1939-2020 His speed thrilled and chilled
Fireballing pitcher’s bouts of wildness intimidated batters
Steve Dalkowski, who possessed a terrifying fastball he could not control and became an enduring figure of baseball lore despite never making the major leagues, died Sunday in his hometown of New Britain, Conn.
Dalkowski, a victim of COVID-19, was 80. “He’s in a better place now,” said his sister Patty Cain, who brought Dalkowski, suffering from alcohol-related dementia, back home to Connecticut 26 years ago. “He is resting. He had a rough couple of months.”
One of the most written-about subjects in baseball history, Dalkowski was an inspiration for the character Nuke Laloosh in the film “Bull Durham.” The screenwriter was Ron Shelton, who played in the minor leagues in the 1960s as Dalkowski stories — many exaggerated but rooted in real events — were passed around.
“It’s the gift from the gods — the arm, the power,” Shelton wrote in 2009. “That is what haunts us. He had it all and didn’t know it.
“That’s why Steve Dalkowski stays in our minds. He had the equivalent of
Michelangelo’s gift but could never finish a painting.”
Dalkowski was a star athlete at New Britain High in the 1950s and signed with the Orioles in 1957. Throughout his baseball career, Dalkowski compiled strikeout and walk totals that are almost inconceivable today.
A left-hander who stood about 5-foot-10, he threw back-to-back no-hitters for New Britain High in April 1957, striking out 39 and walking 17 in the two games. Dalkowski struck out 24 in a single game against New London that season.
Former UConn baseball coach Andy Baylock, who grew up next door to Dalkowski, caught him during their high school days.
How hard could Dalkowski throw? “Heaven knows,” Baylock said. “We didn’t have radar guns and all that stuff in those days. I just knew my left index finger got purple, and I learned how to use ‘soft hands.’ You bring your wrist back and bend your elbow at the same time to deaden it.”
Guesses rated Dalkowski’s fastball at far over 100 mph, even 120. Frank “Beauty” McGowan, a former major-leaguer from Branford and longtime scout, signed him for the Orioles that season. Dalkowski, with $4,000 and a new car, went to pitch for Kingsport (Tenn.) in the Appalachian League.
In one of his first games, he hit a fellow teenager, Bob Beavers, in the side of the head, causing severe bleeding in the left ear and knocking him unconscious. Beavers never played again and McGowan later suggested the experience shook Dalkowski, who feared he might one day kill someone.
That season, Dalkowski struck out 121, and walked 129, in 62 innings, and his career continued along that path as he moved through the minor leagues. During a season with future Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver at Elmira, New York, in 1962, Dalkowski donned thick glasses and took a little off his fastball. He totaled 192 strikeouts and 114 walks in 161 innings.
In spring training in 1963, Dalkowski’s control improved enough for Orioles manager Billy Hitchcock to envision him as a major-league reliever. After one appearance against the Dodgers, opponents debated whether he threw harder than even Sandy Koufax.
“My, he makes that ball look small,” Hall of Famer Leo Durocher told the Baltimore Sun that night. “All that guy’s got to do is get it over. If he gets that fastball over consistently, look out.”
A Baltimore uniform was made for Dalkowski, and he was dominating Yankees batters in his next appearance, striking out Elston Howard and Roger Maris, when he felt a pop in his elbow and his hand went numb. Dalkowski never fully recovered from the injury and was out of baseball two years later. In his pro career, he pitched 956 innings, struck out 1,324, walked 1,236, hit 37 and threw 145 wild pitches.
The stories that emerged were embellished, such as his throwing the ball through a wooden fence on a dare, hitting a hot dog vendor in the grandstand with an errant pitch and terrified batters bailing out of the box. But those who played in the minors in the 1960s or ’70s heard them, and no one who watched Dalkowski unleash his fastball ever forgot him.
“He was unbelievable,” Weaver once said. “He threw a lot faster than [Nolan] Ryan. It’s hard to believe, but he did.”