PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – It was one Pirates playoff pitcher helping another in a little told story of how Bob Walk helped Steve Blass work through his control issues.
Blass’ career ended with a seemingly sudden inability to throw strikes. The man who pitched a complete game four-hitter to clinch the Pirates 1971 World Series (threw 18 innings in two World Series starts giving up only seven hits and two runs) and won 19 games in 1972 was out of baseball by 1974. Blass talked about it publicly, but what really wasn’t discussed was how Bob Walk helped him later in life.
On the Pomp and Joe Show Friday, Walk said it was about 20 years ago or so that he was at a Pirates Fantasy Camp in Bradenton (and this story comes from Blass’ autobiography). Walk didn’t see Blass struggle in MLB, he was in high school at the time, but had heard about it.
As they were in-between sessions with Pirates fans who paid to be around their baseball heroes, Walk decided it was time for a catch. He went into the Pirates clubhouse and got a got a catcher’s glove and they headed out to a pitcher’s mound with no one around.
“I told Steve, ‘come on, grab a fielders’ glove, a couple of baseballs, we are going to the bullpen’,” Walk recalled with Joe Starkey. “I made him throw to me and he threw perfect. Even at that point, he was probably 60-years-old.
He was popping my glove pretty well. The sinkers were all on his arm side, just boom, boom, boom, boom. Sliders perfect on the glove side, I’m hardly having to move the glove.”
“I’m going ‘Steve, what the hell’?”
It meant a lot to Blass as well as he discussed in ‘A Pirate for Life’. From that day, Walk never saw the issues that Blass agonized through at the end of his career.
“As he got older, I never saw him have any problems at all throwing the baseball and hitting the target,” Walk said with Pomp and Joe. “As he went on in life, he got rid of whatever demons there were after him and keeping him out of that strike zone.”
Walk also said Blass is an amazing athlete, recalling on the Pomp and Joe Show when he made a big defensive play.
“I remember one of those fantasy games, I was pitching and he was playing centerfield,” Walk said on 93.7 The Fan. “One of the younger guys hit a bullet to centerfield and there was Blass making a back-to-the-infield, Willie Mays catch. He was in his upper 50s or low 60s when he made that catch.”