It should also be understood that his was not at all the somewhat commonplace experience of an established and well-paid major-league star who suffers through one or two mediocre seasons. By luck, two of the outreaching hands have overlapped exactly in the middle of the photograph, so that the pitchers bare right palm and fingers are silhouetted against the catchers glove, and as a result the two men are linked and seem to be executing a figure in a manic and difficult dance. He had a 10-year career as a pitcher for the Pirates and pitched two complete games in the 1971 World Series, giving up only seven hits and two runs in 18 innings while posting two victories. Some of them mentioned Rex Barney, a Dodger fastball pitcher of the nineteen-forties, who quit baseball while still a young man because of his uncontrollable wildness; Barney, however, had only one good year, and it is fair to say that he never did have his great stuff under control. During his decline, he was plainly unable to throw the fastball effectively to battersespecially to Pirate batters in practice. 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. 64 books | 59 friends Michele Neeson. Blass, once his difficulties commenced, was helpless. Sometimes I think I got to hate the frustration and pain of this more than he did. Its only nickel psychology, but I think theres a lost kid in Steve. . Sustaining this kind of control over a stretch of, say, one hundred and thirty pitches in a seven- or eight-inning appearance places such excruciating demands on a hurlers body and psyche that even the most successful pitchers regularly have games when they simply cant get the job done. Pirates broadcaster and World Series champion Steve Blass is congratulated by his wife, Karen, during a ceremony honoring his 60 years of service with the team Saturday, Sept. 28, 2019, at PNC Park. Other elite athletes have experienced the same loss of ability. Then baseball suddenly stopped being fun for him. 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. He could do rat soundsthe noise a rat makes running. Never. She paused, and then she said, I think he directed his anger toward making the situation livable here at home. He was, in short, an extremely successful and useful big-league pitcher, and was understandably enjoying his work. Blass was enjoying himself, and it seemed to me that the familiarities and surprises of the game had restored something in him. Steve Blass is a former pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates and has been broadcasting their games as color commentator since 1987. 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. 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. Advertisement. 3.85. (He was wilder than hell, Blass said. Lamb was also ordered to repay the money she stole. Intelligent, knows how to win. I dont think pitchers, by their nature, allow themselves to think that way, he said. 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. Ive never been a goal-plannerIve never said Im going to do this or that. But Steve Blass never had a good day in baseball after this thing hit him.. He was always up, always agitating. Dusty Baker singled, driving in a run. He would never do such a thing outside. I really think thats one of the things thats helped me in baseball.. Blass, then 29, still wishes he had talked longer, told his neighbors more of what was, and still is in his heart. Hey, you can really see how it works from here, cant you? he said. Prior to this season, Steve announced it . Then, in the fourth, there were a couple of bases on balls and maybe a bad call by the ump on a close pitch, and suddenly there was a complete reversal. You cant force your ideas on somebody, especially when he is doing what he thinks he has to do. He shortens up and then chases the pitch up here., He was animated. Blass flew out to California to see Dr. Bill Harrison once more, and also to visit a hypnotist, Arthur Ellen, who has worked with several major-league players, and has apparently helped some of them, including Dodger pitcher Don Sutton, remarkably. It may also be seen, in a much enlarged version, on one wall of the office of Joe L. Brown, the general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates, in Three Rivers Stadium. I remember that after the 71 Series he said, I didnt think I was as good as this. He seemed truly surprised at what hed done. 9 books | 63 friends Ann-See Yeoh. In the sixth, Blass walked Darrell Evans. Uncle and Aunt, Larry and Karen (Erickson) Stoller, Uncle Chris Blass, Aunt Coleen Blass, Cousins Lyndsi . .. This was a late-afternoon date in the Upper St. Clair (Pennsylvania) Recreation League schedule, played between the White Sox and the Orioles on a field behind the Dwight D. Eisenhower Elementary SchoolLittle League baseball, but at a junior and highly informal level. Ad Choices. The Charlies did a lot of travelling by bus. Nolan Ryan, of the Angels, walked two hundred and two men in three hundred and thirty-three innings, or 5.4 per game; however, he helped himself considerably by fanning three hundred and sixty-seven, or just under ten men per game. These are routine pitching mistakes, which almost all pitchers are guilty of from time to time, and Blass worked on them assiduously. I dont think anybodys ever said that maybe I just lost my control. Log In. He was the son of a plumber. Steve Blass, the longtime Pittsburgh Pirates broadcaster and former pitcher, will retire at the end of the 2019 season, he announced at a press . He lives in New York City. I thought it might be the end for me. Sadly, "Steve Blass Disease" is fatal to pitching careers. I was totally unnerved. I must have thrown it three out of four pitches to him, and I just knew it was going to be there. There is a further marvela touch of pure fortunein the background, where a spectator in dark glasses, wearing a dark suit, has risen from his seat in the grandstand and is lifting his arms in triumph. The mystery of Steve Blasss decline was old stuff by now in most big-league-city newspapers, but as soon as he was sent down, there was a fresh wave of attention from the national press and the networks, and sportswriters for newspapers in Memphis and Rochester and Richmond and the other International League cities looked on his arrival in town as a God-given feature story. In truth, nothing helped. I had some books along, and we had plenty of wine and beer on the bus, so the time went by somehow. He paused and then shook his head. Sometimes in the eveningonce in a great whilewed be sitting together, and wed have a couple of drinks and he would relax enough to start to talk. How much did Steve Blass weigh when playing? 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. CELEBRITY GOSSIPY BIO. In '72 he had some of the best numbers of his career. He was seriously affected by the death of Roberto Clemente. At this ballgame, he looked like any young suburban father who had caught an early train home from the office in order to see his kids in action. Only ten holes separated his two aces. I really thought he was on his way, he told me. When I was pitching well, I was doing that very thing. He has the arm of a twenty-year-old. He pitched with extreme care, throwing mostly sliders. Karen was born April 2, 1958 in Toledo, Ohio, to Samuel Selden La Then, unexpectedly, the slump endsmost of the time, that isand he is back where he was: a winning pitcher. However, it is a fact that a professional athleteand most especially a baseball playerfaces a much more difficult task in attempting to regain lost form than an ailing businessman, say, or even a troubled artist; no matter how painful his case has been, the good will of his associates or the vagaries of critical judgment matter not at all when he tries to return. Pretty soon youre trying so hard that you cant function., I ventured to repeat Nellie Kings guesses about the mystery to Steve Blass and asked him what he thought. For three innings, he escaped serious difficulty. I asked if maintaining this superhuman calm might not have damaged Steve in some way, or even added to his problems. I was embarrassed and disgusted. I would call the balls and strikes and hits. He picked us all up. At another point, he decided to throw every single day in the bullpen, to see if he could recapture his groove All it did was to get me very, very tired, Blass told me. It didnt even have to be major-league ball. What a player is thinking is about eighty per cent of it. They never came. I began worrying about making big money and not performing. SEND FLOWERS Add a Memory Share Obituary . They urged him to cut loose with the fastball. He walked 84 batters . 2 2. 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. Blass is a modest man, both in temperament and in background, and his success and fame were quite sudden and, to some degree, unexpected. Select this result to view Stephen Mark Blass's phone number, address, and more. . He has a tendency to go up the middle, and Ill try to keep it a bit away.. 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. Explore Steve Blass net worth, bio, age, height, family, wiki, birthday, career, salary [Last Update 2021]! I worried about not contributing to the team. Marty Perez walked. His military honors include Bronze Star Medal, Air Medal, Army Commendation Medal (2), Army . Pretty good inning, I said. In his first start, against the Dodgers in Los Angeles, he pitched against Don Drysdale and won, 42. Perfect. Karen used to bawl out me and Tony for not being tougher on him, for not doing more. 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. Write Karen Blass' 1st recommendation. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Its something he has always felt very strongly about, and I have to give him all the credit in the world. He pitched five innings, and gave up eight runs (three of them unearned), five hits, and seven bases on balls. Then hed let it come out, and yell and scream and pound on things. Pitcher Ron Reed singled, driving in two more runs, and was wild-pitched to second. With Steve, everything is right out in the open, Karen said. 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. While trying for his twentieth victory in his last start in 1972, he was hit on the point of the elbow of his pitching arm by a line drive struck by the Mets John Milner; he had to leave the game, but a few days later he pitched that first playoff game for the Pirates and won it handily. Writer Kirk Robinson stated that, "In 1972, if you had to choose any pitcher in the . Of course, there was a hell of a lot less of that from him in the last couple of years. Tony Bartirome (He is forty-three years old, dark-haired, extremely neat in appearance. He didn't. 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. Known as. There was no game there, or anythingI just had to see how it looked.. 111 books | 680 friends Kirsty. The game he picked was against the Cubs, in Chicago, on September 11th. Blass put on his warmup jacket and trotted to the outfield to run his wind sprints. But then he suddenly shut up about it, and he never talked that way again. 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. He and Karen rented an apartment in Charleston, and the whole family moved down when the school year ended; David and Chris enjoyed the informal atmosphere around the ballpark, where they were permitted to shag flies in batting practice. <br><br>With a dual background in both the . This is before the rest of the squad arrives, you understand, so youre just pitching to the other pitchers. share to facebook . It had occurred to me that in spite of his enforced and now permanent exile from the game, he still possessed a rare body of precise and hard-won pitching information. View. (His pay, which had been ninety thousand dollars in 1973, was cut to seventy-five thousand for the next season, and then to sixty-three thousand this spring.) Steve Blass Movies Steve Blass Books Steve Blass Wikipedia Photo. He became smug and was no longer hungry. In the old days, he used to get mad at himself after a bad showing, and sometimes he threw things around in the clubhouse. 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. Steve Blass was born on April 18, 1942 in Canaan, Connecticut, USA. The sinking fastball tends to tail off just a little., Well, now we come back with another slider, and Ill try to throw it inside. Sign Up. Rose took another ball, and then grounded out on a medium-speed curveball. Think about the enormity of that feat. 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. The photograph shows a perfectly arrested moment of joy. He then fouled off a fastball, and Blass threw him another good fastball, high and inside, and Perez struck out, swinging, to end the inning. Karen Lamb Miller passed away peacefully, surrounded by her family on June 20, 2010, at Saint Luke's Hospital, after a sudden illness. 'The Mooncatcher's Rescue' by Karen Lamb is available online. Blass has known the best and the worst of Pirates seasons on a personal level. 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). They have two children. I was encouraged. . Los Angeles, CA 90010. The best result we found for your search is Karen Louise Blass age 80+ in Bradenton, FL in the South Bradenton neighborhood. Everybody has been great to me, all through this thing, Blass said. (He is said to have once thrown twenty-seven consecutive balls in a spring-training game.) Last year, I went through something like Steves crisis. Karen L Blass are some of the alias or nicknames that Karen has used. Then, in late February, 1974, Blass reported to Bradenton with the other Pirate pitchers and catchers. The residential address for Karen is 2711 Lee Av, Early, IA 50535. Last year, both leagues had ten pitchers who finished up below 3.00, led by Buzz Capras N.L. I was a total Indians fan, completely buggy. Maybe thats what Id like to believe, he said. Earlier in the week of my visit, he had accepted a promising job with Jostens, Inc., a large jewelry concern that makes, among other things, World Series rings and high-school graduation rings, and he would go to work for them shortly as a travelling representative in the Pittsburgh area. 79 (18 1942) Steve Blass/. Blass spent four days with him, and then rejoined the Pirates, this time as a batting-practice pitcher. What happened to Steve Blass? Nellie King (A former pitcher with the Pirates. Steves a very private person.. Blass was never thought of as one of the great pitchers of his time, but in the late sixties and early seventies he was probably the most consistent starter on the Pirate staff; it was, in fact, a staff without stars. He wonders whether he will ever win again or whether he will now join the long, long listthe list that awaits him, almost surely, in the endof suddenly slow, suddenly sore-armed pitchers who have abruptly vanished from the big time, down the drain to oblivion. A letter-high fastball, with good mustard on it., Now Ill do it again, until I missbust him up and in. Virdon remained calm, although he was clearly puzzled. Karen M Lamb. Tony Bartirome, the Pirate trainer, who is a close friend of Steves, thought he was pitching as well as he ever had. Steve Blass passed over my questions about whether he had ever felt this kind of fear when on the mound. aren is a top-producing agent at Beacham and Company Realtors and has been selling . Steve Forrest, Karen Lamm appearing in the ABC tv movie 'The Hatfields and the McCoys'. I think there are things weighing on him, and I think he may be so angry inside that hes afraid to throw the ball. Answers here become more gingerly. Early that season, however, baseball suddenly stopped being fun for him. Well, I really did it. Blass once told me that there were at least seventeen theories about the reason for his failure. The other, more serious theories are sometimes presented alone, sometimes in conjunction with others. I said, Hes ready, we can use him! Funny. Its like being plugged into a computer. The pizza disappeared rapidly, and then David and Chris went off upstairs to do their homework or watch TV. Or wont. 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. 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. He struck out some players with his fastball. 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