Saturday, April 17, 1999
Blass relates to Wohlers
Ex-Pirate had same problems
BY CHRIS HAFT
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Mark Wohlers' saga sounds all too familiar to Steve Blass.
“Every story I read, I can anticipate the next chapter,” Blass said Friday after the Reds obtained Wohlers from Atlanta. “It just looks so similar to what I went through.”
Blass unwittingly became the symbol for accomplished, healthy pitchers whose skills mysteriously vanish. He pitched 10 years in the majors for Pittsburgh, won twice in the 1971 World Series as the Pirates defeated Baltimore and followed that with his best season, finishing 19-8 with a 2.48 ERA in 1972.
Then, in May of the following year, Blass lost all sense of the strike zone. He posted a 3-9 record with a 9.85 ERA. He allowed 109 hits and 84 walks in 88ö innings.
“It just slid away — nothing catastrophic, no particular incident,” Blass said. “It was gone and it never came back.”
Blass gave up after two springs of trying to rebound, his excellent career statistics (103-76, 3.63 ERA) punctuated by a question mark.
Thus, he roots for Wohlers to regain his form.
“Nobody can appreciate what he's going through like I can,” said Blass, who was at Cinergy Field as a Pirates color analyst. “I'll tell you this: If you get on the other side of this with your emotions and mental state intact, you're a stronger person.”
Blass left a note of encouragement for Wohlers in his locker at Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Stadium when his troubles began last year. Blass got that kind of support when he struggled, estimating that he received 200 positive letters a week at one point. “I think I feel as good about that stat as anything I did on the field,” he said.
Blass, who turns 57 on Sunday, retired in 1975. He knew he had sought every answer possible, from hypnotism to visualization.
“Maybe my allotted time was 10 years,” Blass said. “You temper it, too, with the fact that you did everything you dreamed about, and then some.”
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