I worried about not contributing to the team. Brooke Lamb, 42 Karen Prosser Ann Patricia Hampton Colleen, 65 Jerry Grice, 78 Cindy Grice, 73 Karen Walliker, 72. has lived in Boring, OR Sandy, OR Gresham, OR Boise, ID Answers here become more gingerly. I really thought he was on his way, he told me. Never. She paused, and then she said, I think he directed his anger toward making the situation livable here at home. and in bookshops internationally. On many other teams, he would have been no more than the second- or third-best starter, and his responsibilities, real and imagined, would have been less acute. He has been married to Karen Lamb since October 5, 1963. 9 books | 63 friends Ann-See Yeoh. It was kind of scary.. 2d 17h. On August 1st, he started against the Mets and Tom Seaver at Shea Stadium and gave up three runs and five walks in one and two-thirds innings. (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.) Pretty good inning, I said. Anyone who takes the trouble to write a man who is suffering deserves to be thanked, he told me. Over on the right, another player, the pitcher, is just past the apex of an astonishing leap that has brought his knees up to his chest and his feet well up off the ground. Then, in late February, 1974, Blass reported to Bradenton with the other Pirate pitchers and catchers. Now Ill throw him a sinking fastball, and still try to work him out that way. When spring training came, however, nothing had altered. 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. I dont know the answer, Bill Virdon told me in the Yankee clubhouse. They had also been generous, refusing to cut his salary by the full twenty per cent permissible in extending a major-league contract. . Karen@Goldlamb1.com. He says now that he was very interested in Dr. Harrisons theories but that they just didnt seem to help him much. ), The Pittsburgh organization signed Steve Blass right out of Housatonic High in 1960, and he began moving up through the minors. At eleven that same night, they reboarded the bus and drove to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, for their next date, arriving at about nine in the morning. Karen L Blass are some of the alias or nicknames that Karen has used. 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. Finally, of course, one must accept the possibility that a great many players may have suffered exactly the same sort of falling off as Blass for exactly the same reasons (whatever they may be) but were able to solve the problem and continue their athletic careers. Its Gimme the ball, boom! He played his entire career in Major League Baseball as a right-handed pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1964 and from 1966 through 1974. When I was pitching well, I was doing that very thing. Steve is an outstanding man, and you hate to quit on him. Im real proud of the fact that this thing hasnt bothered us at home. This insider's view of the humorous and bizarre journey of . Thats pretty heavy, he said after a moment. Results focussed and relationship orientated sales leader and business development professional. My next view of Steve Blass on a baseball diamond came on a cool afternoon at the end of April this year. The pitcher goes into a slump. Steve Blass is a former pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates and has been broadcasting their games as color commentator since 1987. Last year, I went through something like Steves crisis. SSG STEVE BLASS passed away on March 11, 2013 at the age of 27 in ESTHERVILLE, Iowa. Blass, in any case, celebrated the Pirates championship more exuberantly than Clemente, exchanging hugs and shouts with his teammates, alternately smoking a cigar and swigging from a champagne bottle. Thats one of the concepts of Dr. Harrisons program, you knowvisualization. He became smug and was no longer hungry. It didnt even have to be major-league ball. He could do Roberto Clementenot just the way he moved but the way he talked. 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). 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. Karen Lamb, widow of former Milwaukee Mayor Henry W. Maier, speaks at the Milwaukee Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center in this undated, submitted photo. I really think thats one of the things thats helped me in baseball.. I wanted to feel I had at least got things turned around and facing in the right direction.. He would never do such a thing outside. The former Karen Lamb, who will celebrate her 49th anniversary with Mr. Blass today [Friday], came from an athletic family. 1 bid. That year, in his first outing Blass pitched five scoreless innings in relief against the Braves, facing, among others, Hank Aaron. Forty-seven years old): Right after that terrible game in Atlanta, Steve told me that it had felt as if the whole world was pressing down on him while he was out there. You know, this thing thats happened has been painted so bad, so tragic, he said. Their fastball comes in high, their curves hang, the rest of their prime weapons desert them. Steve Blass passed over my questions about whether he had ever felt this kind of fear when on the mound. 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. I am with Carly and Naami in one picture. If I did Id go get Steve to pitch for me. 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. I didnt know how to solve my problem, but I knew I had to solve it. 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 said. My Work. He is very tallsix-six. His statistics for the game, including an E.R.A. The outfield consisted of Willie Stargell, Roberto Clemente, and Al Oliver. Now, after ball one, Ill give him a medium-to-slow curveball and try to get it over the platejust throw it for a strike., Now I throw him a real slow curveballa regular rainbow. Von McDaniel, a younger brother of Lindy McDaniel, arrived suddenly as a pitcher with the Cardinals, and disappeared just as quickly, but two years pitching hardly qualifies as a record. Down there, youve got to look at it all in pieces. Karen used to bawl out me and Tony for not being tougher on him, for not doing more. The Cubs won, 20, but Steve gave up only two hits and one earned run in the five innings he worked. 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. Ad Choices. Tony Bartirome, the Pirate trainer, who is a close friend of Steves, thought he was pitching as well as he ever had. Steve had a lot of guts to stay out there as long as he did. I guess I dont have a tendency to go into things in much depth. He tried pitching with his left foot tucked up behind his right knee until the last possible second of his delivery. 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. Ill start him off with a slider away. But then he suddenly shut up about it, and he never talked that way again. 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. 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. Don Osborn, a gentle man in his mid-sixties, says, Steves problem was mental. Thats a good feeling. Karen Blais. The team was still in Atlanta, and Virdon called Blass into the game in the fifth inning, with the Pirates trailing by 83. I worried about being traded. I was encouraged. His speech is on ano. Its no big thing, but suddenly its gone. He paused, and then he laughed in a self-deprecating way. Steve was startled by the unfamiliar view. He does not talk about itin part out of natural reticence but also because the Pirate front office, in an effort to protect his privacy, turned away inquiries into this area by Pittsburgh writers and persistently refused to comment on whether any such therapy was undertaken. Blass refuses to make jokes about these nostrums. On my last morning with Steve Blass, we sat in his family room and played an imaginary ballgame togetherhalf an inning of baseball. 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