The Roger Angell Baseball Collection Part 11

Harry Walker is a tall, deep-bellied man who has at various times managed the Cardinals, the Pirates, and, most recently, the Houston Astros. As a player, three decades ago, he was known as Harry the Hat; he won the National League batting t.i.tle in 1947, with an average of .363. He is Dixie Walker's brother. Harry Walker is reputed to be one of the finest theoreticians of hitting in baseball, and several players who have come under his tutelage have given him credit for an increase of twenty or thirty points in their batting averages-astounding figures, for batting is considered the most difficult of all athletic techniques to learn or to teach. Some other players, however, have admitted that they found it impossible to take advantage of Walker's wisdom, simply because they could not force themselves to stay within earshot of him-to go on listening to the hundreds of thousands of words that pour from Harry Walker every day. Harry Walker talks like a river. He is easily capable of as many words per hour as Hubert Humphrey or Buckminster Fuller-which is to say that he is in the Talkers' Hall of Fame. A few summers back, one of the Houston infielders is reported to have said to a teammate, "I'm worried about Harry. He's a natural .400 talker, and these last few days he ain't talked more than about .280."

Three years ago, before an Astros-Dodgers game in Los Angeles, I casually asked Harry Walker why his young pitchers and catchers seemed to be giving up so many stolen bases to enemy runners. Harry Walker has no casual answers, and his reply, which took the better part of twenty minutes, encompa.s.sed the American public-school system, permissiveness in the American home, Dr. Spock, our policies in Vietnam, great pick-off deliveries of various right-thinking pitchers of the past, the high rate of divorce in America, umpiring then and now, the inflated American economy, the exorbitant current bonuses paid to young baseball prospects, taxation, growing up in the Great Depression, how to protect home plate with your bat during the run-and-hit, and various other topics. At one point I recall his crying, "Whah, h.e.l.l-fahr, when Ah was goin' after mah battin' t.i.tle in '47 and Ah got the sign to lay down the bunt 'cause we was down a run late in the game and needed to move that runner up, Ah didn't come stormin' and hollerin' back to the dugout to tell the old man how much Ah wanted mah at-bats in order to qualify for that t.i.tle and whah Ah'd ruther have hit away, and Ah didn't slam mah battin' helmet down on the ground like those kids do here today. No, sir! Whah, G.o.d d.a.m.n it, we din' even have any battin' helmets back then!"

Here, in time, the Mets and the umpires and the fans appeared, and the batting cage and Harry Walker were taken off the field, and the game began, and the visitors demolished the Mets, in a somnolent, sun-filled time-killer, by 104. Jerry Koosman pitched three good innings, and Randy Tate pitched, too, and gave up five runs and six hits; I am not a camera, but it seemed to me that Tate was still not driving off the rubber. Between these two hurlers, there was an appearance by a good-looking Mets sprout named Jeff Grose, who is only two years out of high school. Grose, a southpaw, showed us a live fastball and a smooth, high-kicking motion, and he hid the ball behind his hip while on the mound, like Sandy Koufax. He seemed poised, but he was working a little too quickly, and he gave up three hits and a run in his first inning of work. In the next inning, his fastball began missing the corners. He kept falling behind the hitters, and then forcing things and overthrowing to make up for it. He gave it a battle, though. With two out and a run in, he went to three and two, saw the next pitch barely tipped foul, then threw the fourth ball way inside, to load the bases, then swiftly walked in another run and gave up a single, and was lucky when Rusty Staub threw out a base runner at the plate. It was painful to add up his totals: four runs, six hits, and four walks in two innings. Spring training is good young pitchers falling behind on the count and then disappearing until next year.

POSTCARDS.

Saw the Phillies beat the Cards at Al Lang Field by 10, in a game illuminated by wind, sun, and young baseball stars. The newcomers include twenty-three-year-old Alan Bannister, a swift Phillie outfielder, and twenty-one-year-old Keith Hernandez, the new Cardinal first baseman, who batted .351 last year in the American a.s.sociation. Before the game, I saw the Cards' Reggie Smith and the Phillies' Dave Cash in earnest conversation near the batting cage. As I walked by, Reggie was saying, "And the rest I got in tax-exempts."

Al Lang Field is to be demolished next fall, and a more modern ball park will be built on the same site. It seems a pity, since the stands, which look like a leftover segment of Ebbets Field, perfectly match the style and antiquity of the fans. And what will happen to the ushers? When an Al Lang usher escorts an elderly female fan to her seat, it is impossible to tell who is holding up whom.

"Pick it" is this year's "in" baseball phrase. It means playing the infield well. Ken Reitz, the Cardinal third baseman, can really pick it.

Talked to John Curtis, the tall, intelligent left-handed pitcher who came over to the Cardinals from the Red Sox two years ago. I told him I had a vivid recollection of a night game at Yankee Stadium two years ago, in July, in which he had shut out the Yankees by 10, and had retired the last batter on a pop-up with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth. He remembered it, too, of course. "That one-and-two change-up I threw to Felipe Alou in that spot was the best pitch of my life," he said.

Curtis had an off year last season, and this campaign will be an important one for him. I have heard it said that he may be too gentle a man to become a big winner in the majors.

VETERAN.

The speaker is Ray Sadecki, thirty-four, who is beginning his fifteenth year as a major-league pitcher. His lifetime totals are 129 victories and 127 losses, and an earned-run average of 3.77. His best year was 1964, when he won twenty games for the Cardinals and also won a World Series start. The next year, he slipped to six and fifteen. He has also pitched for the Giants and, in the last five years, for the Mets. He was sent back to the Cards last winter, as part of the Joe Torre trade. He sat in the dugout at Al Lang Field one afternoon, wearing a bright-red warm-up jacket, and talked about baseball. He has a quizzical, amused expression and an easy manner. He is left-handed.

"It seems to take me every single day of the spring season to get ready now," he said. "I make all the same moves, but I come up a little short. Then, of course, when the season starts, a man like me who isn't a front-line pitcher anymore has to do all his training all over again, throwing on the sidelines. You get caught in those rainouts and before you know it you've only pitched two or three innings in three weeks. The most starts I had with the Mets was twenty, and the least was two. You get to know all the conditions, all the possibilities. You know about that year when I lost fifteen games, right after my best year? Well, a man has to be pitching pretty well to get the chance to lose fifteen.

"Every time I'm traded, I figure the other club wants me. I went once for a pretty fair player named Orlando Cepeda. This trade from the Mets-you know they had to make it. Getting a chance at Torre doesn't mean they dumped me. The thing about trades is it's an opportunity for most players. An awful lot of trades end up helping the people involved. Look at Nolan Ryan. Look at Dave Cash. Torre came over to this club from Atlanta and won an MVP. Too many people get it wrong and think, 'Boy, what a rotten thing to do.' Fans don't understand trades.

"The only tough part about being traded-the worst part-is when it happens during the season. Seventy-two hours to report. Your family is all upset, your wife has to do all the moving. You walk into your new dugout and they're playing the anthem. h.e.l.l, when I went over to the Giants I walked out onto the mound, and Tom Haller and I had to get together on our signs. A pitcher and a catcher need a lot of time to get used to each other.

"I'm a completely different kind of pitcher than I was when I was with this club the last time. But I don't figure I'm down here to let them see what I can do. They're looking at the young pitchers. I got together with Red [Schoendienst, the Cardinal manager] and Barney [Schultz, the pitching coach], and said I'll get ready in my own time. I pitched two and two-thirds yesterday. They weren't the best ever, but they were just right for me. I'm just where I want to be. That's what spring training is for. Anyway, we all know about a pitcher who gets hammered all spring and then walks out there on opening day and n.o.body can touch him. Another one has it the other way around-once the bell rings, he can't get anybody out. It's awful hard to make a decision about people in the spring. I've been out there at times in March and couldn't do anything. I embarra.s.sed myself. But you can't start throwing harder and mess yourself up. That's what a kid will do. It's the last week or so of training that counts. That's when you'll see a pitcher try things he hasn't done all spring. He's getting ready for that first start. You can't pay much attention to what happens down here. Putting on these games has always seemed to me sort of a distraction. I think that most of the players are less cooperative with the press in spring training because of this-because you can't go telling the writers, 'Look, don't pay any attention to what I did.'

"It's the young players I'm sorry for. It's awful hard for a rookie to make a ball club in the spring. If you're a pitcher, you've pretty well got to throw all scoreless innings. If you're a batter, you've got to hit about .400. Even so, they'll all say, 'h.e.l.l, it's only spring training.' Spring is hard on people."

The Cactus League consists of four small ball parks attached to a ribbon of motels, moccasin shops, trailer sales lots, and Big-Boy burger stands in and around Phoenix, Arizona-plus outlying baseball stockades in Tucson, Yuma, and Palm Springs, California. (The air service to Palm Springs, where the Angels train, is sketchy, and when one of the Phoenix-area clubs-the Cubs, say-plays there, the visitors can count on a good twelve hours, round-trip, in which to study the desert from the windows of their bus.) The motels are functional to the spring baseball scene. Generally, they feature an enclosed central swimming pool and lawn and patio, plus restaurant and bar and dance floor and shuffle courts and lobby and coin-operated electronic Ping-Pong games, all of them variously patronized by players, managers, league executives, front-office people, writers, scouts, and fans, and attendant wives, children, babies, parents, in-laws, girl friends, hookers, and Baseball Annies. (Lounging at poolside one morning, I noticed a nearby gathering of cheerfully forward, heavily tanned ladies, of indeterminate age and affiliation. I asked a fellow writer about them. "Groupies," he said. "They've been coming here for years and years. They used to hang out with the players, then with the coaches. Now I think they're umpire groupies.") The Giants' park, Phoenix Munic.i.p.al Stadium, is an agreeable, half-sunken field, with a concrete grandstand offering a prospect of distant mountains, a nearby highway, and, in between, several weirdly twisted, b.u.t.telike rock formations suggesting dinosaurs or Boschian d.a.m.ned souls or Horace Stoneham's baseball hopes. The Giants, by general consensus, in recent years have led their league in finding and developing the greatest talent and then employing it to the smallest possible ends. This year, they have come up with another one of their nearly irresistible Spring Specials-a new (almost) manager, a lineup stripped of last year's disappointing stars, and a stimulating catalogue of young arms and great wheels. Gone is the charming, moody skipper, Charlie Fox, who plainly lost control of things last summer and was replaced in midcampaign by the calm and approachable Wes Westrum. Gone are the high-strung, well-paid Bobby Bonds and Dave Kingman. A veteran hot-dog second baseman, t.i.to Fuentes, was sent to the Padres in return for a new hot dog, Derrel Thomas. The pitching staff is young and strong but without a true stopper-with the possible exception of a second-year fireballer named John D'Acquisto. The holdover regulars afield, including Chris Speier and Garry Maddox and Gary Matthews, have dash but not much power, and there is a terrific catching prospect named Marc Hill.

I watched this bright-eyed entering cla.s.s in action against the World Champion A's, whom they defeated by 72, thus pleasing an underflow crowd of 2,802 and persuading me that another summer of high, dashed hopes was in the making at Candlestick Park. Steve Ontiveros, a former outfielder, does not exactly pick it at third base for the Giants; in the fourth inning, he played a one-hopper by Joe Rudi off his shoulder, and he later threw the ball away while attempting an easy double play. (The Giants have had forty-six third bas.e.m.e.n since they came to the Coast in 1958.) The A's, for their part, seemed to be suffering from similar tinkering. Joe Rudi, the best defensive left fielder in the American League, has been moved to first base in order to make room for Claudell Was.h.i.+ngton, who is a fine hitter but cannot field much. He played a fly ball by Matthews into a double and later threw behind a runner. The best poke of the day was a triple in the fifth by Bobby Murcer-a Murcer Special into the deepest right-field corner. A week or two earlier, Bobby had delivered himself of a bad-tempered public blast against the Yankees for s.h.i.+pping him off to San Francisco in the Bonds trade, but now, after the game, he appeared to be in splendid humor, as befits a man currently batting .500. I asked him if the trade might not in fact be one of those that ended up helping both princ.i.p.als. "Don't know," he said. "Ask me in September."

The most heavily reported news at the Indians' camp in Tucson this spring was fundamentally unreportable-the fact that Frank Robinson, the new Cleveland manager, is black. Like several dozen visiting scribes before me this year, I sought him out in his office at Hi Corbett Field (where he was lunching on two c.o.kes and some saltines crumbled into a cup of soup), shook hands, asked him some questions, and concluded that he was going about his duties in a responsible if inescapably predictable fas.h.i.+on. He admitted to some innovations-no team curfew, the appointment of two team captains (one white, one black; or, rather, as Robinson put it, one an outfielder and one an infielder)-and said he had turned over a great deal of detail work to his coaches, so that he might have more time to watch and get to know his players. "I want things done right," he said. "That is, I want them done my way."

He hadn't had time to do much batting himself, and thus prepare himself for his additional duties as a designated hitter. Robinson spoke with alternate gravity and humor, exuding the same sense of weight and presence I have always observed in him. We chatted a little, and then I said goodbye and wished him luck, and made room for three more out-of-town reporters, who had come for the same unspoken and unspeakable purpose: How does a black manager manage? What is black managing? How does it, uh, feel to be the first black manager?

It was nice and hot in Tucson, and I sat in the stands that afternoon and caught some rays. There was a grove of trees out beyond center field, and the distant outfield fences were covered with old-style billboards-Jim Click Ford, Coors Beer, Ralph Hays Roofing, Patio Pools. (Arizona outfields are s.p.a.cious, to make room for the great distances that fly b.a.l.l.s carry through the dry, desert air; a few years ago, in Mesa, Curt Blefary ducked away from an inside pitch, and the ball struck his bat and flew over the right-field fence for a homer.) Two veteran flingers, the Indians' Fritz Peterson and the Angels' Chuck Dobson, had at each other, with the visitors enjoying all the best of things. The Angels have only speed and pitching, and their left fielder, Mickey Rivers, a skinny blur on the base paths, stretched two routine singles into doubles. In the California fourth, Cleveland center fielder George Hendrick fielded a single and threw the ball over the cutoff man's head. The Indians, who have insufficient pitching, may have a long summer of it.

There was a good mix taking the sun in the stands that day: high-school girls with long, clean hair; a lot of young men-probably students at the University of Arizona-with beards and tanned bare chests and cutoff jeans and silver bracelets; and, of course, old folks. At one point, somebody behind me said, "I understand they gave Homer a pacemaker, but it was sort of out of pace with his heart." A pause, and then "Oh, well, Homer has more money than Carter has little pills."

Just before I left, in the seventh, I recorded a personal baseball first: Most Fans Seen Wheeling a Bicycle up Aisle of Grandstand-1.

Friends have told me that they find the Oakland A's insufferable. I find this a mystery. The three-time World Champions have not only more talent but more interesting troubles and more lively conversationalists than anybody else around. This year, their problems may be sufficient to keep them from their customary October rendezvous, for Charlie Finley's fiscal irresiliency has cost them not only Catfish Hunter but the services of their second baseman, d.i.c.k Green, a twelve-year veteran who retired rather than accept Finley's kind of emolument for another year.

I had heard about the infamous conditions at the home park of the A's, in Mesa, but I was still not quite ready for the dim, cluttered, corridorlike room there that serves as the champions' clubhouse. Team trunks were stacked everywhere, and sweats.h.i.+rts hung from the overhead pipes and rafters. There was one fan, and the place suggested nothing so much as a migrant-labor-camp barracks. Joe Rudi must have seen my expression, because he laughed and said, "You know how it is with Charlie-first-cla.s.s all the way." (Finley, it should be added, was not on hand; he rarely comes to Arizona-or, for that matter, to Oakland.) In the past, the captain of the A's, Sal Bando, has been more gentle about his employer than most of his teammates, but this spring he emerged the loser in a vituperative salary arbitration, and he has joined the bad-mouth majority. Finley won four of six arbitration cases this year; whatever the issues, the effect of this was to deny real raises, after a third world champions.h.i.+p, to Bando, Ken Holtzman, Ray Fosse, and Reggie Jackson.

"Until this year," Bando said to me, "I found it hard to understand how low and upset he could make a player feel. Now I understand. The big thing is his lack of respect for other people, and the lack of communication in the whole organization. I said last winter that the front office was a one-man show, and he used this as an excuse to call in the press and demean me. [Finley stated, among other things, that his team captain was the eleventh-best third baseman in the league.] To me, this is like a car dealer buying time on TV and saying he has the worst cars in town. No wonder people don't come to see us play. We win on this team only because each of us has a sense of pride-which is exactly what he wants to take away from us. Winning is what holds this team together."

Winning and, he might have added, great baseball and, inexplicably, great good cheer. In spite of their celebrated squabbles, the A's have always struck me as having the most ebullient dugout in the game. On this afternoon, Bando finished his Finleyan discourse by suddenly leaping off the bench and tipping Pat Bourque's cap over his eyes and grabbing the ball he was about to catch in warm-up. Then young Phil Garner, the rookie who will replace Green at second base this year, came down the steps and said, "My luck's really runnin' good. My wife went to the doc this morning, and he said the baby isn't coming until July. And ... well, he said it sounds like there's more than one heartbeat in there."

Bourque and Ray Fosse and Rollie Fingers took up the topic with alacrity.

"Uh-oh! You better get Charlie on the phone right now. Tell him you're holding out for more. Play on his sympathy."

"'More than one'? Listen, that doesn't mean two, does it? Think about that a little, Phil."

"Yes, if your wife's been messin' with those fertility pills, you'd better get out there and hit about .310 this year and a hundred and fifty runs batted in. At least!"

In the game that day, against the Padres, Phil Garner made three errors. The A's had other troubles, too-including Reggie Jackson running his spring average to one for fifteen, or .066-but Gene Tenace hit a homer and a double, and Bando and Claudell Was.h.i.+ngton and Ted Kubiak doubled, too, and the miserable A's cheerfully won the game, 42.

POSTCARDS.

A group of big-league scouts-Dario Lodigiani, Al Hollingsworth, Haywood Sullivan, and some others-turned up at most of the games I saw. Apparently by agreement, they always seemed to come to the same games, and they always sat together, watching the play and writing notes in their notebooks. Reminded you of Second World War spies taking their aperitifs together at Estoril.

Spotted Alvin Dark's car parked outside Rendezvous Park, in Mesa-a big, mocha-colored Imperial LeBaron, with Florida plates and two rear b.u.mper stickers. "A's, World Champions" was on the left side and "Jesus Is Coming Soon! Every Knee Shall Bow" on the right. Dark, the Oakland manager, is a direct man. Last winter, he mailed several revivalist tracts to Ron Bergman, who covers the team for the Oakland Tribune. Bergman is Jewish.

Rollie Fingers, watching the Padres take infield practice: "There's that Hernandez, at short. I'll never forget that year he had five hundred and something at-bats and drove in twelve runs."

Ray Fosse: "What? That's impossible."

Fingers: "Look it up."

I looked it up. The year was 1971. Enzo Hernandez drove in twelve runs in 549 trips to the plate.

Before an Indians-Brewers game at Sun City, g.a.y.l.o.r.d Perry, the Cleveland pitcher who is starting his fourteenth year in the majors, spotted Del Crandall, who put in sixteen years as a player and is starting his fourth year as the Brewers' manager.

"Hey there, Big Del," Perry said. "I see we made it to another year."

"Yeah," Crandall said. "Let's hope it don't run out on us."

March was winding down, and my holiday was nearly over. The penultimate stop was a Giants-Brewers night game, which I witnessed from the stands in the company of seventy or eighty members of the Giants Boosters Club. Surrounded by orange-and-black caps and b.u.t.tons and pennants, I yelled for every San Francisco grounder and fly ball, and felt a lively sense of accomplishment over the eventual 31 win by the Good Guys. As one might imagine, given their team's recent record, the Boosters don't know the meaning of quit. There are some four thousand of them in all, mostly season-ticket holders at Candlestick Park, and a lot of them sign up for road trips, too, accompanying their boys to Los Angeles or as far as the East Coast, and even once to j.a.pan. The Boosters are middling-old, and not many of them, I noticed, keep score. This is not a sign of amateurish fandom, however; the Boosters are too busy simultaneously yelling and socializing to do any writing. All Giants are addressed, fortissimo, by their first names, but some criticism is permitted within the family, too. After Ontiveros threw out a Milwaukee base runner, a woman next to me leaned over and murmured, "Every time Steve throws the ball, I shudder." At one point, I asked another lady near me what she thought about the recent news that Juan Marichal, the longtime Giants mound ace, had signed up with the Dodgers. She pondered the question, and then said, "Well, I'm sort of sorry for Juan. You can't tell me he liked doing that."

The winning two-run Giants rally, sparked by a Derrel Thomas double, interrupted a lengthy discussion of home states ("You're from Montana? Why, I was born in b.u.t.te...."), and then we all anxiously discussed the Giants' relief pitcher David Heaverlo, who was summoned in to protect the lead. Heaverlo, a young nonroster flinger, was so delighted at being invited to camp this year that he shaved all the hair off his head. Tonight, it turned out, he was throwing nothing but BBs out there. "Heave her low, Heaverlo!" we shouted, and he did, and we went home hoa.r.s.e but happy.

On, then, the next afternoon, for the Indians and the Brewers, at Sun City. This is a retirement community, a vast walled city of low, white bungalows, which, viewed from the non-vantage point of the ceaseless desert plain, looks as big as Benares. The ball park appears to have been dug out of one end of a parking lot-an arrangement I finally understood when I realized that it allowed all the fans to walk down to their seats; a number of them spared themselves even this minimal strain by watching the proceedings from parked golf carts. On this particular day, however, there were a good many younger adults and children mixed in with the geezers-Easter-vacation visitors, perhaps. Hank Aaron, baseball's most celebrated active codger, started for the home team as the designated hitter, and began a six-run Milwaukee outburst in the fourth with a single off g.a.y.l.o.r.d Perry. Aaron batting and Perry pitching would make a terrific energy-conservation poster.

The afternoon had begun with wind and threatening low clouds. As the game wore on, the clouds began to break up, but the wind blew and blew. The clear desert air became dusty-red, and later that afternoon there were reports of forty- and fifty-mile-an-hour gusts nearby. The wind began to blow away the ball game. Three fly b.a.l.l.s got up into the river of air above us and sailed out beyond the fence for homers; one of them was a grand slam. The sun came out at last, and the sun and the wind made me restless, and I got up and walked out to the deepest part of the stands along the right-field foul line and sat down. There was a flagpole on an embankment above me, and the great wind had nailed the two flags in the air up there-the Arizona state flag under the Stars and Stripes-making them stand out like planks. There was no one near me but a couple of county cops in brown uniforms, and three boys and one girl in jeans and T-s.h.i.+rts and sneakers-they looked about ten or twelve years old-and, just down below us, a young Cleveland pitcher and bullpen catcher, sitting motionless on folding chairs in their warm-up jackets.

My trip was ending, and I was beginning to feel sad about it. In these ten days on the road, it had become clear to me that there is almost no reason for the spring baseball schedule. Most baseball people I had talked to seemed to agree with Ray Sadecki that only the pitchers really needed the full six weeks in which to prepare themselves; Frank Robinson told me that the games were an interruption and that he could have used the same time to better advantage for straight instruction. Strangest of all, it seemed to me, was the fact that the baseball establishment has hardly ever tried to promote spring-training games, or to inflate them beyond their evident usefulness as a publicity device. They are still called exhibitions. Spring baseball, I had to conclude, continues for the strangest of all possible reasons-because everyone enjoys it. It is a relic-sport pure and simple, or the closest we can come to that now. Sport for the joy of it.

I watched the end of the game from there. The warm wind ruffled our hair and rattled the outfield fence, and from time to time bits of peanut sh.e.l.ls and pieces of popcorn flew by us, airborne. n.o.body said anything. Spring was over, or part of it. Dazed with sun and wind, we stared back at the distant players and the silent movements of the game.

POSTCARD.

Walt Williams made the team. He was on the Yankees' twenty-five-man roster that went north to start the regular season-in part because of the club's decision to cut loose its ailing longtime pitching ace, Mel Stottlemyre. Randy Tate had a splendid late-spring record and began the season as the Mets' No. 4 starting pitcher. Ray Sadecki hung on with the Cardinals, but it was a near thing. His earned-run average for the training season was 9.00. Spring, as he said, is hard on people.

LATE POSTCARD.

Walt Williams got the job done in the 1975 season, just as he promised he would. He appeared in eighty-two games for the Yankees, batted .281, and qualified as a ten-year man in the major-league pension plan. Last summer, he played for the Nippon Ham Fighters, in j.a.pan, where he batted .288 and ran out everything. Ray Negron's hopes were not similarly rewarded. He worked hard at Pirate City and impressed the Pittsburgh organization with his eagerness and character, but he could not hit professional pitching. He was cut loose early in the season, and thus got home to see his girl friend Barbara long before September. Ray Sadecki suffered more midseason trades in 1975, moving from the Cardinals to the Braves, and from the Braves to the Kansas City Royals, while acc.u.mulating an overall record of four wins and three losses and an earned-run average of 4.03. Last year, he pitched for the Milwaukee Brewers, finis.h.i.+ng with marks of 20 and 3.86. Del Crandall, the Milwaukee manager, was fired at the end of the 1975 campaign. He took a year-round job as public relations director for a California medical group, but when spring training came around again he discovered that it was impossible for him to stay away from baseball, and he signed on to manage the Salinas Angels, in the Cla.s.s A California League.

Gone for Good

- June 1975 THE PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS A perfectly arrested moment of joy. On one side-the left, as you look at the picture-the catcher is running toward the camera at full speed, with his upraised arms spread wide. 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. Over on the right, another player, the pitcher, is just past the apex of an astonis.h.i.+ng leap that has brought his knees up to his chest and his feet well up off the ground. Both of his arms are flung wide, and he, too, is shouting. His hunched, airborne posture makes him look like a man who just made a running jump over a sizable object-a kitchen table, say. By luck, two of the outreaching hands have overlapped exactly in the middle of the photograph, so that the pitcher's bare right palm and fingers are silhouetted against the catcher's glove, and as a result the two men are linked and seem to be executing a figure in a manic and difficult dance. There is a further marvel-a touch of pure fortune-in the background, where a spectator in dark gla.s.ses, wearing a dark suit, has risen from his seat in the grandstand and is lifting his arms in triumph. This, the third and central Y in the picture, is immobile. It is directly behind the overlapping hand and glove of the dancers, and it binds and recapitulates the lines of force and the movements and the theme of the work, creating a composition as serene and well ordered as a Giotto. The subject of the picture, of course, is cla.s.sical-the celebration of the last out of the seventh game of the World Series.

This famous photograph (by Rusty Kennedy, of the a.s.sociated Press) does not require captioning for most baseball fans or for almost anyone within the Greater Pittsburgh area, where it is still prominently featured in the art collections of several hundred taverns. 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. The date of the photograph is October 17, 1971; the place is Memorial Stadium, in Baltimore. The catcher is Manny Sanguillen, of the Pirates, and his leaping teammate is pitcher Steve Bla.s.s, who has just defeated the defending (and suddenly former) World Champion Baltimore Orioles by a score of 21, giving up four hits.

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 Bla.s.s's face after the game ended. His was, to be sure, a famous victory-a close and bitterly fought pitchers' battle against the Orioles' Mike Cuellar, in which the only score for seven innings had been a solo home run by the celebrated Pirate outfielder Roberto Clemente. 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 Bla.s.s shut them off once and for all. The win was the culmination of a stirring uphill fight by the Pirates, who had fallen into difficulties by losing the first two games to the Orioles; Steve Bla.s.s had begun their comeback with a wonderfully pitched three-hit, 51 victory in the third game. It was an outstanding Series, made memorable above all by the play of Roberto Clemente, who batted .414 over the seven games and fielded his position with extraordinary zeal. He was awarded the sports car as the most valuable player of the Series, but Steve Bla.s.s was not far out of the running for the prize. After that last game, Baltimore manager Earl Weaver said, "Clemente was great, all right, but if it hadn't been for Mr. Bla.s.s, we might be popping the corks right now."

I remember the vivid contrast in styles between the two stars in the noisy, floodlit, champagne-drenched Pirate clubhouse that afternoon. Clemente, at last the recipient of the kind of national attention he had always deserved but had rarely been given for his years of brilliant play, remained erect and removed, regarding the swarming photographers with a haughty, incandescent pride. Bla.s.s was a less obvious hero-a competent but far from overpowering right-hander who had won fifteen games for the Pirates that year, with a most respectable 2.85 earned-run average, but who had absorbed a terrible pounding by the San Francisco Giants in the two games he pitched in the National League playoffs, just before the Series. His two Series victories, by contrast, were momentous by any standard-and, indeed, were among the very best pitching performances of his entire seven years in the majors. Bla.s.s, in any case, celebrated the Pirates' champions.h.i.+p more exuberantly than Clemente, exchanging hugs and shouts with his teammates, alternately smoking a cigar and swigging from a champagne bottle. Later, I saw him in front of his locker with his arm around his father, Bob Bla.s.s, a plumber from Falls Village, Connecticut, who had once been a semipro pitcher; the two Bla.s.ses, I saw, were wearing identical delighted, nonstop smiles.

Near the end of an article I wrote about that 1971 World Series, I mentioned watching Steve Bla.s.s 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: "Bla.s.s ... then arched his back, cricked his neck oddly, rolled his head a few times, took up a stance in the back corner of the batter's box, with his bat held high, and glared out at the pitcher imperiously-Clemente, to the life." I had never seen such a spirited gesture in a serious baseball setting, and since then I have come to realize that Steve Bla.s.s's informality and boyish play const.i.tuted an essential private style, as original and as significant as Clemente's eaglelike pride, and that each of them was merely responding in his own way to the challenges of an extremely difficult public profession. Which of the two, I keep wondering, was happier that afternoon about the Pirates' champions.h.i.+p and his part in it? 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. Steve Bla.s.s, who is now thirty-three, is out of baseball, having been recently driven into retirement by two years of pitching wildness-a sudden, near-total inability to throw strikes. No one, including Bla.s.s himself, can cure or explain it.

The summer of 1972, the year after his splendid World Series, was in most respects the best season that Steve Bla.s.s ever had. He won nineteen games for the Pirates and lost only eight, posting an earned-run average of 2.48-sixth-best in the National League-and being selected for the NL All-Star team. What pleased him most that year was his consistency. He went the full distance in eleven of the thirty-two games he started, and averaged better than seven and a half innings per start-not dazzling figures (Steve Carlton, of the Phillies, had thirty complete games that year, and Bob Gibson, of the Cards, had twenty-three) but satisfying ones for a man who had once had inordinate difficulty in finis.h.i.+ng games. Bla.s.s, it should be understood, was not the same kind of pitcher as a Carlton or a Gibson. He was never a blazer. When standing on the mound, he somehow looked more like a journeyman pitcher left over from the nineteen thirties or forties than like one of the hulking, hairy young flingers of today. (He is six feet tall, and weighs about one hundred and eighty pounds.) Watching him work, you sometimes wondered how he was getting all those batters out. The word on him among the other clubs in his league was something like: Good but not overpowering stuff, excellent slider, good curve, good change-up curve. A pattern pitcher, whose slider works because of its location. No control problems. Intelligent, knows how to win.

I'm not certain that I saw Bla.s.s work in the regular season of 1972, but I did see him pitch the opening game of the National League playoffs that fall against the Cincinnati Reds, in Pittsburgh. After giving up a home run to the Reds' second batter of the day, Joe Morgan, which was. .h.i.t off a first-pitch fastball, Bla.s.s readjusted his plans and went mostly to a big, slow curve, causing the Reds to hit innumerable rainmaking outfield flies, and won by 51. I can still recall how Bla.s.s looked that afternoon-his characteristic, feet-together stance at the outermost, first-base edge of the pitching rubber, and then the pitch, delivered with a swastikalike scattering of arms and legs and a final lurch to the left-and 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 Bla.s.s to cover. But it never happened-Bla.s.s saw to it that it didn't. 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 32-a 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 ent.i.tled the Reds to meet the Oakland A's in the 1972 World Series. It was a horrendous disappointment for the Pittsburgh Pirates and their fans, for which no blame at all could be attached to Bla.s.s.

My next view of Steve Bla.s.s on a baseball diamond came on a cool afternoon at the end of April this year. The game-the White Sox vs. the Orioles-was a close, 31 affair, in which the winning White Sox pitcher, John McKenzie, struck out seventeen batters in six innings. A lot of the Sox struck out, too, and a lot of players on both teams walked-more than I could count, in fact. The big hit of the game was a triple to left center by the White Sox catcher, David Bla.s.s, who is ten years old. His eight-year-old brother, Chris, played second, and their father, Steve Bla.s.s, in old green slacks and a green T-s.h.i.+rt, coached at third. 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 School-Little League baseball, but at a junior and highly informal level. The low, low minors. Most of the action, or inaction, took place around home plate, since there was not much bat-on-ball contact, but there was a shrill nonstop piping of encouragement from the fielders, and disappointed batters were complimented on their overswings by a small, chilly a.s.semblage of mothers, coaches, and dads. When Chris Bla.s.s went down swinging in the fourth, his father came over and said, "The sinker down and away is tough." Steve Bla.s.s has a longish, lightly freckled face, a tilted nose, and an alert and engaging expression. At this ball game, 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. He looked much more like a commuter than like a professional athlete.

Bla.s.s coached quietly, moving the fielders in or over a few steps, asking the shortstop if he knew how many outs there were, reminding someone to take his hands out of his pockets. "Learning the names of all the kids is the hard part," he said to me. It was his second game of the spring as a White Sox coach, and between innings one of the young outfielders said to him, "Hey, Mr. Bla.s.s, how come you're not playing with the Pirates at Three Rivers today?"

"Well," Bla.s.s said equably, "I'm not in baseball anymore."

"Oh," said the boy.

Twilight and the end of the game approached at about the same speed, and I kept losing track of the count on the batters. Steve Bla.s.s, 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 b.a.l.l.s he had already delivered to the same batter; a strike on the 3-0 count reconverted things to 0-1. He suddenly laughed. "Why didn't they have that rule in the NL?" he said. "I'd have lasted until I was fifty."

Then it was over. The winning (and undefeated) White Sox and the losing Orioles exchanged cheers, and Karen Bla.s.s, a winning and clearly undefeated mother, came over and introduced me to the winning catcher and the winning second baseman. The Bla.s.ses and I walked slowly along together over the thick new gra.s.s, toting gloves and helmets and Karen's fold-up lawn chair, and at the parking lot the party divided into two cars-Karen and the boys homeward bound, and Steve Bla.s.s and I off to a nearby shopping center to order one large cheese-and-peppers-and-sausage victory pizza, to go.

Bla.s.s and I sat in his car at the pizza place, drinking beer and waiting for our order, and he talked about his baseball beginnings. I said I had admired the relaxed, low-key tenor of the game we had just seen, and he told me that his own Little League coach, back in Connecticut-a man named Jerry Fallon-had always seen to it that playing baseball on his club was a pleasure. "On any level, baseball is a tough game if it isn't really fun," Bla.s.s said. "I think most progress in baseball comes from enjoying it and then wanting to extend yourself a little, wanting it to become more. There should be a feeling of 'Let's go! Let's keep on with this!'"

He kept on with it, in all seasons and circ.u.mstances. The Bla.s.ses' place in Falls Village included an old barn with an interestingly angled roof, against which young Steve Bla.s.s played hundreds of one-man games (his four brothers and sisters were considerably younger) with a tennis ball. "I had all kinds of games, with different, very complicated ground rules," he said. "I'd throw the ball up, and then I'd be diving into the weeds for pop-ups or running back and calling for the long fly b.a.l.l.s, and all. I'd always play a full game-a made-up game, with two big-league teams-and I'd write down the line score as I went along, and keep the results. One of the teams always had to be the Indians. I was a total Indians fan, completely buggy. In the summer of '54, when they won that record one hundred and eleven games, I managed to find every single Indians box score in the newspapers and clip it, which took some doing up where we lived. I guess Herb Score was my real hero-I actually pitched against him once in Indianapolis, in '63, when he was trying to make a comeback-but I knew the whole team by heart. 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. My first big-league autograph was Hank Majeski."

Bla.s.s grew up into an athlete-a good sandlot football player, a second-team All-State Cla.s.s B basketball star, but most of all a pitcher, like his father. ("He was wilder than h.e.l.l," Bla.s.s said. "Once, in a Canaan game, he actually threw a pitch over the backstop.") Steve Bla.s.s pitched two no-hitters in his junior year at Housatonic Regional High School, and three more as a senior, but there were so many fine pitchers on the team that he did not get to be a starter until his final year. (One of the stars just behind him was John Lamb, who later pitched for the Pirates; Lamb's older sister, Karen, was a cla.s.smate of Steve's, and in time she found herself doubly affiliated with the Pirate mound staff.) The Pittsburgh organization signed Steve Bla.s.s right out of Housatonic High in 1960, and he began moving up through the minors. 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. He didn't quite make the big club when training ended in the spring, and was sent down to the Pirates' Triple A club in Columbus, but the call came three weeks later. Bla.s.s said, "We got in the car, and I floored it all the way across Ohio. I remember it was raining as we came out of the tunnel in Pittsburgh, and I drove straight to Forbes Field and went in and found the attendant and put my uniform on, at two in the afternoon. There was no game there, or anything-I just had to see how it looked."

We had moved along by now to the Bla.s.ses' house, a medium-sized brick structure on a hillside in Upper St. Clair, which is a suburb about twelve miles southeast of Pittsburgh. The pizza disappeared rapidly, and then David and Chris went off upstairs to do their homework or watch TV. The Bla.s.s family room was trophied and comfortable. 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 s.h.i.+ny 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 Bla.s.s 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 Bla.s.s, 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 town's three selectmen. The biggest picture in the room hung over the sofa-an enlarged color photograph of the Bla.s.s family at the Father-and-Sons Day at Three Rivers Stadium in 1971. In the photo, Karen Bla.s.s looks extremely pretty in a large straw hat, and all three male Bla.s.ses are wearing Pirate uniforms; the boys' uniforms look a little funny, because in their excitement each boy had put on the other's pants. Great picture.

Karen and Steve pointed this out to me, and then they went back to their arrival in the big time on that rainy long-ago first day in Pittsburgh and Steve's insisting on trying on his Pirate uniform, and they leaned back in their chairs and laughed about it again.

"With Steve, everything is right out in the open," Karen said. "Every accomplishment, every stage of the game-you have no idea how much he loved it, how he enjoyed the game."

That year, in his first outing, Bla.s.s pitched five scoreless innings in relief against the Braves, facing, among others, Hank Aaron. In his first start, against the Dodgers in Los Angeles, he pitched against Don Drysdale and won, 42. "I thought I'd died and gone to Heaven," Bla.s.s said to me.

He lit a cigar and blew out a little smoke. "You know, this thing that's happened has been painted so bad, so tragic," he said. "Well, I don't go along with that. I know what I've done in baseball, and I give myself all the credit in the world for it. I'm not bitter about this. I've had the greatest moments a person could ever want. When I was a boy, I used to make up those fict.i.tious games where I was always pitching in the bottom of the ninth in the World Series. Well, I really did it. It went on and happened to me. n.o.body's ever enjoyed winning a big-league game more than I have. All I've ever wanted to do since I was six years old was to keep on playing baseball. It didn't even have to be major-league ball. I've never been a goal-planner-I've never said I'm going to do this or that. With me, everything was just a continuation of what had come before. I think that's why I enjoyed it all so much when it did come along, when the good things did happen."

All this was said with an air of summing up, of finality, but at other times that evening I noticed that it seemed difficult for Bla.s.s to talk about his baseball career as a thing of the past; now and then he slipped into the present tense-as if it were still going on. This was understandable, for he was in limbo. The Pirates had finally released him late in March ("out-righted" him, in baseball parlance), near the end of the spring-training season, and he had subsequently decided not to continue his attempts to salvage his pitching form in the minor leagues. Earlier in the week of my visit, he had accepted a promising job with Josten's, 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 traveling representative in the Pittsburgh area. He was out of baseball for good.

Pitching consistency is probably the ingredient that separates major-league baseball from the lesser levels of the game. 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. 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 hurler's body and psyche that even the most successful pitchers regularly have games when they simply can't get the job done. Their fastball comes in high, their curves hang, the rest of their prime weapons desert them. The pitcher is knocked about, often by an inferior rival team, and leaves within a few innings; asked about it later, he shrugs and says, "I didn't have it today." He seems unsurprised. Pitching, it sometimes appears, is too hard for anyone. Occasionally, the poor performance is repeated, then extended. The pitcher goes into a slump. He sulks or rages, according to his nature; he asks for help; he works long hours on his motion. Still he cannot win. He worries about his arm, which almost always hurts to some degree. Has it gone dead? He worries about his stuff. Has he lost his velocity? He wonders whether he will ever win again or whether he will now join the long, long list-the list that awaits him, almost surely, in the end-of suddenly slow, suddenly sore-armed pitchers who have abruptly vanished from the big time, down the drain to oblivion. Then, unexpectedly, the slump ends-most of the time, that is-and he is back where he was: a winning pitcher. There is rarely an explanation for this, whether the slump has lasted for two games or a dozen, and managers and coaches, when pressed for one, will usually mutter that "pitching is a delicate thing," or-as if it explained anything-"he got back in the groove."

In spite of such hovering and inexplicable hazards, every big-league pitcher knows exactly what is expected of him. As with the other aspects of the game, statistics define his work and-day by day, inning by inning-whether he is getting it done. Thus, it may be posited as a rule that a major-league hurler who gives up an average of just over three and a half runs per game is about at the middle of his profession-an average pitcher. (Last year, the National League and the American League both wound up with a per-game earned-run average of 3.62.) At contract-renewal time, earned-run averages below 3.30 are invariably mentioned by pitchers; an ERA close to or above the 4.00 level will always be brought up by management. The select levels of pitching proficiency (and salary) begin below the 3.00 line; in fact, an ERA of less than 3.00 certifies true quality in almost exactly the same fas.h.i.+on as an over-.300 batting average for hitters. Last year, both leagues had ten pitchers who finished below 3.00, led by Buzz Capra's NL mark of 2.28 and Catfish Hunter's 2.49 in the AL. The best season-long earned-run average of the modern baseball era was Bob Gibson's 1.12 mark, set in 1968.

Strikeouts are of no particular use in defining pitching effectiveness, since there are other, less vivid ways of retiring batters, but bases on b.a.l.l.s matter. To put it in simple terms, a good, middling pitcher should not surrender more than three or four walks per game-unless he is also striking out batters in considerable cl.u.s.ters. Last year, Ferguson Jenkins, of the Texas Rangers, gave up only 45 walks in 328 innings pitched, or an average of 1.19 per game. Nolan Ryan, of the Angels, walked 202 men in 333 innings, or 5.4 per game; however, he helped himself considerably by fanning 367, or just under ten men per game. The fastball is a great healer.

At the beginning of the 1973 season, Steve Bla.s.s had a lifetime earned-run average of 3.25 and was averaging 1.9 walks per game. He was, in short, an extremely successful and useful big-league pitcher, and was understandably enjoying his work. Early that season, however, baseball suddenly stopped being fun for him. He pitched well in spring training in Bradenton, which was unusual, for he has always been a very slow starter. He pitched on opening day, against the Cards, but threw poorly and was relieved, although the Pirates eventually won the game. For a time, his performance was borderline, but his few wins were in sloppy, high-scoring contests, and his bad outings were marked by streaks of uncharacteristic wildness and ineffectuality. On April 22, against the Cubs, he gave up a walk, two singles, a homer, and a double in the first inning, sailed through the second inning, and then walked a man and hit two batsmen in the third. 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. By early June, his record was three wins and three losses, but his earned-run average suggested that his difficulties were serious. Bill Virdon, the Pirate manager, was patient and told Bla.s.s to take all the time he needed to find himself; he reminded Bla.s.s that once-in 1970-he 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.

What was mystifying about the whole thing was that Bla.s.s still had his stuff, especially when he warmed up or threw on the sidelines. He was in great physical shape, as usual, and his arm felt fine; in his entire pitching career, Bla.s.s never experienced a sore arm. Virdon remained calm, although he was clearly puzzled. Some pitching mechanics were discussed and worked on: Bla.s.s 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. These are routine pitching mistakes, which almost all pitchers are guilty of from time to time, and Bla.s.s worked on them a.s.siduously. He started again against the Braves on June 11, in Atlanta; after three and one-third innings he was gone, having given up seven singles, a home run, two walks, and a total of five runs. Virdon and Bla.s.s agreed that a spell in the bullpen seemed called for; at least he could work on his problems there every day.

Two days later, the roof fell in. The team was still in Atlanta, and Virdon called Bla.s.s into the game in the fifth inning, with the Pirates trailing by 83. Bla.s.s walked the first two men he faced, and gave up a stolen base and a wild pitch and a run-scoring single before retiring the side. In the sixth, Bla.s.s walked Darrell Evans. He walked Mike Lum, throwing one pitch behind him in the process, which allowed Evans to move down to second. Dusty Baker singled, driving in a run. Ralph Garr grounded out. Davey Johnson singled, scoring another run. Marty Perez walked. Pitcher Ron Reed singled, driving in two more runs, and was wild-pitched to second. Johnny Oates walked. Frank Tepedino singled, driving in two runs, and Steve Bla.s.s was finally relieved. His totals for the one and one-third innings were seven runs, five hits, six bases on b.a.l.l.s, and three wild pitches.

"It was the worst experience of my baseball life," Bla.s.s told me. "I don't think I'll ever forget it. I was embarra.s.sed and disgusted. I was totally unnerved. You can't imagine the feeling that you suddenly have no idea what you're doing out there, performing that way as a major-league pitcher. It was kind of scary."

None of Bla.s.s's appearances during the rest of the '73 season were as dreadful as the Atlanta game, but none of them were truly successful. On August 1, 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. A little later, Virdon gave him a start in the Hall of Fame game at Cooperstown; this is a meaningless annual exhibition, played that year between the Pirates and the Texas Rangers, but Bla.s.s was as wild as ever and had to be relieved after two and one-third innings. After that, Bill Virdon announced that Bla.s.s would probably not start another game; the Pirates were in a pennant race, and the time for patience had run out.

Bla.s.s retired to the bullpen and worked on fundamentals. He threw a lot, once pitching a phantom nine-inning game while his catcher, Dave Ricketts, called the b.a.l.l.s and strikes. 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," Bla.s.s told me. He knew that Virdon was not going to use him, but whenever the Pirates fell behind in a game, he felt jumpy about the possibility of being called upon. "I knew I wasn't capable of going in there," he said. "I was afraid of embarra.s.sing myself again, and letting down the club."

On September 6, the Pirate front office announced that Danny Murtaugh, who had served two previous terms as the Pirates' manager, was replacing Bill Virdon at the helm; the Pirates were caught up in a close, four-team division race, and it was felt that Murtaugh's experience might bring them home. One of Murtaugh's first acts was to announce that Steve Bla.s.s would be given a start. The game he picked was against the Cubs, in Chicago, on September 11. Bla.s.s, 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. The game went well for him. The Cubs won, 20, but Steve gave up only two hits and one earned run in the five innings he worked. He pitched with extreme care, throwing mostly sliders. He had another pretty good outing against the Cardinals, for no decision, and then started against the Mets, in New York, on September 21, but got only two men out, giving up four instant runs on a walk and four hits. The Mets won, 102, dropping the Pirates out of first place, but Bla.s.s, although unhappy about his showing, found some hope in the fact that he had at least been able to get the ball over the plate. "At that point," he said, "I was looking for even a little bit of success-one good inning, a few real fastb.a.l.l.s, anything to hold on to that might halt my negative momentum. I wanted to feel I had at least got things turned around and facing in the right direction."

The Mets game was his last of the year. His statistics for the 1973 season were three wins and nine defeats, and an earned-run average of 9.81. That figure and his record of eighty-four walks in eighty-nine innings pitched were the worst in the National League.

I went to another ball game with Steve Bla.s.s on the night after the Little League affair-this time at Three Rivers Stadium, where the Pirates were meeting the Cardinals. We sat behind home plate, down near the screen, and during the first few innings a lot of young fans came cl.u.s.tering down the aisle to get Steve's autograph. People in the sections near us kept calling and waving to him. "Everybody has been great to me, all through this thing," Bla.s.s said. "I don't think there are too many here who are thinking, 'Look, there's the wild man.' I've had hundreds and hundreds of letters-I don't know how many-and not one of them was down on me."

In the game, Bob Gibson pitched against the Pirates' Jerry Reuss. When Ted Simmons stood in for the visitors, Bla.s.s said, "He's always. .h.i.t me pretty good. He's really developed as a hitter." Then there was an error by Richie Hebner, at third, on a grounder hit by Ken Reitz, and Bla.s.s said, "Did you notice the batter take that big swing and then hit it off his hands? It was the swing that put Richie back on his heels like that." Later on, Richie Zisk hit a homer off Gibson, on a three-and-two count, and Bla.s.s murmured, "The high slider is one of the hittable pitches when it isn't just right. I should know."

The game rushed along, as games always do when Gibson is pitching. "You know," Bla.s.s said, "before we faced him we'd always have a team meeting and we'd say, 'Stay out of the batter's box, clean your spikes-anything to make him slow up.' But it never lasted more than an inning or two. He makes you play his game."

A little later, however, Willie Stargell hit a homer, and then Manny Sanguillen drove in another run with a double off the left-field wall ("Get out of here!" Steve said while the ball was in flight), and it was clear that this was not to be a Gibson night. Bla.s.s was enjoying himself, and it seemed to me that the familiarities and surprises of the game had restored something in him. At one point, he leaned forward a little and peered into the Pirate dugout and murmured, "Is Dock Ellis over in his regular corner there?" but for the most part he kept his eyes on the field. I tried to imagine what it felt like for him not to be down in the dugout.

I had talked that day to a number of Bla.s.s's old teammates, and all of them had mentioned his cheerfulness and his jokes, and what they had meant to the team over the years. "Steve's humor in the clubhouse was unmatched," relief pitcher Dave Giusti said. "He was a terrific mimic. Perfect. He could do Robert Kennedy. He could do Manny Sanguillen. He could do Roberto Clemente-not just the way he moved but the way he talked. Clemente loved it. He could do rat sounds-the noise a rat makes running. Lots of other stuff