MORE THAN FAST
Baseball men will tell you that Steve Dalkowski, not Nolan Ryan or Walter Johnson, was the fastest pitcher who ever lived. There’s no proof one way or the other. But there’s plenty of evidence that Steve Dalkowski was a pitcher with blinding speed. One year, playing for Stockton in the California League, he struck out 262 batters in 170 innings. That’s almost 14 batters a game. The trouble was that he also issued 262 walks. And that was his problem: CONTROL! One sportswriter said Dalkowski could easily throw the ball through a barn door – except he couldn’t hit the door. It was the simple truth. Dalkowski once pitched a one-hitter and lost the game 9 to 8. The Baltimore Orioles tried hard to make Dalkowski into a major-league pitcher. For one golden stretch of 52 innings, with the Elmira Pioneers, under manager Earl Weaver, he found the range. In those 52 innings, he struck out 104 and walked only…
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