GLORY DAYS:

Summer nights in Bakersfield he can still be found, standing in the oven heat down the right-field line near the bullpen, watching the minor leaguer pitchers loosen up. Every few years a sportswriter from the East flies in to do a piece about him for a big magazine, but the little guy never shows up for the interview. Except for that, and the cops and the groundskeepers, nobody knows who he is.

To the ballplayers in the bullpen he's just another drunk. It matters not that he used to pitch in that very ballpark, that he used to be the greatest pitching prospect of all time. From a prospect to a suspect, they used to say. And if you don't believe the groundskeepers and the cops, ask the veterans.

The fastest pitcher I ever saw? Easy. Dalkowski. Dalko, we used to call him. Little guy, glasses. Drank like a fish. Had unbelievable heat. Blew it by Ted Williams in spring training. "Fastest ever," Ted said. "I never want to face him again." Harry "The Cat" Brecheen called it "the best arm in the history of baseball." Cal Ripken Sr., his catcher in the minors said, "Nobody else was close." And the stories are endless.

In the days before radar guns, the Baltimore organization sent him out to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds the night after throwing a complete game. They set up a tube-like device on a tripod above home plate that could measure the speed of an object in flight. The problem was, of course, Dalko couldn't hit the damn thing. He threw for forty minutes before sneaking a fastball down the tube: 98.6 miles an hour--without a mound. A fresh, sober Bob Feller threw 5 miles an hour slower through the same machine. Some say Dalko would've stopped a radar gun at 120 mph.

In Wilson, North Carolina, he threw a wild pitch through the welded mesh screen sixty feet behind the catcher. Thirty years later the hole in the screen is still there.

He stood in front of the center-field clubhouse in Stockton, 430 feet from home plate, watching his teammates place bets to see if any of them could throw a ball to home plate on a single bounce. One of them did. His curiosity aroused, Dalko picked up a ball. Without warming up, still in street clothes, he threw it over home plate. Over the backstop. It landed in the press box somewhere.

There was the time his catcher couldn't get the glove up fast enough and a rising fastball hit the umpire in the mask, shattering it in three places. The ump got off easy, people say, compared to the guy who had his ear ripped off by one of Dalk's 0-and-2 pitches. It was a clean tear, they said. Sewed back on real easy.

They sent him to Florida to play under the steady influence of a veteran manager and just maybe, shake his love of drinking and partying. They wanted to him to mature. Instead, he became pals with Bo Belinksy. The manager had a heart attack.

Tweet   @brothersjudd