Steve Dalkowski

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Steve Dalkowski bigraphy, stories - Baseball Pitcher

Steve Dalkowski : biography

June 3, 1939 –

Steven Louis "Dalko" Dalkowski (born June 3, 1939 in New Britain, Connecticut) is a retired left-handed pitcher in minor league baseball. He is sometimes called the fastest pitcher in baseball history and had a fastball that probably exceeded . Some experts believed it went as fast as , others that his pitches traveled at or less. As no radar gun or other device was available at games to measure the speed of his pitches precisely, the actual top speed of his pitches remains unknown. Regardless of its actual speed, his fastball earned him the nickname "White Lightning". Such was his reputation that despite 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."

Dalkowski was also famous for his unpredictable performance and inability to control his pitches. His alcoholism and violent behavior off the field caused him problems during his career and after his retirement. After he retired from baseball, he spent many years as an alcoholic, making a meager living as a migrant worker. He recovered in the 1990s, but his alcoholism has left him with dementia and he has difficulty remembering his life after the mid-1960s.

Screenwriter and film director Ron Shelton played in the Baltimore Orioles minor league organization soon after Dalkowski. His 1988 film Bull Durham features a character named "Nuke" LaLoosh (played by Tim Robbins) who is based loosely on the tales Shelton was told about Dalkowski. Brendan Fraser’s character in the film The Scout is loosely based on him. 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. But, no matter how embellished, one fact always remained: Dalkowski struck out more batters and walked more batters per nine-inning game than any professional pitcher in baseball history."

Life after baseball

In 1965 he married schoolteacher Linda Moore in Bakersfield, but the marriage did not last long and they divorced two years later. Unable to find any gainful employment, he became a migrant worker. Already a heavy drinker during his baseball career, he could not keep his alcoholism from escalating, and he was frequently arrested for drunkenness. He received help from the Association of Professional Ballplayers of America periodically from 1974 to 1992 and went through rehabilitation. He was able to find a job and stay sober for several months but soon went back to drinking, and so the organization dropped its support.

Little is known about his life after the 1960s owing to his failing memory, and his failure to keep in contact with his family. What is known is that poor health in the 1980s finally prevented him 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. At some point during this time he married again to a motel clerk named Virginia, who moved him to Oklahoma City in 1993. After her death from a brain aneurysm in 1994, one of his former catchers, Frank Zupo — a teammate at Stockton in 1960 — and Dalkowski’s sister, Pat Cain, brought him back to his home town of New Britain, Connecticut, and placed him in the care of the Walnut Hill Care Center.

Although he was not expected to live very long, he has endured and is in remarkably good health. In recent times he is managing to stay sober but still suffering from the effects of his years of alcohol abuse. He has difficulty remembering much of his life after 1964; however, he still attends baseball games and spends time with his family. On September 8, 2003 he threw the ceremonial first pitch to relief pitcher Buddy Groom before an Orioles game against the Seattle Mariners.

For his contributions to baseball lore, he was inducted into the Shrine of the Eternals on July 19, 2009. Sports Illustrated’s 1970 profile of Dalkowski concluded, "His failure was not one of deficiency, but rather of excess. He was too fast. His ball moved too much. His talent was too superhuman… It mattered only that once, just once, Steve Dalkowski threw a fastball so hard that Ted Williams never even saw it. No one else could claim that."