Aroldis Chapman in Pittsburgh this season had his fastball clocked at 105.5 miles per hour. That’s the fastest pitch on record. Chapman is one of three pitchers to clock 105 or better, joining the Angels Ben Joyce and Giants Jordan Hicks.
Steve Dalkowski however may have been the hardest throwing pitcher in the history of baseball. Not major league history because the lefthander never made it that far. He just didn’t know where it was going most of the time!
Dalkowski pitched in two hundred and thirty-six minor league games including fifteen at the Triple A level. He sure was tough to hit, allowing only 664 hits in 956 innings. He struck out an amazing 1324 but also walked 1236!
Everybody throws 95 now
Not that long ago if you could get it up there at 95 miles per hour you were considered elite when it came to velocity. Our ability to measure the exact number has come a long way. Nolan Ryan probably threw the hardest starting from his rookie season in 1966.
Ryan’s fastest pitch was clocked at 100.9 mph using primitive radar gun technology that was 10 feet from home plate. With modern technology, it’s estimated that the pitch was actually 108.1 mph.
Between 2000 and 2003 the average fastball velocity from MLB starting pitchers increased from around 89 to over 94 miles per hour. The pitchers than can get it up to triple digits is astounding compared to other eras.
Three Hall of famers would certainly rank near the top. Randy Johnson who arrived two decades after Ryan. ‘The Big Train’ Walter Johnson, way back in the early 1900’s and Bob Feller.
Feller with Cleveland from 1936 to 1956 was the hardest thrower of his time. The thought was ‘Rapid Robert’ could fire it in the 102 MPH range although many believed in his prime he could do even better.
They tried a few ways to measure his speed. Once against a motorcyle, another time into a machine called the “Lumiline Chronograph.” It used photoelectric cells to clock the object that passed through the device’s opening. Feller’s the fastest clocked at 98.6 mph.
George Skadding/The LIFE Picture Collection
Dalkowski speed and wildness legendary
Dalkowski was a special case however and the stories of his wildness are epic. Cal Ripken Sr. was a 22-year-old catcher who played with Dalkowski in 1958 for Class B Wilson of the Carolina League:
“Steve Dalkowski was the hardest thrower I ever saw,” Ripken, once said. “In 1958, he threw a pitch through the backstop of the grandstand. I was back in Wilson in 1975 scouting for the Orioles. First thing I did was check to see if the hole was still there. It was.”
Emma Baccellieri wrote about Dalkowski for sports Illustrated:
He tore the lobe off a hitter’s ear. He broke another’s arm. When he hit an ump with an errant pitch, the man went “18 feet, chest pad over whisk broom.” In some parks, fans wouldn’t sit behind the plate when he pitched.
When Ted Williams stepped into the batting cage to face Dalkowski in spring training, he took one pitch and stepped out. “Fastest I ever saw,” he said
Filmmaker Ron Shelton, once an Orioles minor leaguer, used Dalkowski as his model for Nuke Laloosh in the movie Bull Durham. Shelton wrote an article on the lefthander for the L.A. times in 1999.
“It’s the gift from the gods … that this little guy could throw it through a wall, literally, or back Ted Williams out of there,” Shelton wrote in his 2009. “That is what haunts us. He had it all and didn’t know it. He had the equivalent of Michelangelo’s gift but could never finish a painting”
