Steve Dalkowski, hard-throwing pitcher and baseball's greatest what-if story, dies at 80 of CV

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Obituaries

Steve Dalkowski, hard-throwing pitcher and baseball’s greatest what-if story, dies at 80 of coronavirus

By Matt Schudel
April 24, 2020 at 7:29 p.m. EDT

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 greatest unharnessed talent, died April 19 at a hospital in New Britain, Conn. He was 80. ... His family announced his death in a death notice in the Hartford Courant, which reported that he had covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

Mr. Dalkowski pitched nine years in the minor leagues in the 1950s and ’60s, mostly in the Baltimore Orioles organization, without reaching the major leagues. Yet, in that time, he amazed — and terrified — countless hitters with a blazing fastball of astonishing speed.

{snip}

That was Mr. Dalkowski’s problem throughout his baseball career: He had the best arm in the game, but he could not control his pitches. ... In high school, he pitched a no-hitter in which he walked 18 batters and struck out 18. Another time, in an extra-inning minor league game, he walked 18 hitters and struck out 27 while throwing 283 pitches — far more than a team would allow a pitcher to throw today.

{snip}

He once beaned a mascot with a fastball — a scene depicted in the 1988 baseball movie “Bull Durham.” The film’s screenwriter, Ron Shelton, played in the Orioles’ minor league system a few years after Mr. Dalkowski, but stories about him were still being told. He based the character of Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh, played by Tim Robbins, on Mr. Dalkowski. ... “Playing baseball in Stockton and Bakersfield several years behind Dalko, but increasingly aware of the legend,” Shelton wrote in the Los Angeles Times in 2009, “I would see a figure standing in the dark down the right-field line at old Sam Lynn Park in Oildale, a paper bag in hand. Sometimes he’d come to the clubhouse to beg for money.

{snip}

“That is what haunts us. He had it all and didn’t know it. That’s why Steve Dalkowski stays in our minds. In his sport, he had the equivalent of Michelangelo’s gift but could never finish a painting.”

Matt Schudel
Matt Schudel has been an obituary writer at The Washington Post since 2004. He previously worked for publications in Washington, New York, North Carolina and Florida. Follow https://twitter.com/MattSchudel

[underpants]

1. I read a story once about him

He drank so heavily that he couldn’t remember one of his wives.

I’d also read that his Control problem was up and down not hitting batters. I guess that was wrong.

[Brother Buzz]

2. Stories circulated he became a transient in California's Central Valley....

after he hung up his spikes. Apparently went on a decade long drinking binge and his mind turned to mush.

That being said, he was the one pitcher that terrified Ted Williams in Spring Training games