with his body; perhaps he had exaggerated his peculiar swoop toward first base and thus was losing his power. The wife of longtime Fort Myers director of golf Rich Lamb is recovering after being involved in a wrong-way, head-on car accident on Alligator Alley on Tuesday. A lot of the Sox struck out, too, and a lot of players on both teams walked more than I could count, in fact. You have no business being there, performing that way as a major-league pitcher. ? he said. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Then it was over. At contract-renewal time, earned-run averages below 3.30 are invariably mentioned by pitchers; an E.R.A. I knew I wasnt capable of going in there, he said. ADVERTISEMENT Steve Blass - Bio, Age, Wiki, Facts and Family Advertisement. In '72 he had some of the best numbers of his career. I thought Id died and gone to Heaven, Blass said to me. Danny Murtaugh waited, but Blass could not get the third out. . Once you start maintaining a plateau, youve got to be absolutely sure what your goals are.. On a team that played close to .500 ball, Blass stood out as one of its prime stars. (202) 225-7084. In spite of such hovering and inexplicable hazards, every big-league pitcher knows exactly what is expected of him. He has never worn glasses when pitching, which meant that Pirate catchers had to flash him signals with hand gestures rather than with finger waggles; however, he saw well enough to win when he was winning, and his vision has not altered in recent years. ) Blass had started the game in Toledo, and he was so disgusted with his performance that he got back on the bus without having showered or taken off his uniform. Following his rousing success in 1972, Blass was inexplicably bad in 1973. Maybe your control is something that can just go. I know what Ive done in baseball, and I give myself all the credit in the world for it. Like the other Pirates, Dave Giusti was watching with apprehensive interest. Then, in the fifth and deciding game, he returned and threw seven and one-third more innings of thoughtful and precise patterns, allowing only four hits, and departed with his team ahead by 32a pennant-winning outing, except for the fact that the Pirate bullpen gave up the ghost in the bottom of the ninth, when a homer, two singles, and a wild pitch entitled the Reds to meet the Oakland As in the 1972 World Series. I was so worried that I couldnt get back to sleepand all this was just over going out and throwing to pitchers. His statistics for the 1973 season were three wins and nine defeats, and an earned-run average of 9.81. I must have thrown it three out of four pitches to him, and I just knew it was going to be there. He walked Mike Lum, throwing one pitch behind him in the process, which allowed Evans to move down to second. Steves humor in the clubhouse was unmatched, relief pitcher Dave Giusti said. Its only nickel psychology, but I think theres a lost kid in Steve. He sulks or rages, according to his nature; he asks for help; he works long hours on his motion. (National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum) Lowering his ERA to 2.12, Blass won 18 games and emerged as the clear ace of the Pirates' staff. The Pirates had scored again in the eighth, but the Orioles had responded with a run of their own and had brought the tying run around to third base before Blass shut them off once and for all. A big-league fastball comes in on the batter at about eighty-five or ninety miles an hour, completing its prescribed journey of sixty feet six inches in less than half a second, and, if it is a strike, generally intersects no more than an inch or two of the seventeen-inch-wide plate, usually near the upper or lower limits of the strike zone; curves and sliders arrive a bit later but with intense rotation, and must likewise slice off only a thin piece of the black if they are to be effective. 'The Mooncatcher's Rescue' by Karen Lamb is available online. A letter-high fastball, with good mustard on it., Now Ill do it again, until I missbust him up and in. Theres no doubt about itno information needed. Steve Blass was a pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates who helped them win the World Series in 1971 and was an All Star in 1972. Longtime City of Fort Myers director of golf Rich Lamb passed away after a long health battle. Its Gimme the ball, boom! [1] [2] He was the recipient of many fashion awards, including seven Coty Awards and the Fashion Institute of Technology 's Lifetime Achievement Award (1999). The word on him among the other clubs in his league was something like: Good but not overpowering stuff, excellent slider, good curve, good changeup curve. Theres one possibility nobody has brought up, he said. He tried pitching while kneeling on the mound. Blass, then 29, still wishes he had talked longer, told his neighbors more of what was, and still is in his heart. Karen Lamb (Blass) is a 1960 graduate of Housatonic Valley Regional High School in Falls Village, Connecticut. Most painful of all, perhaps, was the fact that the men who most sympathized with his incurable professional difficulties were least able to help. He felt that the Pirates and Joe Brown had been extraordinarily patient and sympathetic in dealing with a baffling and apparently irremediable problem. There have been hundreds of shiningly promising rookie pitchers and sluggers who, for one reason or another, could not do their thing once they got up to the big time. Stephen Robert Blass (born April 18, 1942) is an American former professional baseball player and television sports color commentator. I would call the balls and strikes and hits. Joe Morgan stood in, and Blass puffed on his cigar and looked at the ceiling. 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