Suitors of Spring, The: The Solitary Art of Pitching, from Seaver to Sain to Dalkowski (Summer Game Books Baseball Classics) Read Online Free PDF Page A

after that, either.
    “Following that incident Steve was always terrified of hitting somebody. One year Clyde King, his manager at Rochester, put a batter on each side of the plate and made Steve throw to them both simultaneously. He threw five of six strikes right down the middle, possibly because he knew that if he threw the ball either left or right it would hit one of them.
    “Another reason he didn’t make it was that he was too easily led. He seemed always to be looking for someone to follow, and in the minors he followed the wrong guys. He was never a bad kid, really, but he liked to drink a little, and raise hell at night, which certainly never helped his career. One year I remember we sent him to Pensacola to play under Lou Fitzgerald, an easy-going old-timer. And who do you think Steve got hooked up with down there? Bo Belinsky and Steve Barber. That had to be the three fastest, wildest left-handers any manager had to cope with—both on the field and off. Yet I think Steve could have made it if he was ever led by the right guys. Once we put Harry Brecheen behind the mound to talk to him on every pitch. Steve threw nothing but strikes. But the minute Harry walked off, Steve was as wild as ever.
    “And finally I think the Orioles made too much of a fuss over Steve in his early years. They were always billing him as the ‘fastest pitcher alive,’ and I think the publicity hurt him. Stuff like taking him to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds and conducting all those experiments. I think he would have been a lot better off if they had just left him alone in the minors and let him move up by himself. . . . But even that might not have done it, I guess. What it all boiled down to was the fact that Steve never made the major leagues because he never did learn to control Steve Dalkowski—period.”
    But if he failed to discipline himself and his talent, Dalkowski made a herculean effort. He never took exception to the many experiments the Orioles’ performed with him, even though at times he doubted them. Brecheen once said that if ever a man deserved to make the major leagues it was Dalkowski, “because of the determined way he went at pitching and the cooperation he always showed in those long hours of work.”
    Many people close to Dalkowski felt he suffered those experiments too good-naturedly, that he should have gotten angry and rebelled against them. But rather than become angry with all the interest in him, he seemed bewildered and confused by it. No matter how many hours he worked in the distant bullpens of Aberdeen and Kingsport and Pensacola, Dalkowski never really seemed a part of the experiments. He always gave the impression that he viewed them from outside himself, as if they were being conducted not on him personally but on a body that belonged only partly to him and partly to a lot of other people who had a stake in him.
    Furthermore, people said, he never got angry enough for success. If he could only begrudge someone else their success, if he could only become mad at those with inferior talent who surpassed him, it might inspire him to succeed. But he said he never envied anyone else’s success, and then added, “I never met a ballplayer I didn’t like.”
    “No one ever wanted to succeed more than Steve,” said Ken Cullum, a friend of Dalkowski’s from New Britain. “He would run through a brick wall if he had to. But he always seemed afraid that his success would have to come at the expense of someone else. And he could never hurt anyone like that.”
    By 1962 the Orioles had tired of Dalkowski. The previous year they had come up with four young pitchers, Steve Barber, Chuck Estrada, Milt Pappas and Jack Fisher, who together had won 56 games, and now they no longer worried about Dalkowski’s progress. He was shipped to Elmira of the Class A Eastern League, and immediately the front office began scanning their lower minor league rosters to see where they could ship him next once he became