MLB All-Star Game Memories From All-Star Pirates’ People

With the 96th MLB All-Star Game to be played in Philadelphia in just over two weeks, I thought who better to get and share memories of the Midsummer Classic than from two of the most beloved people associated with the Buccos.

Steve Blass was selected for and pitched in the 1972 All-Star Game played in Atlanta. In his eighth season pitching for Pittsburgh and coming off an MVP-like 1971 World Series, in which the pride of Canaan, Connecticut, won two complete games (Games 3 & 7), it was a testament to Blass that his manager, Danny Murtaugh, chose him for the 1972 squad.

Blass was having a very good first half of the 1972 season. The right-handed ace would go on to win 19 games in 1972, the most of any of his MLB career in a given season.

“I had done so well in the World Series the year before. I expected Danny to select me. Plus, I was off to a great year,” Blass said. “When I walked into the National League clubhouse in Atlanta, I was stunned. There were 16 future Hall of Famers (plus the St. Louis Cardinals manager, Red Schoendienst, who was part of Murtaugh’s coaching staff) in the room.”

With the manager picking his pitching staff, future Cooperstown immortals Tom Seaver, Fergie Jenkins, Bob Gibson, and Don Sutton were among the haul Murtaugh brought with him to Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. Fellow Pirates teammates Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell were also picked to represent the National League.

“Back then, we (players) didn’t fraternize with the other teams like they do today,” Blass says. “My locker was next to Johnny Bench’s locker. I sat down next to him, and we exchanged pleasantries. That’s the way it was back then.”

There was one good laugh, as Blass recalls, that he and the Cincinnati Reds’ catcher shared. Although Gibson was starting for the National League, Blass was one of six pitchers called for duty by Murtaugh. He relieved Gibson in the third inning.

“Johnny says to me, ‘I understand that you’re pitching the third inning, and I’ll be catching. What signs did you want to use?’ I told Johnny that whenever I face you, you seem to know what’s coming. We had a good laugh.”

Overall, Blass looks back at his lone All-Star selection with an upbeat atmosphere. Aside from facing Carl Yastrzemski and Reggie Jackson, a highlight of the All-Star Game for Blass that still brings an “aw shucks”, surreal moment to the former Pirates ace more than 50 years later, was when Sandy Koufax recruited him for an interview.

Koufax, the legendary Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers Hall of Famer, along with Jim Simpson, were the broadcast team for those listening to the All-Star Game on the radio.

“(Koufax) interviewed me. Him asking me for “a little time” is one of my career highlights. I’d give him all the time that he wanted.”

From the playing field to up in the Pirates’ press box, in either the radio or TV booths, Greg Brown is a longtime trusted friend to Buccos friends. Since 1994, Brown has been delivering all the highs and lows of Pittsburgh baseball. What makes Brown good at what he does is that the baseball fan in him has never left.

Like many baseball fans of a certain age, so much fun surrounding the All-Star Game was getting a hold of the ballot cards at the stadium to punch out the chads when making your vote. Brown recalls that same joy.

“As a kid growing up in Central PA, I remember trying to grab as many of those ballots as humanly possible! I believe there would be stacks of them outside the cardboard boxes located throughout the ballparks. For me, it was attending games at Veterans Stadium and Three Rivers.”

Brown has happy memories of spending hours trying to punch all the various Pirates players on the ballot. He confesses to, most times, not even bothering to fill out the American League side. He found voting for his favorite players both exciting and exhilarating.

“To think, I could make a difference? If I just sent in 20 more ballots, those could be the votes needed to put our players over the top.”

Two decades before Brown became a full-time voice of the Pirates on the airwaves, he attended the 1974 MLB All-Star Game in Pittsburgh. What a pleasant surprise.

“In the late spring of 1974, my father called me downstairs to his office at our house in Mechanicsburg. He usually kept the door closed, and we rarely went into his cramped little workspace, which was cluttered with files and papers and newspaper clippings scattered all over his desk,” Brown remembers.

“When I walk in, he pointed to a brown envelope atop one stack of mail. He asked me what it was and if I would open it. Inside, there were four tickets to the 1974 All-Star Game at Three Rivers Stadium. They were the most beautiful pieces of cardstock I had ever laid my eyes upon. I was going to the 1974 All-Star Game.”

Brown didn’t care or remember to see where his seats were located in the stadium. It didn’t matter to him. As Brown recalls, the seats were in the very last row in the upper deck of center field. These seats were later removed when the video replay board was brought to Three Rivers.

One final All-Star memory that Brown shares from the 1994 Pittsburgh game is simply amazing. He didn’t attend the game and had a very good reason.

“My fiancé and I decided that would be a good “break in the schedule” to get married. We had the rehearsal dinner the night of the All-Star Game, up on Mt. Washington, so I could see the stadium and all the activity, but was unaware that one of the greatest All-Star Games in history was taking place in that stadium below.”