On the passing of the guy with the blazing fastball who never made it

We don't know for sure, since there were no radar guns at the time, but those that saw lefty Steve Dalkowski pitch have said he threw his fastball well over 100 mph. Maybe 110 mph, maybe even 115 mph. Not kidding.

His fastball was legendary. But so was his walk total. Dalkowski, once an Orioles farmhand, died recently at 80. Sadly, he died due to the coronavirus.

As a kid, I heard about and read a bit about Dalkowski. He was an O's legend of sorts. One who never threw a pitch in the majors. The O's tried to get him to harness his control but every effort failed.

Dalkowski was a real-life Nuke LaLoosh. In fact, the "Bull Durham" movie character was loosely based on Dalkowski. Nuke made the bigs, but Steve never did. Dalkowski once threw six wild pitches in a row. Another time he walked the first nine batters.

For the Orioles farm team in Kingsport, Tenn., not long after he signed out of high school in 1957, Dalkowski averaged 17.6 strikeouts per nine innings. But he also averaged 18.7 walks per nine. The next year that went up, to 20.4. Dalkowski once threw a one-hitter but lost 9-8 because he walked 17. In the California League in 1960, he threw 170 innings. He struck out 262 batters. He walked 262 batters.

He pitched in the minors through 1965 and walked 1,236 in 956 innings. He only allowed 37 homers in all those innings. Squaring up his pitches was not easy. If only he could find the plate or even get close. He never could to any consistent level.

The Athletic's Joe Posnanski recently wrote this excellent article (subscription required) about Dalkowski. It included this excerpt:

"The story goes that an aging Ted Williams was curious and stepped into the batting cage against Dalkowski, saw one pitch, dropped his bat and said that he didn't need to see that pitch again. He'd survived this long in baseball, he didn't need to take any more chances. People who saw Dalkowski pitch say that when he threw to hitters in a cage, he sometimes missed the cage."

Posnanski wrote about the Orioles' continuous and, at times, exhaustive efforts to try to help Dalkowski throw more strikes.

"They had a coach standing behind him during simulated games offering positive reinforcement between pitches. Didn't work," he wrote. "They had two batters standing on each side of the plate at the same time to give him a tunnel view of home plate. Didn't work. They tried to tire him out by having him warm up for an hour or two before the game, hoping that would exhaust him so he wouldn't overthrow the ball. Didn't work. The kid was inexhaustible. He'd throw 200 or 250 pitches in a game, and the last of them was just as hard and wild as the first."

Earl Weaver managed Dalkowski in Elmira, N.Y., in 1962 and helped him get his walk rate down to 6.4. He told Dalkowski to ease up on his fastball until he got to two strikes. It worked. But just for a brief time.

Perhaps due to his struggles on the mound, Dalkowski had struggles in his personal life. He battled alcoholism. According to this ESPN story, Dalkowski returned to his home in Connecticut in the mid-1990s and spent much of the rest of his life in a care facility, suffering from alcohol-induced dementia.

That is a sad ending for a pitcher who never made the majors but became a legend due to his blazing fastball. They say he threw faster than all the greats, even if he never got to throw a single big league pitch.

A few other notes: The Cape Cod League is considered the top college summer league. Each year, it features some of the top young amateurs and its players are seen by scouts and can improve their draft stock. But there will be no games in that league this summer. The Cape Cod League announced Friday it will cancel the 2020 season due to the coronavirus.

MLBPipeline.com recently expanded its ranking of the top players available in this year's draft to 150 prospects. Here is their list, which shows Arizona State's Spencer Torkelson No. 1, followed by Austin Martin of Vanderbilt, Asa Lacy of Texas A&M, Emerson Hancock of Georgia and Nick Gonzales of New Mexico State.

Finally, after noting the terrific television ratings for the Michael Jordan documentary and the opening night of the NFL draft, MLB officials must be wondering how their games would do if and when baseball returns.

No doubt pretty well, especially at first. But baseball games are televised in local and not national markets in the regular season. While I'm sure fans would love the return of a live sport, we're probably going to have to wait a while for baseball to have any chance to return safely.

But I do wonder how initial ratings will be. I also wonder how fans will adapt to watching games that will likely be played without fans in the stands. Will it get old after a while watching games with no fan atmosphere?