Retired Pirates broadcaster Steve Blass learning to adjust to life without baseball

Steve Blass retired from the Pittsburgh Pirates broadcast booth to enjoy life away from baseball.

What Blass wasn’t expecting is life without baseball.

Blass, 78, had no way of knowing or preparing for the MLB season to be suspended amid the coronavirus crisis, let alone that he and his wife, Karen, would be stranded in Florida.

“Wow!” Blass said by phone this week. “I didn’t know what it was going to be like, if I’d be busy enough. I find myself busy enough. It’s retirement times 10.”

Despite retiring in September after 60 years with the Pirates as a player and broadcaster, the pitching hero of the 1971 World Series spent time with the team as a special instructor at spring training and is looking forward to returning to Pittsburgh this month to serve in what he calls an ambassadorial role for the organization.

Blass is enjoying the time he is spending with his wife after decades of baseball dominating his schedule. Blass joked if he needs a baseball fix, it’s now her job to provide it.

“She probably swings the bat better than I throw it nowadays,” Blass said with a laugh. “It’s funny because I retired primarily to spend more time with Karen. I found out I can handle it in a kind of usual and good way. I’m spending a ton of time with her. We’re enjoying that aspect of it.”

Blass lamented his former broadcast partner, Greg Brown, is having a harder time without baseball than he is — “He’s got a motor that never stops,” Blass said, “so this has to be driving him crazy” — but joked new Pirates manager Derek Shelton is the one bearing the brunt of life Blass’ life without baseball.

“I talk to Derek Shelton a lot because he’s the only audience I have left for all of my stories and jokes,” Blass said. “He hasn’t heard them yet. When we get started again, he’ll get to hear them several times.”