Baseball pitching legend from the 1960's, Steve Dalkowski with his sister, Patti Cain, at Walnut Hill Park in New . Steve Dalkowski throws out a . Gripping and tragic, Dalko is the definitive story of Steve "White Lightning" Dalkowski, baseball's fastest pitcher ever. [4] Such was his reputation that despite his never reaching the major leagues, and finishing his minor league years in class-B ball, the 1966 Sporting News item about the end of his career was headlined "Living Legend Released."[5]. Moreover, they highlight the three other biomechanical features mentioned above, leaving aside arm strength/speed, which is also evident. Both were world-class javelin throwers, but Petranoff was also an amateur baseball pitcher whose javelin-throwing ability enabled him to pitch 103 mph. Weaver had given all of the players an IQ test and discovered that Dalkowski had a lower than normal IQ. Steve Dalkowski will forever be remembered for his remarkable arm. The four features above are all aids to pitching power, and cumulatively could have enabled Dalko to attain the pitching speeds that made him a legend. After all, Zelezny demonstrated that he could have bested Petranoff in javelin throwing by a distance factor of 20 percent. Pitching for the Kingsport (Tennessee) Orioles on August 31, 1957, in Bluefield, West Virginia, Dalkowski struck out 24 Bluefield hitters in a single minor league game, yet issued 18 walks, and threw six wild pitches. Insofar as javelin-throwing ability (as measured by distance thrown) transfers to baseball-pitching ability (as measured by speed), Zelezny, as the greatest javelin thrower of all time, would thus have been able to pitch a baseball much faster than Petranoff provided that Zelezny were able master the biomechanics of pitching. 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. In conclusion, we hypothesize that Steve Dalkowski optimally combined the following four crucial biomechanical features of pitching: He must have made good use of torque because it would have provided a crucial extra element in his speed. Except for hitting the block, the rest of the features will make sense to those who have analyzed the precisely sequenced muscle recruitment patterns required to propel a 5-ounce baseball 60 6 toward the target. He was likely well above 100 under game conditions, if not as high as 120, as some of the more far-fetched estimates guessed. Because of control problems, walking as many as he struck out, Dalkowski never made it to the majors, though he got close. Instead, it seems that Dalko brought together the existing biomechanical components of pitching into a supremely effective and coherent whole. Papelbon's best pitch is a fastball that sits at 94 to 96 mph (he's hit 100 mph. 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. Javelin throwers make far fewer javelin throws than baseball pitchers make baseball throws. Most likely, some amateur videographer, some local news station, some avid fan made some video of his pitching. He's already among the all-time leaders with 215 saves and has nearly 500 strikeouts in just seven short seasons. Dalkowski was suffering from alcohol-related dementia, and doctors told her that he might only live a year, but he sobered up, found some measure of peace, and spent the final 26 years of his life there, reconnecting with family and friends, and attending the occasional New Britain Rock Cats game, where he frequently threw out ceremonial first pitches. Dalkowski struggled with alcoholism all his life. His fastball was like nothing Id ever seen before. He spent his entire career in the minor leagues, playing in nine different leagues during his nine-year career. 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. Unlike some geniuses, whose genius is only appreciated after they pass on, Dalkowski experienced his legendary status at the same time he was performing his legendary feats. I bounced it, Dalkowski says, still embarrassed by the miscue. Dalko explores one man's unmatched talent on the mound and the forces that kept ultimate greatness always just beyond his reach. Granted much had changed since Dalkowski was a phenom in the Orioles system. There in South Dakota, Weaver would first come across the whirlwind that was Steve Dalkowski. Bill Huber, his old coach, took him to Sunday services at the local Methodist church until Dalkowski refused to go one week. He died on April 19 in New Britain, Conn., at the age of 80 from COVID-19. He almost never allowed home runs, just 0.35 per nine for his career. And, if they did look inside and hold the film up to the light and saw some guy, in grainy black and white, throwing a baseball, they wouldnt have any idea who or what they are looking at, or even why it might be significant. Back where he belonged.. The catcher held the ball for a few seconds a few inches under Williams chin. His first year in the minors, Dalkowski pitched 62 innings, struck out 121 and walked 129. That gave him incentive to keep working faster. He was sometimes called the fastest pitcher in baseball history and had a fastball that probably exceeded 100mph (160km/h). [4] On another bet, Dalkowski threw a ball over a fence 440 feet (134m) away. In 2009, Shelton called him the hardest thrower who ever lived. Earl Weaver, who saw the likes of Sandy Koufax, Nolan Ryan, and Sam McDowell, concurred, saying, Dalko threw harder than all of em., Its the gift from the gods the arm, the power that this little guy could throw it through a wall, literally, or back Ted Williams out of there, wrote Shelton. 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. On a staff that also featured Gillick and future All-Star Dave McNally, Dalkowski put together the best season of his career. [2][6] Brendan Fraser's character in the film The Scout is loosely based on him. Stephen Louis Dalkowski Jr. (June 3, 1939 [1] - April 19, 2020), nicknamed Dalko, [2] was an American left-handed pitcher. The Gods of Mount Olympus Build the Perfect Pitcher, Steve Dalkowski Was El Velocista in 1960s Mexican Winter League Baseball, Light of the World Scripture Memorization Course. Baseball players, coaches, and managers as diverse as Ted Williams, Earl Weaver, Sudden Sam McDowell, Harry Brecheen, Billy De Mars, and Cal Ripken Sr. all witnessed Dalko pitch, and all of them left convinced that no one was faster, not even close. I first met him in spring training in 1960, Gillick said. 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. Dalkowski managed to throw just 41 innings that season. Thats when I stopped playing baseball and started javelin training. In 2009, he traveled to California for induction into the Baseball Reliquarys Shrine of the Eternals, an offbeat Hall of Fame that recognizes the cultural impact of its honorees, and threw out the first pitch at a Dodgers game, rising from a wheelchair to do so. RIP to Steve Dalkowski, a flame-throwing pitcher who is one of the more famous players to never actually play in the major leagues. 2023 Marucci CATX (10) Review | Voodoo One Killer. So the hardest throwing pitchers do their best to approximate what javelin throwers do in hitting the block. After one pitch, Shelton says, Williams stepped out of the box and said "I never want to face him again.". First off, arm strength/speed. He asserted, "Steve Dalkowski was the hardest thrower I ever saw." . This video consists of Dalkowski. He was a puzzle that even some of the best teachers in baseball, such as Richards, Weaver, and Rikpen, couldnt solve. [20] Radar guns, which were used for many years in professional baseball, did not exist when Dalkowski was playing, so the only evidence supporting this level of velocity is anecdotal. I was 6 feet tall in eighth grade and 175 lbs In high school, I was 80 plus in freshman year and by senior year 88 plus mph, I received a baseball scholarship to Ball State University in 1976. That, in a nutshell, was Dalkowski, who spent nine years in the minor leagues (1957-65) putting up astronomical strikeout and walk totals, coming tantalizingly close to pitching in the majors only to get injured, then fading away due to alcoholism and spiraling downward even further. How fast was he really? To push the analogy to its logical limit, we might say that Dalkowski, when it came to speed of pitching, may well have been to baseball what Zelezny was to javelin throwing. According to Etchebarren his wilder pitches usually went high, sometimes low; "Dalkowski would throw a fastball that looked like it was coming in at knee level, only to see it sail past the batter's eyes".[18]. [27] Sports Illustrated's 1970 profile of Dalkowski concluded, "His failure was not one of deficiency, but rather of excess. Barring direct evidence of Dalkos pitching mechanics and speed, what can be done to make his claim to being the fastest pitcher ever plausible? Some experts believed it went as fast as 110mph (180km/h), others that his pitches traveled at less than that speed. [15] Weaver believed that Dalkowski had experienced such difficulty keeping his game under control because he did not have the mental capacity. He threw so hard that the ball had a unique bend all its own due to the speed it traveled. He was able to find a job and stay sober for several months but soon went back to drinking. Best USA bats "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. Dalkowski, a football and baseball star in New Britain, was signed to a minor league contract by the Orioles in 1957. Its hard to find, mind you, but I found it and it was amazing how easy it was once you found the throwing zone I threw 103 mph a few times on radar, and many in 97-100 mph range, and did not realize I was throwing it until Padres scout came up with a coach after batting practice and told me. The Orioles brought Dalkowski to their major league spring training the following year, not because he was ready to help the team but because they believed hed benefit from the instruction of manager Paul Richards and pitching coach Harry Brecheen. Dalkowski was fast, probably the fastest ever. Anyone who studies this question comes up with one name, and only one name Steve Dalkowski. That meant we were going about it all wrong with him, Weaver told author Tim Wendel for his 2010 book, High Heat. It was tempting, but I had a family and the number one ranking in the world throwing javelins, and making good money, Baseball throwing is very similar to javelin throwing in many ways, and enables you to throw with whip and zip. The American Tom Petranoff, back in 1983, held the world record for the old-design javelin, with a throw of 99.72 meters (cf. 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. 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. No one else could claim that. Extreme estimates place him throwing at 125 mph, which seems somewhere between ludicrous and impossible. "[18], Estimates of Dalkowski's top pitching speed abound. [19] Most observers agree that he routinely threw well over 110 miles per hour (180km/h), and sometimes reached 115 miles per hour (185km/h). and play-by-play data provided by Sports Info Solutions. Nope. Suffice to say, for those of you who have never gotten a glimpse of the far endpoints of human performance, Dalkowskis stats are just about as ultimate as it gets. Cain moved her brother into an assisted living facility in New Britain. [4], Dalkowski's claim to fame was the high velocity of his fastball. How anyone ever managed to get a hit off him is one of the great questions of history, wrote researcher Steve Treder on a Baseball Primer thread in 2003, years before Baseball-Reference made those numbers so accessible. But he also walked 262 batters. They warmed him up for an hour a day, figuring that his control might improve if he were fatigued. Its like something out of a Greek myth. The writers immediately asked Williams how fast Steve Dalkowski really was. 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. He had it all and didnt know it. They couldnt keep up. At some point during this time, Dalkowski married a motel clerk named Virginia, who moved him to Oklahoma City in 1993. Given that the analogy between throwing a javelin and pitching a baseball is tight, Zelezny would have needed to improve on Petranoffs baseball pitching speed by only 7 percent to reach the magical 110 mph. What is the fastest pitch ever officially recorded? Yet nobody else in attendance cared. Here are the four features: Our inspiration for these features comes from javelin throwing. It is certain that with his high speed and penchant for throwing wild pitches, he would have been an intimidating opponent for any batter who faced him. "Steve Dalkowski threw at 108.something mph in a minor league game one time." He was? 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. In other words, instead of revolutionizing the biomechanics of pitching, Dalko unknowingly improved on and perfected existing pitching biomechanics. Old-timers love to reminisce about this fireballer and wonder what would have happened if he had reached the Major Leagues. Add an incredible lack of command, and a legend was born. 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. He is sometimes called the fastest pitcher in baseball history and had a fastball that probably exceeded 100mph (160kmh). If you've never heard of him, it's because he had a career record of 46-80 and a 5.59 ERA - in the minor leagues. In comparison, Randy Johnson currently holds the major league record for strikeouts per nine innings in a season with 13.41. by Handedness, Remembering Steve Dalkowski, Perhaps the Fastest Pitcher Ever, Sunday Notes: The D-Backs Run Production Coordinator Has a Good Backstory, A-Rod, J-Lo and the Mets Ownership Possibilities. On May 7, 1966, shortly after his release from baseball, The Sporting News carried a blurred, seven-year-old photograph of one Stephen Louis Dalkowski, along with a brief story that was headlined . Again, amazing. 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). As a postscript, we consider one final line of indirect evidence to suggest that Dalko could have attained pitching speeds at or in excess of 110 mph. Steve Dalkowski was considered to have "the fastest arm alive." Some say his fastball regularly exceeded 100 mph and edged as high as 110 mph. He tested positive for the virus early in April, and appeared to be recovering, but then took a turn for the worse and died in a New Britain hospital. Read more Print length 304 pages Language English Publisher 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. Dalkowski signed with the Orioles in 1957 at age 21. Forward body thrust refers to the center of mass of the body accelerating as quickly as possible from the rubber toward home plate. A few years ago, when I was finishing my bookHigh Heat: The Secret History of the Fastball and the Impossible Search for the Fastest Pitcher of All Time, I needed to assemble a list of the hardest throwers ever. Though he pitched from the 1957 through the 1965 seasons, including single A, double A, and triple A ball, no video of his pitching is known to exist. Well, I have. He became one of the few gringos, and the only Polish one at that, among the migrant workers. That is what haunts us. Cal Ripken Sr. guessed that he threw up to 115 miles per hour (185km/h). He was too fast. So speed is not everything. [20], According to the Guinness Book of Records, a former record holder for fastest pitch is Nolan Ryan, with a pitch clocked at 100.9mph (162.4km/h) in 1974, though several pitchers have recorded faster pitches since then. 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. 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. A far more promising avenue is the one we are suggesting, namely, to examine key components of pitching mechanics that, when optimally combined, could account for Dalkos phenomenal speed. In an attic, garage, basement, or locker are some silver tins containing old films from long forgotten times. It was good entertainment, she told Amore last year. Dalko is the story of the fastest pitching that baseball has ever seen, an explosive but uncontrolled arm. Koufax was obviously one of the greatest pitchers in MLB history, but his breaking balls were what was so devastating. Good . Dalkowski experienced problems with alcohol abuse. Steve Dalkowski was one of the fastest pitchers in organized baseball history with a fastball thought to be over 100 miles per hours. - YouTube The only known footage of Steve Dalkowski and his throwing motion. 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. Plagued by wildness, he walked more than he . If the front leg collapses, it has the effect of a shock absorber that deflects valuable momentum away from the bat and into the batters leg, thus reducing the exit velocity of the ball from the bat. Williams, whose eyes were said to be so sharp that he could count the stitches on a baseball as it rotated toward the plate, told them he had not seen the pitch, that Steve Dalkowski was the fastest pitcher he ever faced and that he would be damned if he would ever face him again if he could help it. Consider the following remark about Dalkowski by Sudden Sam McDowell, an outstanding MLB pitcher who was a contemporary of Dalkowskis. In 1974 Ryan was clocked with radar technology available at the time, placing one of his fastballs at over 101 mph at 10 feet from the plate. Ted Williams faced Dalkowski once in a spring training game. The cruel irony, of course, is that Dalkowski could have been patched up in this day and age. They were . * * * O ne of the first ideas the Orioles had for solving Steve Dalkowski's control problems was to pitch him until he was so tired he simply could not be wild. All major league baseball data including pitch type, velocity, batted ball location, Weaver knew that Dalkowski's fastball was practically unhittable no matter where it was in the strike zone, and if Dalkowski missed his target, he might end up throwing it on the corners for a strike anyway. 0:44. [16], Poor health in the 1980s prevented Dalkowski from working altogether, and by the end of the decade he was living in a small apartment in California, penniless and suffering from alcohol-induced dementia. On September 8, 2003, Dalkowski threw out the ceremonial first pitch before an Orioles game against the Seattle Mariners while his friends Boog Powell and Pat Gillick watched. Consider, for instance, the following video of Tom Petranoff throwing a javelin. In his final 57 innings of the 62 season, he gave up one earned run, struck out 110, and walked only 21. "He had a record 14 feet long inside the Bakersfield, Calif., police station," Shelton wrote, "all barroom brawls, nothing serious, the cops said. Williams took three level, disciplined practice swings, cocked his bat, and motioned with his head for Dalkowski to deliver the ball. He was arrested more times for disorderly conduct than anybody can remember. His story offers offer a cautionary tale: Man cannot live by fastball alone. He rode the trucks out at dawn to pick grapes with the migrant farm workers of Kern County -- and finally couldn't even hold that job.". With Kevin Costner, Derek Jeter, Denard Span, Craig Kimbrel. [21] Earl Weaver, who had years of exposure to both pitchers, said, "[Dalkowski] threw a lot faster than Ryan. We were overloading him., The future Hall of Fame manager helped Dalkowski to simplify things, paring down his repertoire to fastball-slider, and telling him to take a little off the former, saying, Just throw the ball over the plate. Weaver cracked down on the pitchers conditioning as well. Dalkowski, who once struck out 24 batters in a minor league game -- and walked 18 -- never made it to the big leagues. In 1991, the authorities recommended that Dalkowski go into alcoholic rehab. XFL Week 3 preview: Can AJ McCarron, Battlehawks continue their fourth-quarter heroics? (In 2007, Treder wrote at length about Dalkowski for The Hardball Times.). 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 . Dalkowski warmed up and then moved 15 feet (5m) away from the wooden outfield fence. Home for the big league club was no longer cozy Memorial Stadium but the retro red brick of Camden Yards. Lets flesh this out a bit. The greatest javelin thrower of all time is Jan Zelezny, who holds the world record at 98.48 meters, set in 1996, for the current javelin (older javelins, with different specifications, could be thrown farther more on this shortly). The Orioles, who were running out of patience with his wildness both on and off the field, left him exposed in the November 1961 expansion draft, but he went unselected. Some suggest that he reached 108 MPH at one point in his career, but there is no official reading. How could he have reached such incredible speeds? Andy Baylock, who lived next door to Dalkowski in New Britain, caught him in high school, and later coached the University of Connecticut baseball team, said that he would insert a raw steak in his mitt to provide extra padding. Instead Dalkowski almost short-armed the ball with an abbreviated delivery that kept batters all the more off balance and left them shocked at what was too soon coming their way. [7][unreliable source?] He grew up and played baseball in New Britain, CT and thanks to his pitching mechanics New Britain, CT is the Home of the World's Fastest Fastballer - Steve Dalkowski. All 16 big-league teams made a pitch to him. When he returned in 1964, Dalkowski's fastball had dropped to 90 miles per hour (140km/h), and midway through the season he was released by the Orioles. A left-handed thrower with long arms and big hands, he played baseball as well, and by the eighth grade, his father could no longer catch him. In Wilson, N.C., Dalkowski threw a pitch so high and hard that it broke through the narrow . Late in the year, he was traded to the Pirates for Sam Jones, albeit in a conditional deal requiring Pittsburgh to place him on its 40-man roster and call him up to the majors. In 1970, Sports Illustrated's Pat Jordan wrote, "Inevitably, the stories outgrew the man, until it was no longer possible to distinguish fact from fiction. 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. This video is interesting in a number of ways: Bruce Jenners introduction, Petranoffs throwing motion, and Petranoffs lament about the (at the time) proposed redesign of the javelin, which he claims will cause javelin throwers to be built more like shot put and discus throwers, becoming more bulky (the latter prediction was not borne out: Jan Zelezny mastered the new-design javelin even though he was only 61 and 190 lbs, putting his physical stature close to Dalkos). What, if any, physical characteristics did he have that enhanced his pitching? He finished his minor league career with a record of 46-80 and an ERA of 5.57. I never drank the day of a game. To me, everything that happens has a reason. No one knows how fast Dalkowski could throw, but veterans who saw him pitch say he was the fastest of all time. But after walking 110 in just 59 innings, he was sent down to Pensacola, where things got worse; in one relief stint, he walked 12 in two innings. "To understand how Dalkowski, a chunky little man with thick glasses and a perpetually dazed expression, became a 'legend in his own time'." Pat Jordan in The Suitors of Spring (1974). At 5'11" and weighing 170 pounds, he did not exactly fit the stereotype of a power pitcher, especially one. Our content is reader-supported, which means that if you click on some of our links, we may earn a commission. He set the Guinness World Record for fastest pitch, at 100.9 MPH. This goes to point 2 above. The problem was that Dalkowski sprayed pitches high, low, inside, and out but not nearly often enough over the plate to be effective. 9881048 343 KB A professional baseball player in the late 50s and early 60s, Steve Dalkowski (19392020) is widely regarded as the fastest pitcher ever to have played the game. I did hear that he was very upset about it, and tried to see me in the hospital, but they wouldnt let him in.. The future Hall of Fame skipper cautioned him that hed be dead by age 33 if he kept drinking to such extremes. Stephen Louis Dalkowski Jr. (June 3, 1939[1] April 19, 2020), nicknamed Dalko,[2] was an American left-handed pitcher. Then he gave me the ball and said, Good luck.'. [22] As of October 2020[update], Guinness lists Chapman as the current record holder. 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. [6] . The minors were already filled with stories about him. Dalkowski, 'fastest pitcher in history,' dies at 80, Smart backs UGA culture after fatal crash, arrests, Scherzer tries to test pitch clock limits, gets balk, UFC's White: Miocic will fight Jones-Gane winner, Wolverines' Turner wows with 4.26 40 at combine, Jones: Not fixated on Cowboys' drought, just '23, Flyers GM: Red Wings nixed van Riemsdyk trade, WR Addison to Steelers' Pickett: 'Come get me', Snowboarding mishap sidelines NASCAR's Elliott, NHL trade tracker: Latest deals and grades, Inside the long-awaited return of Jon Jones and his quest for heavyweight glory. But before or after, it was a different story. in 103 innings), the 23-year-old lefty again wound up under the tutelage of Weaver. Dalkos 110 mph pitching speed, once it is seriously entertained that he attained it, can lead one to think that Dalko was doing something on the mound that was completely different from other pitchers, that his biomechanics introduced some novel motions unique to pitching, both before and after. 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.