Skull Sessions

It almost never fails.

Any time a big league pitcher can’t find home plate with his fastball, Steve Blass gets a telephone call. Any second now, he can expect Atlanta pitcher Mark Wohlers’ agent to break in with an emergency call.

“They say, ‘We’d like you to talk to this guy,’ ” Blass says, “and I say, ‘I’m the last guy you want to talk to him!’ ”

Blass is baseball’s most enduring mental mystery. After pitching the Pittsburgh Pirates to the 1971 World Series title, and winning 19 games the next year, Blass lost control of his pitches in 1973 and was out of the game, at 32, in 1974.

“To this day, I don’t know what caused it,” says Blass, now a Pirate broadcaster. “I never had a sore arm in my life.”

The malady remains commonly known in baseball circles as “Steve Blass Disease.”

Blass didn’t have a team psychologist to turn to, although on his own he sought out everything short of shock therapy.

“I went to a hypnotist and he said, ‘You’re a bad subject.’ ”

Blass wishes he could have tapped into today’s advances in sports psychology.

“I think there would be more things for me to try,” he says.

There have been considerable strides made in helping athletes cope with the mental side of sports.

Agent Leigh Steinberg says many of his famous clients use acupuncture, acupressure, meditation and yoga for stress relief.

The Dodgers and Angels have sports psychologists on staff, although many players are still reluctant to take a seat on the couch.

“No one wants to admit it’s mental,” Angel team psychologist Ken Ravizza says. “They say ‘It’s my arm, my mechanics, it’s not my head.’ It’s the biggest barrier I have to overcome, the whole shrink image. I say, ‘I’m not a shrink, I’m a stretch.’ On the Angels, maybe one-fourth of the guys are really into it.”

Troy Percival and Tim Salmon are two Angels not reluctant to admit they work with Ravizza.

Percival uses breathing techniques to stay calm on the mound.

“The game goes from 100 to 1,000 mph,” he says. “If you can’t slow it down, the game’s over.”

Modern sports psychology was popularized in the late 1960s by Soviet and East German doctors in their work with Olympic athletes.

Yet, 30 years later, Ravizza says only about half a dozen major league baseball teams employ psychologists.

In the macho world of baseball, getting players to open up is about as easy as hitting Greg Maddux.

“This is about being great, it’s not that you’re messed up,” Ravizza tells players.

Former Angel Damion Easley, now with Detroit, has been using hypnotherapist Pete Siegel since 1995, yet only recently admitted it publicly. Easley didn’t even tell his teammates.

Salmon says, “A lot of players say, ‘Hey, wait a minute, I don’t need my whole game analyzed.’ ”

Easley finally “came out” because he credits Siegel for salvaging his career.

“I feel it’s my responsibility to help others,” Easley said recently. “And when I went through a tough time, this is how I got out.”

Ravizza is not familiar with Siegel’s work, but says that, in general, players have to be careful in seeking counsel.

“There is no magic dust,” Ravizza says. “A hypnotist says, ‘I’m going to change you overnight?’ I’m sorry, I disagree. You might get a quick fix, but it’s got to be developed over time. I see a lot of people selling witch oil.”

Salmon agrees.

“People are always looking to jump on your coattails and be associated with success of a person,” he says. “You can confuse players, overload players. Paralysis by analysis. I take a very simple approach.”

Some see today’s modern players and wonder how they could possibly be stressed out.

“In my day, you had to produce on the field, then had to work in the winter to put food on the table,” former Dodger Ralph Branca says. “I’d say there was more pressure in my day.”

Many of today’s players enjoy salaries that can secure them for life, free agency, guaranteed contracts and no-trade clauses.

“There could be a lack of pressure,” St. Louis Cardinal Manager Tony La Russa argues. “It’s a tough time to be excellent, tougher now than ever before. You have to dig real deep inside yourself. A lot of the natural motivators are not there anymore, like survival, like conditions of employment. A lot of them don’t worry, believe me.”

Yet, if stress on the modern athlete is different, Steinberg argues that it’s very real.

“Every single week, unhappy athletes call up,” Steinberg says.

Salmon also disagrees that today’s athletes have less stress.

“ESPN shows everything you do,” Salmon says. “On every news channel there is some sarcastic sportscaster, part-time comedian. If you screw up, some guy makes a joke about it and all the guys in the locker room are watching. Scrutiny, that’s probably different than in the past.”

Steinberg says increased media coverage and sports-talk radio have dramatically raised expectations for players and fans.

“People with large amounts of money, power and success are not necessarily calm, placid and content,” Steinberg says. “Unfortunately, if they don’t deal with it well, it can be alcohol that ends up being the stress reliever.”

Steinberg says he doesn’t believe any of his top clients, mostly NFL stars, see sports psychologists.

Who needs a shrink when you can lean on your agent? It is Steinberg, in fact, who serves as his clients’ primary care giver.

Steinberg has found one method of therapy particularly effective.

“You will find, while not scientific, for many athletes it’s the ability to sit on a chair at home, with no one talking to them, with a satellite dish, flipping from TV show to TV show,” Steinberg says. “That’s probably the No. 1 method of vegging out.”

Ravizza thinks most fans underestimate what it means to be in the public spotlight.

“One of the biggest fears of pro athletes is embarrassment,” he says. “When it comes to performance, that hasn’t changed. They all stand naked before the gods, and the great ones thrive on that.”

Sports psychology could not solve the mystery of Steve Blass, although he left no base unturned in search of a cure.

“I would put two film projectors in a room and put up the footage when I was throwing good and when I was throwing bad, and I didn’t see any difference,” he says. “I could warm up in the bullpen and be fine, but when I got a hitter up there, I just froze up.”

Blass’ legacy?

“Me and Lou Gehrig,” he says. “The only two guys with diseases named after us.”