View Single Post
Old 06-24-2016, 07:42 PM   #28292
Merkle923
Hall Of Famer
 
Join Date: Aug 2013
Posts: 2,163
Steve Dalkowski 1963 (Kinda)

Everybody knows this extraordinary story; after years of epic minor league wildness (he had only two true outcomes: walks and strikeouts) Earl Weaver got a hold of him in 1962 and taught him to throw nothing but his rising fastball and slider.

Dalkowski had made the Orioles as a reliever in 1963 and was just tuning up against the Yankees in Florida when he threw the slider and something popped in his elbow. He never appeared in the majors, and within three years was out of the game and working as a migrant farm laborer.

The Dalkowski negative uploaded today was from the image Topps took in March, 1963 and used on his Rookie Card (he really had made it) and doubles the number of known color images of the pitcher who might have been the fastest of all-time (the other is a rough scan of a capless Topps image, it's shown below):

Last edited by Merkle923; 08-03-2017 at 10:19 PM.
Merkle923 is online now   Reply With Quote