Their playing careers barely intersected, but you won’t be surprised to learn that one of the few times they shared a dugout produced a wonderfully funny moment.
Bittersweet, yes. But wonderfully funny.
It was the summer of 1974. Steve Blass was in the midst of a mysterious career implosion. One of the better pitchers in the National League suddenly could not find home plate. He’d recently made what would be his final major league appearance, a disastrous one against the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field, and had been sent to the Pirates’ Triple-A farm club in Charleston, W.Va.
Blass was now playing for the Charleston Charlies, who in 1974 had a roster dotted with future notables. They included Art Howe, Tony LaRussa, Omar Moreno, Ed Ott, John Candelaria and Kent Tekulve.
As the story goes — and few besides Blass tell a story as compellingly as Tekulve — Blass wasn’t doing much better against minor league hitters and returned to the dugout one afternoon particularly befuddled.
“It’s hotter than (heck) in Charleston, West Virginia, in this old, small ballpark, where you had the railroad tracks behind right field and dugouts the size of little bumpers,” Tekulve told me years later. “It’s July, it’s 95 degrees, Steve’s pitching, and it’s the same thing — all over the place. In the second inning, the manager takes him out, and Steve sits down. He’s got the towel around his neck, dripping sweat. He’s sitting in the middle of us in this little bitty dugout, his head down, none of us knowing what to say to this guy who’s won a hundred big-league games.
“Well, he finally lifts his head, looks down to the left, looks down to the right, then looks up at the field and mutters the immortal words, ‘Almost heaven, my ass.’”
I’m thinking of Blass and Tekulve this weekend because the Pirates are in Baltimore, where each took starring roles in the two greatest Pirates wins of the past 52 years. I’m talking about Game 7 of the 1971 World Series and Game 7 of the 1979 World Series, of course, and it was Blass and Tekulve, respectively, who threw the final pitches of those games.
I’m also thinking about how lucky we were to have these guys settle in Pittsburgh. Both became part of the soundtrack of our lives — Blass as a Pirates broadcaster and Teke as a television studio analyst.
You simply won’t find two better-humored, bigger-hearted baseball guys.
All of which is why it was so incredible to see Blass, 81, drop in on Tekulve, 76, last month to inform him he’d been named to the Pirates’ latest Hall of Fame class. Tekulve was taping an interview at the AT&T SportsNet studio when Blass barged in.
If you didn’t get dusty watching the video, you might not be human.
“I am surprised and extremely honored to be included in that group,” Tekulve said after a bear hug from Blass.
Blass pitched one of the greatest games in World Series history on Oct. 17, 1971, holding a powerful Orioles lineup to four hits in a complete-game victory. The sight of him racing off the mound after the final out and literally leaping into history led to a series of images that remain among the most iconic in Pittsburgh sports history.
One of them featured catcher Manny Sanguillen sprinting from his post and Blass seemingly flying into the frame from the right, like a long jumper finishing a gold-medal launch. He later said he was yelling, “It’s forever! It’s forever!”
On the exact same date, in the exact same venue eight years later, Tekulve came in to protect a 2-1 Pirates lead with two on and one out in Game 7 of the World Series. He worked his way out of it and pitched a 1-2-3 ninth. His old Charleston buddy Moreno caught the final out. It remains the most recent playoff series win of any kind for the Pirates.
But it wasn’t just their accomplishments that distinguished Blass and Tekulve. It was the way they dealt with uncommon forms of adversity. I had a chance over the years to dive deep with both of them on those painful topics.
For Blass, it was the way his career ended with the sudden loss of control. As he put it, how many people have a disease — “Steve Blass Disease” — named after them?
Back in 2008, at a breakfast spot in the South Hills, I sat down with Blass to talk about all of that and found that behind the humor hid deep pain.
“Underneath, very privately and very personally, is a feeling I got cheated,” Blass said. “I never had a sore arm. I knew how to pitch. I loved throwing the baseball, loved making it do things. I thought I could pitch until I was 40-something years old. Nobody enjoyed it more than I did.”
He never did beat Steve Blass Disease, but he learned to live with it. To use it as a teaching tool. To laugh about it. Blass remembered all the remedy ideas people would send him. At one point, he received upwards of 50 letters per week. A hunter from Virginia wrote to tell Blass that whenever his shooting aim was off, it was because his underwear was too tight.
“I laughed like hell and showed it to my teammates,” Blass said, “and went out and bought looser underwear.”
Tekulve had a far more dire challenge: He became gravely ill and, after nearly dying, underwent a heart transplant on Sept. 5, 2014. We spoke about that at length three years later, just after he announced his retirement from the Pirates postgame show.
At the time, Tekulve had not chosen to pursue the identity of his donor.
“The thing is, even without a face, without a name, you’re still extremely thankful that the person was considerate enough of others that before they ever got in a situation where they were in trouble, they said, ‘If something happens, I want to do this for somebody else,’” he said. “Just to make the choice to be an organ donor is a big decision.”
Tekulve had a new outlook on life at that point. He considered it his “bonus round.”
“I stole the line from Steve Blass,” he said. “He always talks about the bonus round. It kind of goes with everything else in my life, because I have to ask: Why have I been so fortunate?”
We’re the lucky ones.
Joe Starkey: jstarkey@post-gazette.com and Twitter @joestarkey1. Joe Starkey can be heard on the “Cook and Joe” show weekdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on 93.7 The Fan.
First Published: May 12, 2023, 1:30 p.m.
