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Former Major League pitcher Steve Blass doesn’t hang his hat on the fact that he was a National League All-Star or a World Series champion.
No, he looks most fondly at his life – and his wife.
“I’ve been with the Pirates 56 years and with my wife 52 years,” Blass said. “One wife and one team – that’s pretty good stuff.”
In a 10-year big league career – all playing with the Pirates – Blass compiled a 78-44 record with 50 complete games and a 3.05 earned run average. He recorded the final out of the 1971 World Series in which Pittsburgh defeated the Baltimore Orioles.
“I’m so proud of that, something like that just doesn’t happen anymore,” Blass said of spending his entire baseball career with one team. “All I wanted to do was play baseball. That started when I was 8 years old and it’s been a magical ride and I’m still hanging on. It goes faster and faster each year and it’s always been fun.”
Though he started in the booth full-time in 1983, Blass was conditioned for the job while he was still a ballplayer. As a minor leaguer in Charleston, W.Va. he was invited into the radio booth on days when he wasn’t scheduled to pitch. His partner in those days was, coincidentally enough, Lanny Frattare, the former “voice of the Pirates.”
“In Toledo, Tidewater, Richmond, Rochester, Pawtucket and Syracuse, we forged an announcing team, not knowing that we’d be reunited as Pirates announcing partners,” Frattare said.
In 1974, through the coaxing of Blass – then a member of the Pirates starting rotation – Frattare was able to shadow announcers Bob Prince and Nellie King in Pittsburgh. In 1976, Frattare was named the full-time play-by-play man.
“I owe that to Steve Blass,” he said.
Just as Frattare made the jump from Charleston to Pittsburgh, Blass earned that same promotion as a player.
At 10 p.m. on a night in May of 1968, after a bus trip from Syracuse, N.Y., Blass was sleeping in his downtown Charleston apartment complex as his wife, Karen, was getting ready for bed.
The phone rang. Karen reluctantly answered.
“The voice on the other line said, ‘We’d really like to speak to Steve,'” Blass recalled. “‘It’s important.’
“Karen said, ‘My husband has had a long day and he’s sleeping now. I’m not going to wake him up.'”
The voice was persistent.
“Young lady, my name is Joe Brown, I’m the general manager for the Pittsburgh Pirates and we’d like to have Steve come up and pitch for us.”
“The next thing you heard in that apartment was, ‘Get your butt out of bed, we’re going to the big leagues!'” Blass remarked.
And he’s been at the top ever since.
“Steve is one of those special individuals that is very humble and loyal,” said Bob Walk, a former Pirates pitcher, too, and current member of the Pirates broadcast team. “To be able to work with Steve and have him show me the ropes, I couldn’t have been any luckier. It’s amazing to be able to be with a guy like that, on and off of the booth.
“Steve was a star big league pitcher, not everybody today realizes it. You look at his stats and he really was one of the best pitchers in all of baseball. Without him, the Pirates wouldn’t have won the 1971 World Series.”
Blass played with the best of the best.
“I competed against the legends,” he said. “I’m so grateful to have played in that era with (Tom) Seaver, (Bob) Gibson, (Willie) McCovey, (Carlton) Fisk, (Hank) Aaron, (Willie) Mays – it goes on and on.”
But he admits that there may be more talent in today’s game.
“I would still say that era holds its weight with what is going on now,” Blass said. “There are really gifted players that are playing now, but expansion has diluted that. If you were to go back to when there were eight teams playing in each league, you would see a concentrated talent pool that would be absolutely phenomenal.”
As for his favorite player in today’s game, Blass picks the face of the franchise in Pittsburgh.
“I see Andrew (McCutchen) everyday, he’s pretty special,” Blass said. “He’s a gifted athlete who still has a lot of ceiling left in him. That’s a compliment because he’s already accomplished so much in his young career, but the best is yet to come with Andrew.”
While McCutchen may put his stamp on baseball at PNC Park, there’s a litany of immortal players from Three Rivers Stadium, Forbes Field, Exposition Park and Recreation Field.
Blass ranks right up there with the best of them.
“When you talk about the face of the Pirates, I understand (Roberto) Clemente, (Willie) Stargell and (Bill) Mazeroski, but when you talk about the nuts and bolts of the organization, it’s a different type of icon,” said former MLB manager Jim Leyland. “Steve Blass is that icon for the Pirates. He represents the team on a daily and nightly basis to the ultimate.”
In 2005, Blass announced that he was cutting back on his broadcasting duties, only announcing home games for the Pirates. It gave him more time to spend with his family and enjoy the twilight of his life.
All these years, it’s been a Pirate’s life for Blass.