HARTFORD, Conn. — Steve Blass had just pitched the game of his life, of any pitcher’s life, beating the Orioles, 2-1, in Game 7 of the World Series. After the championship Pirates of 1971 boarded their plane home in Baltimore, MVP Roberto Clemente stood up in front.
“Come up here,” he called to Blass. “Let me embrace you.”
Blass climbed over knees and laps to get to the center aisle and to the front of the plane for that embrace. “Those are the moments,” Blass says, “That stick with you.”
That was one of the images and moments in Blass’ mind just 15 months later when, legs shaking, more nervous than he had ever been, he made his way to the aisle at Iglesia San Fernando de la Carolina and past the church’s pews to deliver his brief eulogy for Roberto Clemente. It was Jan. 4, 1973, fifty years ago Wednesday.
“I was never so nervous, even pitching the seventh game of the World Series, than I was sitting in that church,” said Blass, who rose from Falls Village, Conn., to stardom with the Pirates.
Blass’ remarks were short, and they rhymed. Bill Guilfoile, the Pirates’ director of public relations, had called the Blass home during their New Year’s Eve party with the awful, still-to-be confirmed report that Clemente, 38, had died in a plane crash as he was leaving Carolina, Puerto Rico, to deliver supplies to earthquake victims in Managua, Nicaragua.
Late morning on New Year’s Day, confirmation came that Clemente was lost, “and the city’s shoulders slumped,” Blass said. Guilfoile, who had worked for the Yankees in the 1960s, called them to request permission to adapt a eulogy read at Lou Gehrig’s funeral in 1941, and in the coming days asked Blass to read it on behalf of the team.
“It was perfectly stated,” Blass said. “And there was no reason to add anything to it.”
The party flew from Pittsburgh to Puerto Rico, and Blass remembers the total silence on the five-mile bus to the small stone church in Carolina. Among the mourners there was Tom Walker, a young major leaguer who had played with Clemente in the winter league and helped him load the plane at Carolina’s airport on Dec. 31, 1972. He wanted to go on the trip, but Clemente told Walker to stay and spend the holiday with his family.
“I was sitting next to Tom in the church,” Blass said. “And he said, ‘I’ve never seen you so scared in my life.’ Nervous times 10. I was back of center in the church and that was a very long walk up there for me. My knees were shaking.”
Blass was just 30, so young to process the death of a friend and give a eulogy. To this day, he is not sure why he was chosen, rather than other Pirate stars, such as Willie Stargell; he assumes Guilfoile had the blessing of the franchise’s top management. His wife, Karen, also from the Connecticut’s northwest corner, was with him and kept telling him to “go slow,”
“As I was walking up the aisle of that church, I was just saying, ‘let me get through this ... let me get through this,’ ” Blass said. “And I did. I got through it, and was very proud to do it. I was very honored to do it, I just wish I could have done it when he was 90 years old.”
Slowly, Blass recited the words before a church filled with teammates and baseball luminaries, devastated family members and heartbroken citizens of Carolina:
"Let this be a silent token
Of lasting friendship’s gleam.
And all that we’ve left unspoken
— Your friends on the Pirate team."
His pitch was just right. He later had the poem engraved on a plaque and donated it to the Clemente Museum in Pittsburgh, where Blass still frequently appears to help guide tours, always ending by reading it, reliving all the emotions. Blass was there last Saturday night for ceremonies celebrating Clemente’s life on the 50th anniversary of the world’s loss.
“The children read about it here in Pittsburgh,” Blass said. “And I love kind of fleshing it out, because they never knew him, all they do is read and see video. I can personalize it for them a little bit. They should know about this kind of person, who just happened to be a baseball player.”
Blass, who signed with the Pirates out of Housatonic Valley Regional High in 1960, reached the major leagues in ‘64. As a 22-year-old rookie, it took Blass time to work up the nerve to talk to Clemente, but eventually he did and they became warm friends. Between 1968 and '72, Blass was one of the top pitchers in the National League.
“My job the last five years I was with him was to make him smile or laugh,” Blass said. “That was my job. And I really enjoyed my job, getting a smile or laugh out of him.”
Clemente, by then, had already become the barrier-breaker and role model for young players from Puerto Rico and throughout that part of the world, and had become as well known for his work as a humanitarian. His death in the line of what what he considered his duty hit Pittsburgh, and the rest of the world hard as 1973 dawned, and still reverberates today. MLB’s humanitarian award is named for him, as are schools and streets and parks everywhere in the world, including Connecticut. The Yard Goats, who retired his No. 21, held a ceremony celebrating Clemente’s life and impact last August.
Blass, a long-time broadcaster with the Pirates before retiring in 2019, made a promise to himself to never turn down an interview request if the subject is Clemente, as he believes no other athlete has left such an enduring legacy and the task of eulogizing his friend is never finished.
“I’m from Falls Village, Connecticut, population 800,” Blass said. “And how did the planets align where I get to spend 10 years as a teammate of Roberto Clemente’s? I mean, I look back at that now that I’m 80 and think how fortunate I was to be around him. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He helped me go from a ballplayer to a major leaguer, watching him, how he handled himself, how he dressed, how he worked with people less fortunate. And it wasn’t just his death in the plane crash, he lived that concern and that awareness of the world outside of baseball.”
