The Pirates fell short on Steve Blass day Saturday at PNC Park, losing to the Reds, 4-2, in 12 innings.
Still, Blass has a new favorite baseball movie. Yes, The Natural and Field of Dreams are classics, but they might not compare to Sep. 27, 2019.
Blass' final televised broadcast that day was filled with trips down memory lane, personalized messages and thank-yous. To end it, Kevin Newman became the leading man in Blass' movie, hitting a two-out, come-from-behind home run.
“It’s a wonderful script, isn’t it?" Blass told me over the phone on Saturday morning.
After the game, there was a celebration in the Pirates' clubhouse, but when AT&T SportsNet started to play a tribute video for Blass' career, they stopped and gathered in front of a TV to watch.
Even though the team largely consists of young players and newcomers, most of whom have known Blass for only long enough to barely register as a blip on the radar of his 60 years with the Pirates, they knew the significance of the man and what he has meant to Pittsburgh Pirates baseball.
“You take a step back and really realize what he’s done," Newman was telling me at his locker. "To put 60 years of your life towards an organization, to do what he’s done for so long with so much class, such excitement, such positivity. The way he affected the city. It really makes you realize and appreciate what he’s meant.”
The movie game was on Friday. Saturday, Sept. 28, however, was decreed "Steve Blass Day" by the city of Pittsburgh. During a pregame, on-field ceremony in Blass' honor, his longtime broadcast partner Greg Brown announced the Pirates were establishing a team Hall of Fame and that Blass would be part of the inaugural class.
Not bad for a kid from Canaan, Conn., who knew very little about Pittsburgh.
The journey began on June 27, 1960, when Pirate scout Bob Whalen offered him $4,000 and a promise to start him in the minor leagues immediately to sign out of high school. As the years passed, there were complete games in the World Series, an All-Star appearance and being patient zero for "Steve Blass Disease."
On Sunday, it will come to a close, with Blass concluding his 34 seasons as a color commentator with a radio broadcast on 93.7 The Fan.
He is not doing it because he has to. Anyone who saw him hanging onto the "main yard" during his call of Newman's home run could see he still has the passion, the energy and the ability to do his job. However, at 77, he is ready for the next chapter and will transition to an ambassador role in 2020.
And while the number of years of service Blass put into the job was what has been recognized during his final days on the job, it was the quality of his work that made him an integral part of those countless summer nights.
“He’s a really outstanding broadcaster," Brown was telling me. "That’s the thing I hope doesn’t get lost in all of this.”
Brown refers to Blass as a "renaissance man." Well-read. Sharp. Quick-witted. Has a vast mental vocabulary.
And that vocabulary is a source of pride for Blass. He attributes it to being a "voracious reader," and it made him a better broadcaster.
“The color guy should have the ability, the vocabulary, to get in and out," Blass said. "Make your point quick and then not intrude on the game.”
Blass was not intrusive, but rather welcoming and relatable. That was what immediately stuck out about him to his other current broadcast partner, Joe Block.
“How many of us can relate to somebody who was on the mound for Game 7 of the World Series and won it? But yet, he is," Block said. "He’s just one of us.”
Blass was still playing when he started to think about making the jump to broadcasting. When he was demoted to Triple-A Charleston, W. Va., in 1974, he started trying to think out play-by-play while watching games from the dugout. He could not do it.
However, after he was removed from games, he would go up to the booth to talk with young broadcaster Lanny Frattare. There, he found the rhythm of performing with a headset on.
“Without even knowing it, I was doing some color commentary," Blass said. “... That was the foundation of me getting started.”
Frattare, now a professor at Waynesburg University, stresses to his students a cardinal rule of broadcasting: Be yourself. That is what Blass does best.
“Steve is, on the air, who he is," Frattare told me. "He’s a very gregarious guy. He’s a very fun-loving individual. He loves telling stories. He loves to laugh. He loves to make people laugh.”
That love of making people laugh came from his father, Bob Blass. Steve said he used to roll his eyes at his dad for doing that, but he eventually became his father.
"There's nothing better, in my mind, than putting someone at ease and telling a story and making them smile," Blass said.
And for 34 years, Blass has shared stories, even though he claimed to only have seven, and laughs with Pirate listeners through good times and bad.
On Saturday, he opened his speech with, "There's nothing better than knowing there are people that care about you." As the rain picked up, he cut his remarks short and ended it with by telling the crowd, "I love all of you. You own my heart."
The feeling was mutual.
• Blass' day also came with a baseball game that went into the next day, lasting 12 innings after being delayed an hour and five minutes due to rain.
Locked at two apiece since the fourth, Jose Iglesias broke the tie with a two-out double against Alex McRae in the 12th. McRae was in his second inning of work and was the eighth pitcher the Pirates used.
The Pirates offense scored their two runs in the second on a passed ball and a Steve Baron double. They had trouble getting anything going after that, though they came close to finishing it in the ninth.
Pablo Reyes opened that inning with a walk and advanced to third on an Adam Frazier double. With nobody out, Jose Osuna, Jake Elmore and Erik Gonzalez could not bring home the winning run.
"Truthfully, if we take care of the ninth inning on our side, we're not even having the same conversation," Clint Hurdle said.
• James Marvel continued the stretch of positive final outings for Pirate starters. He lasted five innings and allowed two runs on six hits and two walks. He struck out a pair.
After a rough previous two starts on the road, Marvel's September promotion ended on a better note.
"I'm proud of how I finished, against a good Cincinnati team," Marvel said. "I closed out the NL Central and all the teams that I faced. Really good teams. Learning a lot being here every day. Learning a lot about myself. I'm proud I finished pretty strong there. It will be good to go into the offseason on a high note."
His biggest pitch of the night came in the fifth inning. With the go-ahead run 90 feet away, he rung up Eugenio Suarez with a high-and-tight fastball.
• The Reds stranded 15 runners on base and went 3 for 18 with runners in scoring position.
"We made some really good pitches when we had to," Hurdle said.
• Baron was removed from the game in the second inning after being struck in the face on a pick-off attempt. Elias Diaz is out for the season, Baron was still at the hospital during the post-game interviews and Stallings has caught three days in a row and has had some back discomfort this month.
So the emergency catcher threat is at orange alert. Elmore volunteered to catch when he was promoted from Triple-A for the first time in May and Reyes took drills in spring training.
"It'll look like a bunch of equipment's just behind home plate if it's not Stallings," Hurdle joked.
• Blass is, among many other things, a storyteller and a great subject for a story. So while talking to people for today's main piece, I asked them what their favorite Blass story was. Here are the responses:
Greg Brown
During the 1994 player's strike, Brown and Blass called several games for the Pirates' Triple-A affiliate in Buffalo. One day, they and two other members of the production team went to a downtown movie theater to catch a matinee of the new Bruce Willis thriller, Color of Night.
Half an hour in, Brown goes to the bathroom. While in there, he spots someone with a sawed-off shotgun. Brown looked up and saw that its owner had seen his face.
Brown started to panic as he went back to his seat. When he returned, he told the other two members what he saw, and they got scared too. Meanwhile, Blass was not in the loop.
“Steve goes, ‘Quit talking! You’re interrupting the movie,'" Brown said. “I said, ‘Steve, I saw a guy with a sawed-off shotgun.’ And he goes, “Let’s get the hell out of here!’"
The four began to sneak out the back, trying to be as quiet as possible. Right before they get out, Steve stops.
"Wait a minute," he said. "I forgot my Raisinets."
Blass went back to retrieve his candy. He got it, and as he started to head for the exit, the rustle of the Raisinets was so loud that it drew the attention of the theater to them.
“All you could hear were those damn Raisinets,” Blass said. “... The guys looked at me like I was a mental patient."
Lanny Frattare
Those days in Charleston hold a special place for Frattare.
“What an honor it was for me," Frattare said. "Here I am, a minor league announcer, sitting next to an All-Star and a World Series champion.”
But Blass was still a player first. One day, they had a make-up game in Toledo and then had to travel to Pawtucket, R.I. Blass started the Toledo game and got knocked out early. Disappointed, Blass decided not to take off his uniform after his start. Or in the clubhouse. Or on the bus.
It was a 16-hour bus ride with stops from Toledo to Rhode Island. Blass was in his uniform for all of it.
“We stopped for breakfast on the New York state thruway and there he was, with his uniform on,” Frattare said.
Manny Sanguillen
Well, of course it was that October day 48 years ago.
If he wanted to, Sanguillen could do DVD commentary for Game 7 of the 1971 World Series today. He can tell you about pitch sequences they did to Frank Robinson like he was doing a postgame interview from the game that afternoon. Blass can remember starting his wind-up before Sanguillen had even put a sign down.
So rather than retelling the entire game again, let's look at two moments. The first came in the first inning when Orioles' manager Earl Weaver protested that Blass was throwing from the side of the rubber, not the front. Many suspected it was a move to try to rattle Blass. While most catchers would talk to their pitcher to make sure they were ok, Sanguillen knew he should keep his distance.
"If I went [to the mound] before the third inning, Steve would think he doesn't have anything," Sanguillen said.
The other came in the eighth inning. With runners on first and second and nobody out, the Orioles' Tom Shopay bunted and Blass fielded it cleanly. Then he heard Sanguillen.
“He came out hollering ‘Three! Three! Third base,’" Blass said. "And I had third base to the back of me and I wasn’t going to turn around, not knowing where I was going to throw the ball. I took the safe out at first base.
"To this day, he says, ‘You know, we had that guy at third base. You know that, don’t you?’”
As the inning progressed, the Orioles scored their only run of the game on a ground out. Had Blass gone to third and gotten the out, his game seven start very well could have been a shutout.
But it all worked out in the end.
Joe Block
Many of Block's favorite moments with Blass are the laughs they had on air and between innings, so it is impossible to narrow down a "favorite." He does remember meeting him when Block was a member of the Milwaukee Brewers' broadcast team.
Before the series, Blass approached Bob Uecker and Block and immediately started doing what he loves to do: Tell jokes.
“Well, how are you going to approach Bob Uecker without having a story?” Blass asked.
“Ueck and I are in stitches," Block said. "And I’m like, ‘Oh, this guy must be pretty good to be around.’”
When Block joined the team in 2016, the broadcasters had a BBQ on the second day of spring training. There, they ate, drank, talked and, of course, laughed, and Block felt welcome.
“That’s what’s so great about him," Block said. "You never feel uncomfortable around him. You never feel out of place. He made me feel like I’d been here forever.”
Greg Brown, again
"The disrobing."
It was a hot summer day in St. Louis. One-hundred degrees, humid, no air circulation, the heat bouncing off the artificial turf at Busch Memorial Stadium. Brown and Blass had been out late the night before and were tired, so they were struggling.
After a few innings, Blass could not take it anymore. He needed to cool down, so he took off his sport jacket. Then the dress shirt. Then the undershirt.
“By the end of the third inning, he’s doing the game in his shorts,” Brown said.
Eventually, Pirate first base coach Tommy Sandt was able to see what was happening in the radio booth from field level. Soon, the whole dugout was in on the joke.
“They were howling down there," Blass said. "We’re in the middle of the game and this maniac up there is half-naked.”
To complete the visual, Blass popped in a cigar.
“You couldn’t imagine it in this day and age, and you couldn’t do it in this day and age. But back then, things were different, and Steve’s always been different. Steve is Steve.”
Steve Blass
No introduction is needed. Just a transcription.
“It’s a true story. That I came from this little town in Connecticut and I have had a chance to live my dream. Everybody has dreams, but not everybody has a chance to live them. So my story is that I got lucky. The Pirates gave me an opportunity to live my dream, and I will never forget that. I lived it to this day, and because of that, they will have my loyalty forever. I will never give up on them, never quit on them, because they gave me this opportunity to live my dream in this city.”
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
THE INJURIES
• Chris Archer (shoulder, out for season)
• Gregory Polanco (shoulder, out for season)
• Josh Bell (groin, done for year)
• Staring Marte (wrist, out for season)
• Elias Diaz (knee, out for season)
• Cole Tucker (knee, out for season)
• Lonnie Chisenhall (60-day IL, a Pirate for 60 minutes)
Here’s the most recent full report.
THE SCHEDULE
All good things must come to an end. Trevor Williams (7-8, 5.52) will take the bump in the season finale against Tyler Mahle (2-12, 5.34) at 3:05 p.m.. Dejan Kovacevic, Matt Sunday and I will take you across the finish line.
THE COVERAGE
All our baseball content, including every installment of Mound Visit by Jason Rollison, can be found on our Pirates page.
