I first met him in spring training in 1960, Gillick said. Dalkowski's greatest legacy may be the number of anecdotes (some more believable than others) surrounding his pitching ability. His arm still sore, he struggled in spring training the next year and was reassigned to the teams minor league camp, three hours away; it took him seven days to make the trip, to the exasperation of Dalton, who was ready to release him. Pat Gillick, who would later lead three teams to World Series championships (Toronto in 1992 and 1993, Philadelphia in 2008), was a young pitcher in the Orioles organization when Dalkowski came along. Previewing the 2023 college baseball season: Teams and players to watch, key storylines, Road to the men's Frozen Four: Conference tournaments at a glance, Top moments from Brady, Manning, Jordan and other athletes hosting 'Saturday Night Live', Dr. A's weekly risers and fallers: Jeremy Sochan, Christian Wood make the list. Dalkowski, a football and baseball star in New Britain, was signed to a minor league contract by the Orioles in 1957. Again, amazing. That's fantastic. We call this an incremental and integrative hypothesis. April 24, 2020 4:11 PM PT Steve Dalkowski, a hard-throwing, wild left-hander whose minor league career inspired the creation of Nuke LaLoosh in the movie "Bull Durham," has died. [21] Earl Weaver, who had years of exposure to both pitchers, said, "[Dalkowski] threw a lot faster than Ryan. That is what haunts us. Here is his account: I started throwing and playing baseball from very early age I played little league at 8, 9, and 10 years old I moved on to Pony League for 11, 12, and 13 years olds and got better. Just 5-foot-11 and 175, Dalkowski had a fastball that Cal Ripken Sr., who both caught and managed him, estimated at 110 mph. However, several factors worked against Dalkowski: he had pitched a game the day before, he was throwing from a flat surface instead of from a pitcher's mound, and he had to throw pitches for 40minutes at a small target before the machine could capture an accurate measurement. Steve Dalkowski, who entered baseball lore as the hardest-throwing pitcher in history, with a fastball that was as uncontrollable as it was unhittable and who was considered perhaps the game's. Koufax was obviously one of the greatest pitchers in MLB history, but his breaking balls were what was so devastating. [28], Kingsport Times News, September 1, 1957, page 9, Association of Professional Ball Players of America, "Steve Dalkowski had the stuff of legends", "Steve Dalkowski, Model for Erratic Pitcher in 'Bull Durham,' Dies at 80", "Connecticut: Two Games, 40 K's For Janinga", "Single-Season Leaders & Records for Strikeouts per 9 IP", "Steve Dalkowski Minor League Statistics & History", "The Fastest Pitcher in Baseball History", "Fastest Pitchers Ever Recorded in the Major Leagues - 2014 post-season UPDATES thru 10/27", "The Fastest Pitch Ever is Quicker Than the Blink of an Eye", "New Britain legend Dalkowski now truly a baseball immortal", The Birdhouse: The Phenom, an interview with Steve Dalkowski in October 2005, "A Hall of Fame for a Legendary Fastball Pitcher", "How do you solve a problem like Dalkowski? Hes the fireballer who can summon nearly unthinkable velocity, but has no idea where his pitch will go. Did Dalkowski throw a baseball harder than any person who ever lived? Moreover, to achieve 110 mph, especially with his limited frame (511, 175 lbs), he must have pitched with a significant forward body thrust, which then transferred momentum to his arm by solidly hitting the block (no collapsing or shock-absorber leg). I went to try out for the baseball team and on the way back from tryout I saw Luc Laperiere throwing a javelin 75 yards or so and stopped to watch him. White port was Dalkowskis favorite. Dalkowski went on to have his best year ever. This suggests a violent forward thrust, a sharp hitting of the block, and a very late release point (compare Chapman and Ryan above, whose arm, after the point of release, comes down over their landing leg, but not so violently as to hit it). All UZR (ultimate zone rating) calculations are provided courtesy of Mitchel Lichtman. What made this pitch even more amazing was that Dalkowski didnt have anything close to the classic windup. But none of it had the chance to stick, not as long as Dalkowski kept drinking himself to death. The team did neither; Dalkoswki hit a grand slam in his debut for the Triple-A Columbus Jets, but was rocked for an 8.25 ERA in 12 innings and returned to the Orioles organization. Instead, he started the season in Rochester and couldnt win a game. Said Shelton, In his sport, he had the equivalent of Michaelangelo's gift but could never finish a painting. That was because of the tremendous backspin he could put on the ball., That amazing, rising fastball would perplex managers, friends, and catchers from the sandlots back in New Britain, Connecticut where Dalkowski grew up, throughout his roller-coaster ride in the Orioles farm system. McDowell said this about Dalkowskis pitching mechanics: He had the most perfect pitching mechanics I ever saw. The reason we think he may be over-rotating is that Nolan Ryan, who seemed to be every bit as fast as Chapman, tended to have a more compact, but at least as effective, torque (see Ryan video at the start of this article). But many questions remain: Whatever the answer to these and related questions, Dalkowski remains a fascinating character, professional baseballs most intriguing man of mystery, bar none. At Aberdeen in 1959, under player-manager Earl Weaver, Dalkowski threw a no-hitter in which he struck out 21 and walked only eight, throwing nothing but fastballs, because the lone breaking ball he threw almost hit a batter. Consider the following video of Zelezny making a world record throw (95.66 m), though not his current world record throw (98.48 m, made in 1996, see here for that throw). Steve Dalkowski Bats: Left Throws: Left 5-11 , 175lb (180cm, 79kg) Born: June 3, 1939 in New Britain, CT us Died: April 19, 2020 (Aged 80-321d) in New Britain, CT High School: New Britain HS (New Britain, CT) Full Name: Stephen Louis Dalkowski View Player Info from the B-R Bullpen Become a Stathead & surf this site ad-free. He died on April 19 in New Britain, Conn., at the age of 80 from COVID-19. We see torque working for the fastest pitchers. Steve Dalkowski, here throwing out the ceremonial first pitch at. His story offers offer a cautionary tale: Man cannot live by fastball alone. Known for having trouble controlling the strike zone, he was . Baseball players and managers as diverse as Ted Williams, Earl Weaver, Sudden Sam McDowell, and Cal Ripken Sr. all witnessed Dalko pitch, and all of them left convinced that none was faster, not even close. Over the course of the three years researching our book on Dalko, we collectively investigated leads in the USA, Mexico, and Puerto Rico, looking for any motion pictures of Steve Dalkowski throwing a baseball. The evidence is analogical, and compares Tom Petranoff to Jan Zelezny. And . He had an unusual buggy-whip style, and his pitches were as wild as they were hard. Living Legend Released, wrote The Sporting News. Ever heard of Steve "Dalko" Dalkowski (1939 - 2020)? Our aim is to write a book, establish a prize in his honor, and ultimately film a documentary about him. The next year at Elmira, Weaver asked Dalkowski to stop throwing so hard and also not to drink the night before he pitched small steps toward two kinds of control. And he was pitching the next day. Most obvious in this video is Zeleznys incredible forward body thrust. The difference between hitting the block hard with a straight leg and not hitting the block by letting the front leg collapse seems to be a reliable marker for separating low 90s pitchers from 100s pitchers. His first year in the minors, Dalkowski pitched 62 innings, struck out 121 and walked 129. Perhaps that was the only way to control this kind of high heat and keep it anywhere close to the strike zone. High 41F. Then, the first year of the new javelin in 1986, the world record dropped to 85.74 meters (almost a 20 meter drop). Teddy Ballgame, who regularly faced Bob Feller and Herb Score and Ryne Duren, wanted no part of Dalko. He was 80. XFL Week 3 preview: Can AJ McCarron, Battlehawks continue their fourth-quarter heroics? Yet his famous fastball was so fearsome that he became, as the. "[18], Estimates of Dalkowski's top pitching speed abound. At 5 11 and 175 pounds, Dalko gave no impression of being an imposing physical specimen or of exhibiting some physical attributes that set him apart from the rest of humanity. Gripping and tragic, Dalko is the definitive story of Steve "White Lightning" Dalkowski, baseball's fastest pitcher ever. That was because of the tremendous backspin he could put on the ball.. Said Shelton, "In his sport, he had the equivalent of Michaelangelo's gift but could never finish a painting." Dalko is the story of the fastest pitching that baseball has ever seen, an explosive but uncontrolled arm. [14] Dalkowski pitched a total of 62 innings in 1957, struck out 121 (averaging 18 strikeouts per game), but won only once because he walked 129 and threw 39 wild pitches. The old-design javelin was retired in 1986, with a new-design javelin allowing serrated tails from 1986 to 1991, and then a still newer design in 1991 eliminating the serration, which is the current javelin. Davey Johnson, a baseball lifer who played with him in the. Yet it was his old mentor, Earl Weaver, who sort of talked me out of it. After hitting a low point at Class B Tri-City in 1961 (8.39 ERA, with 196 walks 17.1 per nine! Even then I often had to jump to catch it, Len Pare, one of Dalkowskis high school catchers, once told me. I threw batting practice at Palomar years later to cross train, and they needed me to throw 90 mph so their batters could see it live. Its reliably reported that he threw 97 mph. At loose ends, Dalkowski began to work the fields of Californias San Joaquin Valley in places like Lodi, Fresno, and Bakersfield. In 1963, the year that this Topps Card came out, many bigwigs in baseball thought Steve Dalkowski was the fastest pitcher in baseballmaybe in the history of the game. Brooklyn-based Jay Jaffe is a senior writer for FanGraphs, the author of The Cooperstown Casebook (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) and the creator of the JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score) metric for Hall of Fame analysis. He struggled in a return to Elmira in 1964, and was demoted to Stockton, where he fared well (2.83 ERA, 141 strikeouts, 62 walks in 108 innings). He was 80. Ive been playing ball for 10 years, and nobody can throw a baseball harder than that, said Grammas at the time. A throw of 99.72 meters with the old pre-1986 javelin (Petranoffs world record) would thus correspond, with this conservative estimate, to about 80 meters with the current post-1991 javelin. Dalkowski, who later sobered up but spent the past 26 years in an assisted living facility, died of the novel coronavirus in New Britain, Connecticut on April 19 at the age of 80. Ron Shelton once. Lets therefore examine these features. This may not seem like a lot, but it quickly becomes impressive when one considers his form in throwing the baseball, which is all arm, with no recruitment from his body, and takes no advantage of his javelin throwing form, where Zelezny is able to get his full body into the throw. Back where he belonged.. This goes to point 2 above. He was sometimes called the fastest pitcher in baseball history and had a fastball that probably exceeded 100mph (160km/h). Hed let it go and it would just rise and rise.. To be sure, a mythology has emerged surrounding Dalkowski, suggesting that he attained speeds of 120 mph or even better. I still check out his wikipedia page once a month or so just to marvel at the story. "It was truly a magical time back then when Stevie pitched his high school game there," said. From there, Earl Weaver was sent to Aberdeen. Unlike Zelezny, who had never thrown a baseball when in 1996 he went to a practice with Braves, Petranoff was an American and had played baseball growing up. Steve Dalkowski Steve Dalkowski never pitched in the major leagues and made only 12 appearances at the Triple-A level. Later this month, Jontahan Hock will unveil a wonderful new documentary called "Fastball" -- I was lucky enough to consult . In other words, instead of revolutionizing the biomechanics of pitching, Dalko unknowingly improved on and perfected existing pitching biomechanics. Women's Champ Week predictions: Which teams will win the auto bids in all 32 conferences? This video consists of Dalkowski. FILE - This is a 1959 file photo showing Baltimore Orioles minor league pitcher Steve Dalkowski posed in Miami, Fla. Dalkowski, a hard-throwing, wild left-hander who inspired the creation of the . He spent his entire career in the minor leagues, playing in nine different leagues during his nine-year career. Just 5 feet 11 and 175 pounds, Dalkowski had a fastball that Cal Ripken Sr., who both caught and managed him, estimated at 110 mph. Then he gave me the ball and said, Good luck.'. How fast was he really? They help break down Zeleznys throwing motion. Additionally, former Dodgers reliever Jonathan Broxton topped out at 102 mph. In his 1957 debut stint, at Class D Kingsport of the Appalachian League, he yielded just 22 hits and struck out 121 batters in 62 innings, but went 1-8 with an 8.13 ERA, because he walked 129 and threw 39 wild pitches in that same span. We even sought to assemble a collection of still photographs in an effort to ascertain what Steve did to generate his exceptional velocity. During his time in Pensacola, Dalkowski fell in with two hard-throwing, hard-drinking future major league pitchers, Steve Barber and Bo Belinsky, both a bit older than him. Before getting COVID-19, Dalkowskis condition had declined. For a time I was tempted to rate Dalkowski as the fastest ever. Dalkowski ended up signing with Baltimore after scout Beauty McGowan gave him a $4,000 signing bonus . On the morning of March 22, 1963, he was fitted for a major league uniform, but later that day, facing the Yankees, he lost the feeling in his left hand; a pitch to Bobby Richardson sailed 15 feet to the left of the catcher. When in 1991, the current post-1991 javelin was introduced (strictly speaking, javelin throwers started using the new design already in 1990), the world record dropped significantly again. Thats where hell always be for me. [15] Weaver believed that Dalkowski had experienced such difficulty keeping his game under control because he did not have the mental capacity. He. Gripping and tragic, Dalko is the definitive story of Steve "White Lightning" Dalkowski, baseball's fastest pitcher ever. Thats why Steve Dalkowski stays in our minds. [26] In a 2003 interview, Dalkowski said that he was unable to remember life events that occurred from 1964 to 1994. Screenwriter and film director Ron Shelton played in the Baltimore Orioles minor league organization soon after Dalkowski. His pitches strike terror into the heart of any batter who dares face him, but hes a victim of that lack of control, both on and off the field, and it prevents him from taking full advantage of his considerable talent. Despite the pain, Dalkowski tried to carry on. Williams looked back at it, then at Dalkowski, squinting at him from the mound, and then he dropped his bat and stepped out of the cage. The bottom line is that Zelezny would have thrown either javelin (pre-1986 or current design) much further than Petranoff, and thus would have needed and had the ability to impart considerably more power to it than Petranoff. Despite never playing baseball very seriously and certainly not at an elite level, Petranoff, once he became a world-class javelin thrower, managed to pitch at 103 mph. "Far From Home: The Steve Dalkowski Story" debuts Saturday night at 7 on CPTV, telling the story of the left-handed phenom from New Britain who never pitched a big-league inning but became a. The performance carried Dalkowski to the precipice of the majors. When his career ended in 1965, after he threw out his arm fielding a bunt, Dalkowski became a migrant worker in California. Baseball pitching legend from the 1960's, Steve Dalkowski, shown May 07, 1998 with his sister, Patti Cain, at Walnut Hill Park in New Britain, Conn. (Mark Bonifacio / NY Daily News via Getty Images) It rose so much that his high school catcher told him to throw at batters ankles. "Fastest ever", said Williams. The fastest pitcher ever may have been 1950s phenom and flameout Steve Dalkowski. So too, with pitching, the hardest throwers will finish with their landing leg stiffer, i.e., less flexed. He drew people to see what this was all about. Can we form reliable estimates of his speed? He founded the Futility Infielder website (2001), was a columnist for Baseball Prospectus (2005-2012) and a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated (2012-2018). Because pitching requires a stride, pitchers land with their front leg bent; but for the hardest throwers, the landing leg then reverts to a straight/straighter position. He was signed by the Baltimore Orioles in 1957, right out of high school, and his first season in the Appalachian League.