PHILADELPHIA _ On its website, the Shaker Funeral Home, where Steve Dalkowski's private funeral service took place days after COVID-19 claimed him on April 19, describes itself as a "creator of meaningful memories."
If that's true, then the mortuary in his hometown of New Britain, Conn., was the perfect setting for Dalkowski's goodbye.
Though he never threw a pitch in the big leagues and lost nearly twice as many games as he won in nine minor league seasons, few in baseball history created more memories than the Baltimore Orioles' left-handed pitching prospect of the late 1950s and early '60s.
"The stories," said Hank King, an ex-Phillies scout who played a Class A season with him 55 years ago, "there are so many stories."
Ron Shelton, the screenwriter/director, played in the Orioles system after Dalkowski and heard the stories. He used Dalkowski as the basis for Nuke LaLoosh, the flaky, wild pitcher played by Tim Robbins in his 1988 film "Bull Durham."
Because of limitations imposed by the coronavirus outbreak, most of those stories couldn't be shared at funeral services limited to family members. But that didn't stop King and Phillies' senior adviser Pat Gillick from remembering a onetime teammate who was one of the game's all-time characters.
Born with a supernatural arm, Dalkowski could throw a ball through a wall, literally. But, as with all tragic heroes, the gods who gifted him also cursed him with a fatal flaw. He never learned to control his pitches or himself, drank as hard as he threw, and destroyed both his career and himself.
"Ability-wise, he was a freak," recalled Gillick, a fellow pitcher with the Orioles' Elmira, N.Y., affiliate in 1962 (Class A) and 1963 (double A). "You don't run into many guys with that kind of arm and talent. ... But Steve easily went the wrong way. He had a big heart, but he went off the trail."
Just 5-foot-11 and 175, Dalkowski had a fastball that Cal Ripken Sr., who both caught and managed him, estimated at 110 mph. Davey Johnson, a baseball lifer who played with him in the Orioles system and who saw every flamethrower from Sandy Koufax to Aroldis Chapman, said no one ever threw harder.
"Steve was double-jointed in his wrist," said Gillick. "He got so much backspin on the ball that you could almost tell him, 'Don't throw the ball in the catcher's mitt, throw it 2 feet in front of the plate.' And by the time the ball got to the catcher, it was over the hitter's head. He had super arm speed and he threw effortlessly. The ball came out very naturally at a very high velocity."
That magic arm provoked wonder and terror, and quickly a mythology arose around it. His feats, real or imagined, embedded themselves into baseball's oral tradition. Passed from player to player, generation to generation, they have endured.
The bespectacled pitcher's statistics are mind-blowing. In 956 innings from 1957 to 1965, he struck out 1,324 hitters _ and walked 1,236. He averaged 17.6 strikeouts per nine innings in his first season _ and 18.7 walks. One night in Tennessee, he had 24 strikeouts and 18 walks.
Everybody in baseball, it seemed, had a Dalkowski story.
In Sports Illustrated, the pitcher/writer Pat Jordan described the spring training moment when a curious Ted Williams got into the box against him. He took one pitch, which he claimed he never saw, and walked away.
"(He said) Steve Dalkowski was the fastest pitcher he ever faced and that he would be damned if he would ever face him again if he could help it," Jordan wrote.
Gillick remembered a practice session at Elmira when something upset his normally unflappable teammate. Dalkowski picked up a ball at home plate and angrily flung it over the centerfield fence.
King, who now operates a Limerick baseball academy, saw him make a throw from deepest center field that cleared a press box behind the plate.
"When we played together at Tri-Cities in Washington, he'd been around eight or nine years already and he'd been hurt," said King. "I can't imagine how hard he must have thrown before because he was still unbelievable."
