Baltimore Orioles’ farmhand Steve Dalkowski is baseball’s version of Davey Crockett; a character so legendary it is hard to tell where the facts end and the legend begins. Even recorded facts are unbelievable in the case of the left-handed Dalkowski. Some claim to know the truth about Dalko but its hard to tell when reality is as strange as fiction.
The Fastest Pitcher Ever?
Steve Dalkowski threw hard. Authorities such as Ted Williams, Earl Weaver, Paul Blair, Cal Ripken, Sr., and Pat Gillick all say he was the fastest ever. How fast was he? One story holds that he threw a ball through the outfield wall in minor league Elmira on a dare. Another says he occasionally threw pitches through the netting behind home plate. His catchers wore three pads under their gloves. A high fastball hit umpire Doug Harvey’s face mask so hard the mask broke in three places and Harvey was hospitalized with a concussion. The Hardball Times reports that in 1958, the Orioles took Dalko to the US Army so he could be measured on radar. The experiment failed because he was unable to throw the ball through the narrow target Army radar required him to hit.
The Real Nuke LaLoosh
That was Steve Dalkowski’s downfall. He was wild. According to his minor league records, in 1960 Dalko walked an incredible 262 batters in just 170 innings. Sports Hollywood repeats a story from former Yankee manager Bob Lemon that Dalkowski once hit a man in the back with a pitch. The man was in the stands getting a hot dog. Hollywood Director Ron Shelton was a player in the Orioles’ organization a few years after Dalkowski and used stories about the wild hurler as the basis for Nuke LaLoosh in Bull Durham.
What was wrong with Dalkowski? There were different theories. Former teammates recall Dalko going on incredible drinking binges. In fact, Dalkowski drank himself into permanent alcohol-related dementia before drying up in 1994. Others blamed his control problems on poor eyesight, a position supported by the thick glasses Dalkowski wore while playing.
The great Orioles manager Earl Weaver, then the manager at Elmira, had a different theory. He thought that Dalkowski was confused by the volume and variety of advice coming from his coaches. Weaver simplified the instructions he gave to Dalkowski and in 1962 managed him to his best year ever.
Almost an Oriole
It was the first season in his career that Dalko walked less than one man per inning. He had a stretch of 37 scoreless innings and the Orioles began to think of Dalko as a top relief prospect. Dalkowski continued to shine during 1963’s spring training. The wild man had finally harnessed his incredible speed. He pitched six hitless innings and the Orioles told him he had made the major league team. On March 22, the O’s fitted Dalkowski for his first big league uniform. That afternoon, he threw his last good pitch, a slider to the Yankees’ Phil Linz. Something popped in Dalko’s extraordinary left arm and his career was over.
He spent three more years laboring in the minors, but his fastball was gone and Dalko was not a pitcher who could get by on guile and craft. He was never effective again. At the end of Bull Durham, Nuke goes to the majors guided by the advice of his catcher and his girlfriend. There was no Hollywood ending for Steve Dalkowski. He is a myth today; the pitcher who lost a one-hitter because he walked 17. The hurler who was so fast and wild that Ted Williams refused to take batting practice against him. He once tore a batter’s ear off with a pitch. The stories, unlike his career, are endless.
