Not even the bravest Hollywood screenwriter would try to pitch this one.
Just think about this movie plot:
"Alright, it starts off with this ordinary-looking
guy with an ordinary name, growing up in this ordinary town.
"Except it turns out this kid was born with one of
the most extraordinary abilities in sports - he can pitch a baseball faster than
anyone, anywhere. He can throw so fast people can hardly see the ball, so hard
that he can literally throw it through a fence. He can do impossible, miraculous
things that have never been done before in the history of the game.
"Oh, but there's a twist, of course. This kid, he
throws so hard that he can't control it, either. You see, he's got
off-the-charts speed for all kinds of strikeouts, but outside-the-zone wildness
for all kinds of bases on balls. As a pitcher, he's his own worst
enemy.
"The drama comes in this kid's effort to harness
his stuff. He goes off to the Minors, where all these coaches just scratch their
heads. They do their best to tame the ultra-fastball, trying all kinds of wacky
props and stunts to just, maybe, develop one of the greatest pitchers of all
time, another Bob Feller, another Nolan Ryan.
"After all kinds of struggles, there's a turning
point in the story. There's this one manager, a future Hall of Famer, who
finally figures out the pitcher's stuff. Finally, the kid's invincible - he goes
off to Spring Training the next year and the greatest hitter who ever lived is
too intimidated to hit against him. The kid's on the verge of finally making it
to the big leagues.
"Only, there isn't any happy ending. He never does
make it. The fans never do get to see what he can do.
"It turns out at that exact moment, after all that
struggle, the kid gets hurt. Badly hurt. So hurt that he's, finally, tragically
. . . ordinary for the first time in his baseball life. No more healthy arm, no
more lightning fastball, and, eventually, no more playing career.
"Hmmmm. You know? Forget it. It's too sad and,
besides, no one would buy it - too unbelievable."
Well, truth is stranger than fiction. What no
screenwriter would dare invent, a real-live ballplayer once lived.
All of it really did happen. There was once this
ordinary-looking kid (5'11”, 180 lbs. after a full meal), born in 1938 with an
ordinary name (Steve Dalkowski) who grew up in a relatively ordinary, industrial
town (New Britain, CT).
It's true that the kid, somehow, had a blazing
velocity (he would routinely strike out 17 or 18 batters per game in his senior
year of 1956), but he was nearly as wild as he was fast (a typical year would
see him issue 129 bases on balls in 62 innings).
And the rest of the stuff was true, too. The
record shows that Minor League coaches (for the Orioles) tried all kinds of
wacky stuff (wooden cutout targets and the like) reign in all that velocity,
until one future Hall of Famer (Earl Weaver) did figure it out. The pitcher was
nearly unhittable in one Minor League season (in ‘62), so one glorious Spring
Training (1963) really did see the greatest hitter of all time (Ted Williams)
refuse to step into the box.
Finally, sadly, the rest is nonfiction, too. Even
on the verge of achieving his dreams, there was a severe arm injury, one that
eventually killed a Major League dream. Sad, but true.
If the facts of his playing career couldn't have
fit into any kind of Hollywood tale, neither,
unfortunately, did Steve Dalkowski's later years.
After his on-field career ended, the
one-time phenom, like many former ballplayers, went through tough times. In his
particular case, there were many years of very tough times - by the mid-1990's,
a combination of severe emotional and alcohol problems had left the one-time
prospect alone and nearly destitute.
And yet, like the ballplayer he once was, Steve
Dalkowski has managed to rally for a late comeback. With the help of his family,
he found new sobriety and some measure of recovered health. Nowadays, his
greatest blessing may be in his loving and protective sister, Pat Cain, who
joined us in an interview in the care facility where Steve now resides.
The years and illness have taken a toll on
the 67 year-old, to the point where Pat has a sharper memory and voice regarding
some of her big brother’s early days. And yet, when Steve Dalkowski talked
baseball on September 14th, he had many good moments, moments when his eyes lit
up and he flashed a premiere athlete's easy grin. It was something to see. In
recounting the nearly incredible storyline he once lived, at least, the old
fireballer was still pretty quick.
When did you first get interested in
baseball?
Steve Dalkowski: I used to go to a lot of my father’s
games and watch him play.
Pat Cain:
Our father, who the ball players called Ratso, signed a Minor League
contract for the Philadelphia Athletics, way back in Connie Mack’s time, but he
hurt his knee. But he was well known as a semipro player around here for years,
in the industrial leagues.
What position did he
play?
SD:
Shortstop. Some outfield, too.
Did he have a strong arm himself, in getting the ball to
first base?
SD:
Oh yeah. He was fast.
Apart from your father, did you have any favorite ball
players?
SD:
Billy Pierce. He pitched for the Chicago White Sox.
What did you like about
him?
SD:
He was fast.
When did you start thinking about
pitching?
SD:
When I went to Little League.
PC:
Actually, Steve’s 1948, ’49 teams were the first Little League teams in
New
Britain.
Were
you a hard thrower from the beginning?
SD:
Oh yeah.
PC: I
can help you get through this a little bit - Stevie sometimes has a hard time
remembering his times before the Minors.
In high school, Stevie had an Italian-American
coach . . . Mr. Cozetta?
SD:
Cozetta.
PC: . . . A Mr. Cozetta, and he once saw
Stevie throwing the ball in from the outfield, and he converted him to pitcher
on the spot.
Do you have any idea why you were so
fast?
SD:
Not really. I did a lot of running, I did pushups. Nothing
special.
PC:
You played football.
SD: I
played football, too. It just came natural. It just got faster and faster when I
grew up.
PC:
My brother was a great football player, by the way. Stevie was a
left-handed quarterback, all-state.
Washington
State,
Columbia, and Notre Dame all
recruited him, but he chose baseball.
Pat, if I could ask you - when Steve first started
displaying this miraculous kind of pitching ability, what did the family make of
it?
PC:
Coming from a big family - my Mom and Dad both came from families with
eight kids - we didn’t make a big deal out of anything. Even today. It was just
what it was. We would just go to his games and wonder how many he struck out. We
were always proud of him in a quiet way, but we didn’t make any big deal out of
it.
But New
Britain was different. Whenever Steve pitched, there were
thousands of people there. Late into the evening, because of all the walks.
Today, a phenom with that kind of lightning would be a
national story, maybe even an international
story.
PC:
It wasn’t. He wasn’t any kind of celebrity or anything - he was just this
Polish kid from New Britain who knew
how to throw fast. In town, it was a big deal, but otherwise, no.
Well, the other half of the legend was in Steve’s
wildness. One of your former teammates described it as very peculiar - your
fastballs were almost always up and down over home plate, rather than right to
left of it.
SD:
Yeah. The ball just rose, it took off. The torque, I guess.
One of the theories was that you were throwing so hard
that it created this off-the-charts topspin, so that, even if you did almost
everything exactly right in terms of mechanics, you could still be
wild.
SD:
That sounds about right.
Were you over-throwing?
SD:
No, I almost never threw as hard as I could. (laughs) When I did, that’s when
the ball would really take
off.
I’m
sure young Clark Kent had the same
feeling.
SD:
(laughs) They tried to tell me to throw slower, but then they’d start
hitting the ball. Besides, I was like anyone - I wanted to bring it.
When did you start thinking about becoming a
pro?
SD:
In tenth grade. I could strike everybody out.
PC: I
can remember my father and I sitting at one of his tenth grade games at the
park, on the top bleacher. All of a sudden we heard this [loud] ‘whhhhm’ sound.
Like that- ‘whhhhm’. At first
we thought it was static from a radio or the wind in the trees or something, but
it kept going and going and going every few seconds. It was the sound of Stevie
warming-up.
What did your coaches say about your throwing
ability?
SD:
My coaches talked about it all the time. They just said the same thing,
most of them - ‘How the heck do you throw so hard? You’re not big, you’re not
strong - how do you get your leverage and all that?’
Did you ever come up with an
answer?
SD:
No. I still don’t know.
Do you have any idea exactly how fast you were at your
best?
PC:
Cal Ripken, Sr., who was Steve’s catcher in the Minors, thought that he
might have been 110, maybe 120 miles per hour. It seems far-fetched, but who
would know better?
It’s a tough thing to figure out, because in the late
1950’s, early 1960’s, accurate radar guns weren’t really in use.
PC:
They did test him at Aberdeen Testing Grounds once, right after he threw
a complete game.
SD: I
think I got up to 105. Most were 98, they said.
PC:
98 is not bad, either.
Not for an off-night after a complete game, it’s not. Do
you remember when Major League scouts started coming around to see
you?
SD:
Sure.
What was that like?
SD:
It felt good.
PC:
We grew up in the projects and I can remember, at 14, 15 years old,
getting up on a friend’s porch and watching a row of Cadillacs lined up on our
street. They were waiting to see my brother, trying to get him to sign. We
finally decided to go to the Orioles. Who was that guy who signed
you?
SD:
Paul Richards.
PC:
Mr. Richards, who was the manager for the Orioles at the time, came over
to see us. That was huge. Lee MacPhail, the team’s General Manager, came
over.
SD: I
didn’t say much. They did most of the talking. Paul Richards, I liked him a
lot.
What did you like about
him?
SD:
(laughs) He really knew what he was doing. He was a catcher, so he knew
how to handle pitchers.
After you did sign with the Orioles, you went off to the
Minors in 1957. What was that like for you?
SD: I
was scared.
Why?
SD: I
didn’t like being away from home much.
Well, were the batters scared,
too?
SD:
(laughs) They were scared, yeah. They stepped back in the box as far back
and away as they could. I hit a few of them, but not too many. You can’t last if
you hit too many.
PC:
In high school, at least, most of the batters just stood there. And
prayed for a walk.
What was it like throwing those fastballs at your
catchers?
PC:
Andy Baylock, who became the coach at UConn [the
University of
Connecticut] for many years, was a
friend when we were growing up. He caught Stevie in high school and he’d put
steak in his glove, so it wouldn’t break the bones in his hand.
SD:
(laughs) Yeah. It really, really hurt their hands. They said when it hit
their glove, it echoed like hell.
How did the umpires react to your
throws?
SD:
It was hard to get them to get in position to see the pitches. One time,
Doug Harvey broke his face mask on a foul tip, or at least he thought it was a
foul tip. It was a fastball. It never hit the bat or the catcher’s
glove.
What did your Minor League coaches do to try to help you
with your control?
SD:
Well, they cut out these squares in pieces of wood for a strike zone;
they used to try to tire me out. A lot of times they worked on my motion. Harry
Brecheen, he was the pitching coach, ‘I don’t know’ he’d say. He’d turn his cap
around backwards, mutter and say ‘I don’t know’.
PC: I
think what Peter wants to know is if the Orioles had a plan for you to develop
more control.
SD:
They had no plan, no. When they saw me do something wrong, they just said
it. They’d say ‘wrong’ and I adjusted. I’d throw strikes, they’d walk away, and
I’d throw balls again. (laughs) I don’t know why.
Well, control must have been the one crucial issue for
you because, when you did throw strikes, almost no one could hit the ball. From
what I’ve heard, virtually everything that happened in your games was either a
strikeout or a walk. Is that true?
SD:
That’s true.
One thing batters are told to do when they’re facing
premiere fastball pitchers is to make contact, and just let the other guy supply
the power. Did some hitters try to do that?
SD:
Yeah, they tried that. They’d just stick the bat out like this (mimes a
half-swing).
Did that work?
SD:
(laughs) No. They still couldn’t catch up.
I’d like to ask you about some incredible incidents from
those days in the Minors, if that would be
alright.
SD:
Shoot.
‘Steve Dalkowski was so fast and so wild that opposing
batters were ordered to take every pitch until strike two’.
SD:
Yeah, that’s true. I couldn’t believe it. They told me that after the
game. A lot of times, they’d take everything.
‘He was just as fast after 100 pitches as he was at the
beginning of a ball game’
SD:
True. Working didn’t bother me. I got stronger.
That’s amazing . . .
SD:
Yeah, I know. (laughs)
‘He could throw a baseball through a wood
fence’.
SD:
True. I did it in Aberdeen,
in Pensacola,
Elmira, and
Rochester.
‘He could throw a baseball from second base over the
center field clubhouse on the fly’.
SD:
True. That was in ’60.
‘He could throw a ball through a backstop
fence.’
SD:
That was in Elmira [early in
1962]. (laughs) I remember the crowd wouldn’t sit back there behind home plate
after that, and I was wondering why. They said - ‘because of you’.
Do you have any memories of an opponent named Richie
Allen?
SD:
He couldn’t hit me. Dick Allen once said I gave him more trouble than
anyone.
How about Tony La Russa?
SD:
He was a good contact hitter for the Athletics. Didn’t know him very well
off the field.
Did you have any close friends on those Minor League
teams in the early ‘60’s?
SD:
Sure. Boog Powell, Chuck Estrada, Cal Ripken [Sr.]. (laughs) Ripken, he
always used to say he wasn’t an ‘organization man’. But he was.
Do you remember him bringing a little kid named Cal, Jr.
around the team?
SD:
When he was real young, yeah. He was a bat boy for us at
Pensacola, in Class D. He was a
little wild, but he was such a little kid.
What do you remember about another former teammate, Bo
Belinsky?
SD:
(laughs) He was always late. He had a girl in every town.
How about your roommate from 1962, Pat
Gillick?
SD:
He was something else, like a walking encyclopedia. He was so smart. I
liked all my teammates, on the field, off the field.
Well, in 1962, you ran into another pretty smart guy, a
manager named Earl Weaver. What do you remember about him?
SD:
He would always talk about winter ball in
Venezuela.
(laughs) He tried to talk Spanish, but the Latin players would laugh at him.
They called him ‘El Gordo’, ‘the fat one’. They’d really get on him,
boy.
Despite Mr. Weaver’s rusty language skills,
he managed to help you out on the mound. What happened that year in
Elmira?
SD:
Weaver would bang on a water bucket, the water cooler, when he thought I
wasn’t concentrating enough! He banged on it loud, even during warm-ups. He was
a loud guy, anyway. [Doug] Harvey
didn’t like it, so he’d whistle after that.
The other thing was, he worked on my motion. He
drew a line on the mound, and said not to step in front of that line. The idea
was to shorten [the motion]. That helped my control 100%.
It did. It’s said that after you managed to start
throwing strikes in late ‘62, you were nearly unstoppable . . .
SD:
When I threw strikes, forget it.
That led to another story. In that Spring Training of
1963, it is said, Ted Williams once refused to bat against you in an
exhibition.
SD:
True. He wouldn’t bat against me and because he couldn’t even see the
ball, ‘I heard it but I didn’t see it’, he said. This is from Williams, who used
to say he could see the stitches on a fastball.
Unfortunately, that at-bat happened almost right before
your injury.
PC:
That was the same day [March 23,
1963] he was fitted for a Major League uniform for the first
time.
SD:
It hurt, it hurt. I believed, all those years in Minors that I could get
to the Majors. I deserved to go.
PC:
The players said they could hear the pop in his arm around the infield.
Nowadays, that would be another Tommy John surgery, but back then . . .
SD:
After that, I just couldn’t throw hard enough.
Well, there’s something else I have to ask you about, and
that was the drinking. How much of your problems in the Minors were due to
alcohol?
PC:
It did play a part, Steve. You have to admit that.
SD:
Yeah. A lot of it got blown out of proportion, but if I didn’t drink,
everything would have been a lot better for me.
Have you ever come across pitchers who remind you of
Steve Dalkowski as a young pitcher?
SD:
No.
PC:
If you look at Ted Lilly, you’re looking at my brother at his age, in his
face. And he has the exact same lefty delivery and follow-through, too, though
not the same stuff. The first time I saw him, I said ‘Oh, my God’ I couldn’t
watch the Sox game when he was pitching, it was so eerie.
Pat, have you ever come across anyone who reminds you of
Steve in terms of pure stuff?
PC:
No.
Steve, what do you
think?
SD:
Nah.
Have you ever seen anyone who comes
close?
PC:
Who was I watching the other night, a lefty reliever? He pitches for
L.A. and he throws really, really
hard.
Francisco Rodriguez?
PC:
Is he the one with the goggles?
Yeah.
PC:
Him. A little bit. But Stevie was much faster.
For a pitcher who was so incredibly quick, and who never
did make it to the Majors, memories are very slow to fade. I mean, guys like
Ralph Kiner, Gene Mauch, Bill James, many others - they still cite him among all
these Hall of Fame pitchers.
PC: I
never would have expected it. It’s 50 years later, and when people from the area
learn that my maiden name is Dalkowski, they’ll still tell me ‘I remember this
and that from Steve’s games over at
Walnut
Hill
Park’. How do they remember all these
things?
I’m sorry Stevie’s gone through his
problems- life is full of ups and downs - but I’m so grateful he was in baseball
and went to those places and met those people and had those experiences.
Baseball people - guys like [Orioles historian] John
Eisenberg and Pat Gillick - are unbelievable. In helping Steve get better
in these last ten, eleven years, I’ve had a ball and made so many friends, just
because so many people are still interested in Stevie’s career.
It is
amazing. I think maybe it’s because people can identify with his career.
Everyone who loves the game has dreamed of gaining a God-given ability out of
nowhere, and every talented player has feared losing their gifts. There’s a lot
of promise and heartbreak in all of that.
SD:
That’s a good way to say it. It was strange.
And,
as Pat mentioned, Steve, you are still remembered to this day, especially in
Baltimore. What was it like when you were invited to
throw the ceremonial first pitch at Camden Yards?
SD:
Oh, I was nervous, boy.
PC:
All his friends from New
Britain were there [in September 2003]. [Orioles owner]
Mr. [Peter] Angelos gave us a luncheon beforehand, it was
unbelievable.
Then we got up in the morning of the game and my
younger son said, ‘Mom, he doesn’t want to go to the ball park’. He said, ‘Uncle
Steve’s nervous. He won’t do it’. ‘What do you mean he’s not going?!’. Finally,
though, we got him to go to the ball park with the promise he wouldn’t have to
throw out the first pitch. I was a wreck.
I
can guess why. Steve, tell the truth - you were still worried about throwing
strikes.
SD:
(laughs) Nah. Just all the people . . .
PC:
He came around, though. [O’s reliever] Buddy Groom caught the ball.
But you’d slowed down a little bit by then. I doubt if
you can even throw 85 miles per hour nowadays.
SD:
(laughs). Nah.
Are you two still interested in
baseball?
PC:
We go to the [New Britain Rock] Cats’ [AA-level Minor League] games [in
New Britain] about twice a year. A
couple of years ago, Terry Ryan, the Twins’ General Manager, found out that
Stevie was in the ball park. He came over to us, shook hands, and said, ‘So this
is Steve Dalkowski. I’ve been waiting to meet you all these years’. That was so,
so nice.
SD:
It was great. Sometimes, people still ask me for my autograph.
Do you sign?
SD:
(laughs) Any time.
What does ‘the fastest pitcher ever’ think of the game
now, after all these years?
SD: I’m a
big fan. I wish things had been different for me. But I still love
baseball.
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