Steve Blass Disease Cured - in Steve Blass!

When most of us last checked in with Steve Blass, the old Pirates pitcher, he had problems hitting the proverbial broad side of a barn with his throws. The problem there was that Blass was a professional baseball pitcher. A winner of two World Series games in 1971 (and a World Series ring), Blass "melted down" during the 1973 season. Inside two years, he would go from throwing a three-hitter and a four-hitter in that World Series to a pitcher who more likely than not threw to the wrong side of a given batter. After compiling a 3-9 record in '73, he pitched only one more game at the major league level, was sent packing to Charleston, a Pirates minor league affiliate, where he walked nearly 100 batters in less than 60 innings. A ten-year, 103-76 major league record blew apart faster than a Volkswagen hitting an IED in Baghdad, and the sudden inability to throw a baseball to another player on the field got a new name: Steve Blass Disease.

Before and after his last game for the Pirates in 1974, Blass tried everything from psychotherapy to transcendental meditation to cure himself of the "disease" with his name on it. Nothing worked. As the years passed, he eventually became a Pirates broadcaster and had to wrestle with talking about other players, not just pitchers, who came down with his ailment...Bruce Ruffin, Chuck Knoblach, Rick Ankiel, Mark Wohlers. Every time one of these (and others) loosed a throw that knocked out a grandmother in the grandstands, his name came up.

Who knew that Blass himself would have been fine if he'd only been allowed to hit his pitches off the mound with a 2-iron?

Thirty-five years after his departure from The Bigs, Blass demonstrated, at the age of 67, that he is totally cured of his own disease. At the Pirates annual alumni golf outing at the Greensburg (PA) Country Club yesterday, the old pitcher passed a test of athletic accuracy usually not even thought of because it's so rare.

He posted two holes-in-one in a single round of golf.

In fact, his aces were separated by only ten holes. Having started in a group at the tenth hole, Blass' first single-shot hole was the 15^th, where he dropped an 8-iron in the cup 154 yards away. Then, on the seventh hole his 7-iron did the trick from 175 yards. Both holes carried hole-in-one prizes, and thus, Blass is a computer and a $500 gift card richer today. Or is he?

The cured hurler told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "I've never even used a computer. And it cost me $400 in the bar."

In a statistic cited by multiple articles on Blass' feat, Golf Digest estimated the probability of two holes-in-one in a round of golf at 67,000,000 to one. Two aces within ten holes is likely a one in a hundred million matter. It's very likely, though, that Blass would trade his rare status today for another five years pitching that he had to figure were his "back in the day."

Sources:

Dulac, Gerry. "Former Pirates ace Blass blasts two holes-in-one." Post-gazette.com. 11 September 2009.

Livingstone, Seth. "Baseball's head cases often proved baffling." USAToday.com. 8 February 2001.

"Steve Blass," Baseball-Reference.com. 12 September 2009.