The Legend of All Legends

So many former teammates told tales about Steve Dalkowski that I devoted an entire chapter to him in my Orioles history book even though he never played for the Orioles.

In the long chronicle of Orioles history, Steve Dalkowski is the greatest mythological figure. No one else comes close as a source of baseball tales that sound completely made up.

“Saw him strike out 24 and walk 18 one night.”

“On a crappy little field with dim lighting in Tennessee, he threw a fastball that the batter never saw. Ball hit the guy in the head and bounced back onto the field, landing near second base. Shattered the guy’s helmet. They took him straight to the hospital.”

“Walked into a place one night and he was sitting there at the bar with 24 scotch-and waters lined up in front of him. ‘Ain’t that a beautiful sight,’ he said.”

After signing out of high school for a modest bonus in 1957, Dalkowski, a left-handed pitcher from New Britain, Connecticut, was in the Orioles’ minor league system for eight years. He was the ultimate temptation. No one had ever seen anyone throw the ball harder. Earl Weaver didn’t blink at comparing him to Sandy Koufax. But he was wild, unable to control his beast of a fastball, and he also was wild off the field, a bitter coincidence that eventually sent his life spiraling in the wrong direction.

For all the hullaballoo he generated, he never threw a pitch in the major leagues. Just when he was on the verge in 1963, after years of tinkering, he injured his arm in his last spring training outing and never came close again. Truly a baseball tragedy.

When I wrote From 33rd Street to Camden Yards, my book on the history of the Orioles published in 2001, I divided the story into 46 chapters. One was devoted entirely to Dalkowski.

It really didn’t make sense. A history of the team with an entire chapter devoted to a guy who never actually played for the team?

But it did make sense. As I went around the country interviewing nearly 100 former players, managers and executives for my book, everyone kept telling me stories about Dalkowski that sounded absurd, except they were real.

“They tried having him throw in the bullpen for an hour before he came in, thinking maybe it’d wear him out and he wouldn't be so wild.”

“When I roomed with him. I roomed with a suitcase.”

The most unbelievable part of his legend was how his fastball traveled. “It would rise, on average, a foot to two feet between the mound and home plate, It looked like an airplane taking off,” Ron Hansen said in his Bird Tapes interview.

Dalkowski was just of modest build, around 5-11 and 170 pounds, with an arm that was long and limber but seemingly not extraordinary. But that arm unleashed a fastball so freakish that his former teammates’ eyes grew wide when they spoke about it decades later.

“Cal Ripken caught him and said if the ball ever left his hand aiming belt-high on the batter, he just turned and ran for the screen. Because it was going to sail over everyone’s head,” Steve Barber said in his Bird Tapes interview.

Barry Shetrone, a Baltimore high school star who later played for the Orioles, said in his interview for my book (which is coming to the Bird Tapes), “You had to see it to believe it. I took batting practice against him in spring training in ‘58, and he threw a ball to me, and his reputation had preceded him, and I see it coming. I’m thinking, ‘Well, he’s not so fast.’ Then, before I could think, the ball, which was belt high, just zoomed up and over my head. I stood back and said, ‘I don’t believe what I just saw.’”

In the late ‘50s, the Orioles brought Dalkowski up to Baltimore to throw batting practice before a game against Boston. The Red Sox stopped to watch. “No one had ever see anything like it, Ted Williams included,” Walter Youse said in his Bird Tapes interview. Around the same time, Dalkowski also threw an inning against the Cincinnati Reds in an exhibition game at Memorial Stadium. Reds manager Birdie Tebbetts ordered his players to stand in the far corner of the batters’ box and not swing, just get out of the at-bat as quickly as possible. Tebbetts didn’t want anyone getting hurt. Dalkowski struck out the side.

Herm Starrette, who was a teammate of Dalkowski’s in the minors, briefly pitched for the Orioles in the majors and was later the team’s pitching coach, couldn’t stop talking about Dalkowski when I interviewed him for the book:

“I played with a lot of guys and worked with oodles of them as a coach, but as far as raw ability, there was no one better. He could have pitched in the big leagues for years. He could have set records. He had three quality pitches — fastball, curveball, slider. I never saw him when he didn’t have good stuff. And as hard as he threw, his ball was feathery light.

“A normal outing for him was seven innings, 18 strikeouts, 15 walks. He couldn't go nine because he threw so many pitches. And he set a record with every pitch, either a walk or strikeout record. I couldn't wait for the nights he pitched. One night, he was pitching for Earl in Aberdeen (South Dakota) and walked 18 struck out 20 and threw a no-hitter. He must have thrown 400 pitches. Another night, warming up in Reno (Nevada), he told me, ‘The first warmup pitch, I’m throwing it over the press box.’ He wound up and threw it clean out of the stadium The sportswriters in the press box were ducking. Billy DeMars was managing and he turned to me and said, ‘Did he do that on purpose?’ I said, ‘I don’t think so, that’s just Steve.’”

Boog Powell recalled, “They tried getting him to hold the ball across the seams to keep the ball down. If you throw a cross-seamer with the seams, it’ll sink. They had him doing that and everything else, but it was still taking off. It was something to see. They tried and tried to figure out ways to get him together. I think his problem was he was afraid he was going to kill somebody. He’d hit a bunch of guys when he was younger and tore one guy’s earlobe off. That scared him.”

It didn’t help that Dalkowski was unable to control himself off the field, drinking to excess night after night. Starrette recalled:

“I tried to keep him out of trouble, but there weren't enough eyes around to keep an eye on him. If he was in a bar, he’d buy everyone a drink. Everyone loved him. People took care of him, made sure he got back to the hotel. On payday, he’d come up and give you the money he owed you, because he always owed you, and then before the day was over, he’d borrow it back. He was just a young guy who hadn’t matured. He came in when he got tired of being out. He was a good kid. I don’t think he had a heck of a lot of home life. He couldn’t help that, but he told me he’d go back home in the fall and he and his father would go out and drink a lot.

“One night in Elmira (New York) he got pretty lit after a game, and he was driving around in (teammate) Ray Youngdahl’s Cadillac. The cops stopped him right near the stadium. He’d been drinking and they were going to take him in. Well, Steve, just threw it in reverse and slammed into the cop’s car, really rammed it and tore up the Cadillac. I don’t know if he did it on purpose, but the cops took him in and called Earl and said, ‘We’ve got Steve down here.’ Earl said, “Dammit, let him stay there tonight.’”

Weaver, as a developing managerial prospect in the early ‘60s, helped Dalkowski begin reaching his vast potential. Pitching for the Orioles’ Double A affiliate in Elmira in 1962, Dalkowski started getting the ball over the plate consistently. In 144 innings, he struck out 167, walked “only” 88 and fashioned a 7-8 record with a 3.07 ERA.

“Earl made a reliever out of him,” Starrette said, “and also would take him out when he wasn’t pitching good. Earl wouldn’t let him pitch into jams. Wouldn’t let him fail. And it was working.”

The next spring, Dalkowski had the major league roster made as Opening Day neared. On the afternoon of the Orioles’ final Grapefruit League game, he was fitted for his major league uniform. But that night, pitching against the Yankees, he strained a tendon in his left elbow.

“He threw one pitch that went way wild and looked over to the dugout like something funny had happened. Everyone just sat there and watched. They just thought it was one of his (wild) pitches,” Starrette said. “Then he threw another one that went funny. I said to (Orioles pitching coach) Harry Brecheen, ‘You better go out there. I think he’s hurt himself.’ It was his elbow. He had the club made and he was showing off his arm, like anyone would’ve done, and it happened. He came back after that but his arm was never the same. It went all downhill after that.”

Released in 1965, he was soon out of baseball. Unable to stay sober, he spent years as a farmworker, picking grapes and apricots in California. For a time, he was homeless. When his wife died in the ‘90s, his younger sister brought him back to New Britain and placed him in a nursing home where he could receive proper care for the dementia that his years of alcohol abuse had accelerated. He died in 2020 at age 81.

“No one threw harder, not Nolan Ryan or any of them,” Weaver said in his Bird Tapes interview. “He could’ve had years like Koufax, strung some together. Talent-wise, there’s no doubt. Who knows if that stretch in Elmira (when he pitched with better control in 1962) was just a stretch or the start of something? If he hadn't hurt his arm, who knows?”