Mr. Tiger

Before the final game in the 88-year history of Tiger Stadium, one player spoke on behalf of more than 1,300 Tigers who had stood on the field and worn the Olde English D. In the afternoon sun, Al Kaline grabbed the microphone, stood near home plate and began speaking to the crowd: mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, all those who loved baseball and loved Detroit and suddenly felt gripped by the words of a Tigers hero.

Kaline — the man they called Mr. Tiger, the one who hit 399 career home runs and dazzled in the outfield with a certain elegance no other Motor City baseball player could quite match — talked about the old ballpark in its final days. He remarked on how its beauty was not found in dazzling architecture or creature comforts. He mentioned how it was built with concrete, steel and bricks, but held together with the powerful glue of memories. The true strength of Tiger Stadium, Kaline said, was derived from its “character, charm and history.”
Kaline was dazzling, graceful, wonderful as a player. But perhaps you could say the same about him. Character, charm and history. Kaline died Monday at age 85 at his home in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. His departure was felt in Detroit, in Michigan, across all of baseball.
“We lost an icon,” said Alan Trammell, the Tigers Hall of Fame shortstop. “He will never be forgotten, but he can’t be replaced.”

Kaline was born on Dec. 19, 1934, the son of a Baltimore broom maker. He made his major-league debut at age 18, a week after graduating high school, a face so young security workers at first refused to let him into the stadium. His presence never really left Detroit for the next 66 years. His spirit will be felt even longer.
Kaline played 22 seasons for the Tigers. He had a lifetime batting average of .297, amassed 3,007 career hits and won 10 Gold Gloves. He was a first-ballot Hall of Famer. He called games as a color analyst from 1975-2002. He spent his later years as a special assistant in the Tigers’ front office.
And even up until his final days, Kaline was a common sight in spring training, wearing a blue jersey and baseball pants, working with outfielders. He would still stop by Comerica Park during the season, and sometimes you could find Kaline alone before a game, perched over the dugout railing, gazing out onto the field.

Tigers fans of a certain era grew up wanting to be Al Kaline. They tossed baseballs up in their backyards, envisioned they wore No. 6 and tracked down balls in the right-field corner. They emulated his batting stance, tacked his poster to bedroom walls. He resonated with common fans and modern stars alike.
“Such a kind and generous man who meant so much to so many,” Justin Verlander posted on Twitter. “I hope you knew how much I enjoyed our conversations about baseball, life, or just giving each other a hard time. I am honored to have been able to call you my friend for all these years.”
Kaline, too, was available to all in his orbit. John Hicks, a former Tigers catcher, posted about Kaline grabbing him and putting him in headlocks by his locker. Late last September, Kaline huddled close with rookie catcher Jake Rogers in the back of the clubhouse, talking about hitting.
“Al Kaline was one of the best people and players of all-time,” Rogers posted on Twitter. “I always enjoyed our conversations and will forever cherish those.”
Tigers pitcher Matthew Boyd wrote of Kaline’s welcoming ways and his listening ear. Fellow pitcher Daniel Norris wrote of Kaline’s love and compassion. “He taught us about baseball,” Norris wrote, “but more importantly he taught us how to be better men.”

On that final night at Tiger Stadium, Kaline approached a young hitter named Robert Fick in the clubhouse before the game. Kaline told Fick he would hit a home run that day. Fick was a rookie, and simply being in Kaline’s presence was an honor. In the eighth inning of that game, Fick hit a grand slam off the famed right-field roof, the go-ahead hit and a searing moment in Tigers lore. In an interview last summer, Fick told The Athletic he once wanted to name his son Kaline.
“Al was … talk about a God,” Fick said. “Just a classy man. Once you meet him, you know why he only has 399 career home runs. Because no human being on the earth would walk away from the game with 399 home runs. But that didn’t mean anything to him. The stats don’t mean anything to him. He was just great.”
After that game, legends from Tigers history gathered behind the center field fence. They all came out one by one, taking the field at Tiger Stadium one final time. Kaline received the loudest ovation. He called it one of the best nights of his life.
The Tigers introduced double-play duo Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker together, the final players to take the field. Trammell was not quite comfortable with the honor, because he believed it should have belonged to Kaline.
 

Mr. Tiger

“I felt very strongly that Mr. Tiger should have been the last guy,” Trammell said. “I told him, and Al, as gracious as he always is, said, ‘Don’t worry about it, it isn’t a big deal to me.’”
Strange as it seems, there was a time in Kaline’s career when he grew on edge. A salary dispute in 1956 led to him getting booed. He played through injuries and broke bats. He became a little more guarded, a little more surly with reporters. Eventually the hard feelings passed and Kaline’s kindness shone through. He retired as a legend. And his defining trait — more than the 1968 World Series, more than the statue in the Comerica Park outfield, more than the No. 6 adorned to the stadium’s walls — is the way he was always there.
“It was consistency,” said Jim Leyland, the former Tigers manager.
Kaline touched lives from Leyland to Kirk Gibson to newly drafted kids. Last summer, Tigers first-round pick Riley Greene took batting practice in Comerica Park, blasting balls over the right-field fence like a young Kaline. Kaline stood behind the batting cage with a watchful eye, later complimenting Greene’s power, passing the torch on down a little further.
“Someone that was always willing to give back,” Tigers shortstop Niko Goodrum wrote. “A man that always made you feel good about yourself and gave you hope when you were in his presence.”

Kaline’s impact was felt on the field, in the booth, in the stands. And now, it will always be felt in our memories.
This spring, everyone knew Kaline’s health was declining. He still made the trip to Lakeland, what became his final spring training. One night, he and his wife, Madge Louise, shared dinner with Leyland. “It was kind of eerie, almost,” Leyland said over the phone Monday.
They laughed and told old stories, men who have known each other since Leyland was a minor-league catcher in the 1960s.

They went back to the hotel that evening, and before parting ways, Kaline stopped Leyland, and he pulled him in for a hug. A Kaline gesture if there ever were one.

“Thank you,” Kaline said, “for being my friend all these years.”

Hail to the Boss

Count The Boss as one of the millions of Americans and Canadians missing baseball as part of their everyday lives right now. I can hear him singing.

Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Bruce Springsteen took over his E Street Radio channel on SiriusXM radio Wednesday for an 85-minute broadcast entitled, “From His Home to Yours.” The show featured a playlist curated by Springsteen, a tribute to country-folk legend John Prine, who passed away this week from coronavirus complications, and a nod to the National Pastime as one of the things Springsteen is missing most.

“I miss baseball,” said Springsteen. “I’m not much of a sports fanatic at all, but I do like baseball. … All I know is that when this is all over, I’m gonna take [my wife] Patti [Scialfa] to a baseball game.”

Springsteen grew up playing Little League baseball, and he referenced his youth club in the lyrics of “Blinded By the Light.”

He also referenced baseball in his smash hit “Glory Days,” and the music video for that song featured Springsteen throwing on the diamond and watching Dwight Gooden pitch on TV. One of New Jersey’s most famous residents, Springsteen is a big Yankees fan, having once asked audience members for scores from Yankees games as they came back on the Red Sox during the summer of 1978.

Springsteen went on to play the song “3rd base, Dodger Stadium” by Ry Cooder on his radio show, which ends with the refrain, “Baseball been very good to me.”

 The Boss, like many others, is anxiously awaiting the game to come back into his life again.

Arizona baseball bubble league

Our brightest minds are working on a solution

Major League Baseball issued the following statement Tuesday morning/

“MLB has been actively considering numerous contingency plans that would allow play to commence once the public health situation has improved to the point that it is safe to do so. While we have discussed the idea of staging games at one location as one potential option, we have not settled on that option or developed a detailed plan. While we continue to interact regularly with governmental and public health officials, we have not sought or received approval of any plan from federal, state and local officials, or the Players Association.

The health and safety of our employees, players, fans and the public at large are paramount, and we are not ready at this time to endorse any particular format for staging games in light of the rapidly changing public health situation caused by the coronavirus.”

To date all of these have been fun hypothetical baseball ideas from out of left field. This one is a bit more tied to the news.
 That Major League Baseball is at least thinking about how to play something approaching a baseball season with all teams decamping to Arizona for something I’ve decided to call The Arizona Bubble League. I didn’t much care for that idea. Neither did some players. This, so far, is my favorite line about it from anyone.

That’s literary. That’s some Cormac McCarty stuff there, friendo.
Anyway, MLB backed off of the specifics of last night’s report in a statement later in the day, casting this as more of a “hey, there are no bad ideas in a brainstorming session,” kind of thing. And, fine, that’s fair. As I said on Twitter after that report came out: I think starting play in May via a complicated quarantine system is madness, but talking about how, eventually, baseball can come back is fair game. Just gotta be sensible about it, and the report from overnight did not reflect good sense.
But what is good sense? What do you think baseball’s eventual return should look like? Would you prefer a truncated season? A season with as many games as possible?
I wanna hear your views on it. Be creative, at least within the bounds of realism. Think about what might work for the players and the teams and their families in all of this, not just the fact that you want baseball on your TV set yesterday.

Federal officials imagine a start to the 2020 baseball season in Arizona that might be difficult, if not impossible, for the sport to implement.
Under a plan supported by some leading members of three federal agencies, major leaguers would not sit bunched up together in a dugout but six feet away from each other in the stands, practicing social distancing. They would exist in a sealed environment, moving only between ballparks and hotels. And, perhaps most intriguing from the government’s perspective, they would serve as a model for how the nation could reignite the economy.
The plan, as part of its messaging, even would include players forsaking celebratory high-fives to avoid physical contact and possible transmission of the coronavirus. Games without fans ideally would take place starting in May or June in 10 spring-training parks and Chase Field in Phoenix. But before baseball effectively could proceed under quarantine, it would need to overcome myriad hurdles, including possible concerns raised by both its players and owners, sources say.
The sport is indeed discussing quarantining teams and playing in a centralized location, with Phoenix the preferred choice. But one official described the idea as still in the “concept stage,” adding baseball is reluctant to move quickly. The union, too, is hesitant to offer a premature endorsement, wanting more information on logistics and details, sources said.
Major League Baseball issued the following statement this morning:
“MLB has been actively considering numerous contingency plans that would allow play to commence once the public health situation has improved to the point that it is safe to do so. While we have discussed the idea of staging games at one location as one potential option, we have not settled on that option or developed a detailed plan. While we continue to interact regularly with governmental and public health officials, we have not sought or received approval of any plan from federal, state and local officials, or the Players Association. The health and safety of our employees, players, fans and the public at large are paramount, and we are not ready at this time to endorse any particular format for staging games in light of the rapidly changing public health situation caused by the coronavirus.”
The rising death toll and continued spread of the virus might leave baseball even less likely to play in the weeks and months ahead. An improved outlook nationally, difficult as it might be to envision at this moment, might persuade the sport to adopt a different plan.
Another potentially large obstacle exists as well. If baseball is to be played in empty parks, the sport will generate more limited revenue than under normal conditions – revenue that would come only from television contracts and advanced media, not paid attendance, concessions and parking.
The March 27 agreement between the league and union provides an economic road map for a shortened or canceled season, including plans for how players would be paid. The owners likely would ask the players for salary concessions if part or all of the season is played without fans, sources said. But historically, the union has defended contract guarantees.
Representatives from the union and commissioner’s office spoke about the Arizona plan for less than an hour on Monday and intend to continue discussions this week. If the two sides reach agreement and state and federal government approval is secured, it is unclear if the entire season would take place in Arizona, where the summer heat is oppressive, or if games eventually could be played in other cities as well, locales that would become more viable once the virus is more under control.
Federal officials from the Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention support the plan, and officials in Arizona are intrigued by the idea of hosting 30 major-league teams and bringing attention and business to their state, sources said. But an official from the Major League Baseball Players Association emphasized that even under potential political pressure, the union will protect the safety and interests of its players.
One idea under discussion is whether the players would be completely isolated in Arizona; their wives and children might be permitted to stay with them in hotels, in the way that families are quarantining together across the country, sources said. The plan might also evolve over time to become less restrictive.

Protective uniforms may be neccessary

The inclusion of families, however, would require the sport to greatly expand the number of people in its protective bubble – and that number, when including those involved in transportation, lodging, security and television production, already would be in the thousands.
The logistics of isolating such a group would be complicated, to say the least. The level of government cooperation required might extend to the State Department, which would need to approve travel for players flying back into the U.S. from places such as Japan and the Dominican Republic. League officials already have been in contact with the Arizona Diamondbacks, the sole major-league team in the state, about the use of Chase Field and related matters.
Baseball, taking place outdoors and with players generally positioned away from each other, is the logical choice as the first major professional sport to return, proponents of the plan say. The lack of physical contact, compared to basketball and especially football, should make players less vulnerable to the transmission of the coronavirus. People across North America would watch players perform in a controlled environment on local and national television and, in theory, could better understand the lifestyle adjustments they will need to make in the future.
By the time baseball would resume, testing should be readily available, some federal officials say. Players would undergo regular testing to ensure they are not infected during an initial quarantine period, then begin an abbreviated spring training and continue with regular testing thereafter. The union and MLB are discussing the expansion of rosters to as many as 50 players to ensure the easy availability of substitutes, giving teams additional flexibility not only if players became ill, but also for what likely would be a compressed schedule. Protecting players from the virus, however, might be less difficult than protecting older managers and umpires, who might be more vulnerable.
The federal officials backing the plan believe another concern – the potential draining of medical resources from those in greater need – would not be a major obstacle, sources say. All teams employ their own physicians, and the CDC would be quietly involved, establishing practices, providing consultations and perhaps embedding personnel. The infection of one player would not necessarily force an entire team to be quarantined, provided that player had engaged in proper social-distancing practices.
The health considerations, however, would extend beyond players and other club personnel. Hotel workers might be asked to live on-site for a period of time, and wear masks and gloves at all times. The workers, too, would be tested regularly, and avoid direct contact with the baseball contingent.
With meals, the new reality likely would be similar to the practice some eateries restaurants already have adopted – food individually wrapped and left for customers to retrieve without going near any server. Salad bars and buffets available to more than one customer at a time might be less common in the future.

Perfect 6 feet apart

The union would want assurances that baseball and the government would take every possible precaution to prevent players from being in harm’s way.

 The government officials, however, believe that with the proper measures, the sport can be played as safely as possible. They also believe baseball can play a major role in the country’s restoration, as it did during World War II and after 9-11.



In a nation dealing with so much tragedy and uncertainty, the plan still sounds like a longshot. But for baseball to be played in 2020, there might be no other way.

He's sitting on 714

 I remember the moment it happened, watching Monday Night Baseball, a long drive off of Al Downing of the LA Dodgers.

 How many people saw it live.

 It could have been 100,000. It could have been 200,000.
 It is still the largest home crowd for any home game in Braves history, whether that game was played in Atlanta, Milwaukee or Boston.
And the crowd that day was a moving picture album of Henry Aaron’s life. To scan the stadium that day was to scan his years. Herbert Aaron was there, Henry’s father. Herbert was the first person to hear Henry’s dreams. It was 1948. Henry was 13 or 14. He went to see Jackie Robinson speak at the Davis Avenue Recreation Center. Robinson talked about being relentless, chasing goals, and how a ballplayer’s job is not just to get hits, it is to score runs.
“I’m going to be in the Major Leagues before Jackie retires,” Henry told his father that day.
His mother Estella was there in the crowd, too. She did not want him to become a ballplayer, not at the beginning. She wanted him to go to college, make something of himself, maybe become a teacher. But she also came to understand that Henry had no room in his imagination for anything other than baseball. He went to the pool hall instead of school. He refused to study anything except the art of hitting a baseball with a bat (or a bottle cap with a broomstick — that was often the only option). He somehow knew that he was going to be a big-league ballplayer when that was an impossible thing for him to know.
Ed Scott was there in Atlanta. He was the man who first signed Henry up to play professional baseball. Aaron was 17 when he joined the Mobile Black Bears, a semi-pro team made up of grown men — fathers, husbands, factory workers, farmers.
“He was as green as he could be,” Scott would say in Aaron’s autobiography “I Had a Hammer.” “He stood up there at the plate upright, no crouch at all, and the other team figured he wasn’t ready. The pitcher tried to get a fastball by him, and he hit a line drive that banged against the old tin fence they had around the outfield out there — nearly put the ball through the fence. They walked him the rest of the time.”

John Mullen, the nice man who signed Aaron for the Boston Braves and watched out for him, was there. Sadly, Mullen’s scout Dewey Griggs was not. He’d died in 1968. Griggs had seen Aaron play for the Indianapolis Clowns and was blown away; he told Mullen to do whatever he had to do to get Aaron signed. But Griggs had an even bigger impact on Aaron’s life. Before the game, he walked over and said, casually, “You might want to try hitting with your right hand on top.”
Up to that point, Aaron had been hitting cross-handed.
The first time Aaron hit with his right hand on top of the bat, he homered.
Donald Davidson was there in the crowd that day. He had been the Braves’ traveling secretary. He had given Aaron his famous uniform number, No. 44. Aaron had not asked for that number specifically, he’d only wanted a repeating number for his uniform. “You’re too skinny to have a double number,” Davidson had said, but then he made sure that Aaron got the now legendary No. 44.*
*Aaron and another 44, Willie McCovey, hold the baseball record for most home runs in a season that also matches their uniform number. Aaron hit 44 homers four times. Davidson would always say his big mistake was not giving Aaron the number 66.
Davidson was also the one who spread the nickname “Hammerin’ Hank.”
There were celebrities all over the place. Pearl Bailey sang the National Anthem. Sammy Davis Jr. signed autographs. Georgia governor Jimmy Carter smiled broadly; that smile was about to become world-famous — in less than three years, Carter would be elected President of the United States.
Eddie Matthews was not just there, he was the Atlanta Braves manager. Few teammates have been as connected as Aaron and Mathews. They were the slugging brothers for the Milwaukee Braves for a dozen seasons. They were friends and rivals and balancing influences on each other’s lives. Mathews brought Aaron out of his shell. Aaron helped Mathews calm down.
“Henry would hit a home run,” their teammate Wes Covington said, “and — where somebody else would say he got lucky — Mathews would say, ‘What a shot!’ Mathews would hit a home run, and Hank would say, “Helluva shot!’ Their relationship was like fourteen-karat gold.”
A band played before the game began. A stockpile of fireworks was set beyond the wall.
And in the second inning of the Braves-Dodgers game, Aaron came up to the plate to face Al Downing. Words cannot revive the sounds of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium in that moment. The cheering was something more than cheering. Imagine the sound if 53,775 people gathered in one place to see Neil Armstrong land on the moon or to see the Beatles break out on the Ed Sullivan Show or to see Mike Eruzione score the goal that beat the Soviets at the 1980 Olympics.
That’s how it sounded that day. People had not come to see a baseball game. They had come to be a part of American history, to be in the photograph when something transcendent and wonderful happened. It isn’t often in your life that you go to see something that you know — before it even happens — you will remember forever.

Aaron felt nervous but determined. This would be the day. This would have to be the day; he couldn’t take it any longer. He waited for Downing to give him something to hit; the men had faced each other 24 times. They’d each had their victories. Downing had gotten the better of things the first few times they faced off.
“He usually pitched me outside with sliders and screwballs,” Aaron would say, and so in 1973, he began to crowd the plate more. That worked: Aaron cracked a couple of homers off Downing in ’73. He crowded the plate again that day, and he somehow blocked out the deafening roars. This was one of his many gifts. “I know it’s hard for people to believe,” he said. “But I didn’t hear anything when I was at the plate.”
Downing threw a pitch out of the zone. Another. A third. And a fourth. He walked Aaron on four pitches. The boos from the crowd were murderous.
Then Dusty Baker, Aaron’s teammate and friend, smacked a drive and the Dodgers’ left fielder Bill Buckner misplayed the ball. And Aaron kept running. People never really appreciated just how good a baserunner Henry Aaron was, but then again, that’s the point of all this. There were a lot of things about Aaron people never appreciated. He rounded third and he headed for home. There was no throw to the plate. Aaron scored the first run of the game.
It was the 2,063rd run of his career.
And that broke the National League record set by Willie Mays.
This was something meaningful, something profoundly important to Aaron. It went back to the very beginning when he heard Robinson talk about the importance of scoring runs. To score 2,063 runs you have to average 100 runs for more than 20 years. It is a mind-numbing achievement — think about all those cold April nights, those July steambaths, those meaningless August games and the anxious September games with a pennant in the balance.
Think about the drive, the focus, the sense of purpose needed to score that many runs.
But nobody did think about that, not there in the crowd that day. There were no cheers for that record. Everyone was there for something else, and Aaron knew it. There was no time to celebrate. There was no time even to breathe. No, there was nothing at all for Henry Aaron to do except go out the next time and fulfill the destiny he never wanted.

---

Can a man as beloved and admired and appreciated as Aaron still be underrated? I think so. It comes down to a simple contradiction: His name became synonymous with the home run.
“No matter what it is,” Aaron says, “they’re gonna always say, ‘Hank Aaron and a home run, Hank Aaron and a home run.’”
And Hank Aaron was not a home run hitter.
No, Aaron was a pure hitter. He was an excellent outfielder. He was a superb baserunner. And he was a metronome, pumping out the same brilliant seasons year after year and decade after decade. He led the league in total bases eight times, first as a 22-year-old, last at age 35. Eight times. Nobody — not Ruth, not Williams, not Hornsby, not Musial, not Cobb, not anybody — led the league in total bases as many times.

And the home runs? Well, to turn around the phrase, home runs were a bug, not a feature. Aaron hit the ball very hard and when you hit the ball very hard, some of them go out. He never hit 70 homers in a season like Barry Bonds or 65 homers in a season like Mark McGwire or 60 homers in a season like Babe Ruth or 55 homers in a season like Ken Griffey jr or 50 homers in a season like Mickey Mantle or even 48 homers in a season like Willie Stargell, Dave Kingman and Jorge Soler.
Home runs were not the chorus of Henry Aaron’s song.
He just hit so many baseballs hard over the years that 755 left the ballpark.
And when a person does something as colossal as hit 755 home runs, it’s hard to think of anything else. The magic inventor and writer Jim Steinmeyer talks about a type of stagecraft device called the “dazzler.” It is a very bright light that is placed on stage and pointed at the audience’s eyes. When that light hits the eyes, everything around the dazzler seems to disappear. “If there’s something dark near the dazzler,” he says, “you can’t see it.”
For Henry Aaron, 755 home runs is the dazzler. It blocks the view. People see that, talk about that, argue about that. (When Bonds hit his 756th home run, people argued about it, raged about it, many insisted that Bonds would never be the Home Run King, no matter what the record books said.)
It’s a bright light that blinds people to the things that made Henry Aaron so special. People can’t see, for instance, how fast Aaron was. He didn’t steal bases when he was a young player — almost nobody stole bases in those days, particularly in Milwaukee. In 1957, the Braves stole 35 bases — we’re talking about the whole team. In 1958, they stole just 26, dead last in the league.
It wasn’t until 1959 that Aaron started feeling the freedom to steal bases. He was 25 years old and had been in the league for five years. He attempted eight stolen bases that year. He was successful all eight times. From 1959 to 1968, Aaron stole 203 bases, seventh in all of baseball, ahead even of Mays. He became just the third player in baseball history to have a 30-30 season.
But here’s the big thing: In those 10 seasons, he was successful on more than 80 percent of his attempts. That was the highest stolen-base percentage in the game over that time. How many stolen bases could he have had if he’d tried? There’s no telling. For his career, Aaron was successful more than 76 percent of the time, a higher percentage than Robinson, Maury Wills, Lou Brock, Juan Pierre and, yes, Mays.
“Henry didn’t steal bases like Willie,” Mathews said, “but goddamn, he could steal bases. He could run like hell, and he didn’t even look like he was running. I’ll bet you in a footrace, Hank would have beaten Willie.”
And what about Aaron as an outfielder? Well, he wasn’t a center fielder (he was actually an infielder when he started) and so historically he has been written off by many. But by the Baseball-Reference stats, Aaron was worth 100 runs more than average. By range factor — number of plays made — he often led the league and always finished in the top two or three, and, remember, he played just about his entire career in the same league as another pretty good right fielder named Roberto Clemente. Aaron won three Gold Gloves and could have won more.
Again, from Mathews: “He never threw to the wrong base, never missed the cutoff man.”
Mostly, though, the dazzler covers up just how complete a hitter Henry Aaron was. If you took away his 755 home runs — just took them away — he would still have had 3,000 hits. Not only does he have the record for most RBIs with 2,297, but he also has the most combined runs and RBIs.
Most runs plus RBIs:

1. Henry Aaron, 4,471
2. Babe Ruth, 4,388
3. Barry Bonds, 4,223
4. Ty Cobb, 4,189
5. Alex Rodriguez, 4,107

And then there’s his absurd, almost laughable, breakaway lead in career total bases. If you want to call Henry Aaron the king of something, call him the King of Total Bases. He had 6,856 total bases in his career — 700 more than anyone else.
Musial could have hit 350 more doubles and not had as many total bases as Aaron.
Ruth could have hit 250 more home runs and not has as many total bases as Aaron. (Bonds would have needed 220 more homers just to tie Aaron.)
Pete Rose could have cracked another 1,100 singles and not had as many total bases as Aaron.
And let’s add something else that people miss: Aaron played in a pitcher’s time. He played his prime in a pitcher’s ballpark. If you neutralize Aaron’s numbers — which is to say you try to put Aaron in what Baseball-Reference calls a “neutral setting” — Aaron’s numbers jump from mind-boggling to impossible.
If you neutralize the numbers, Aaron’s total bases jump all the way to 7,502 — and his lead jumps to almost 1,000 bases. All of his numbers go up including, yes, home runs (all the way up to 824 neutralized homers).
See, when you talk about Aaron and home runs, you put Aaron in the wrong box. He wasn’t a slugger and would not stand up to Ruth or Jimmy Foxx or McGwire or a dozen others as a slugger. He never wanted that. Henry Aaron was a ballplayer. He hit for average, hit for power, ran the bases, played good defense and threw with authority. He did everything well for longer than anyone who ever played this game.
And if he was overshadowed by Mays or Mantle or his blinding consistency or his laconic persona or, yes, that damned home run chase, it didn’t matter. He kept going. He kept doing all those brilliant things. Nothing could make him stop.
“You know,” Aaron once said, “If I had to pay to go see somebody play for one game, I wouldn’t pay to see Hank Aaron. I wasn’t flashy. I didn’t start fights. I didn’t rush out to the mound every time a pitch came near me. I didn’t hustle after fly balls that were 20 rows back in the seats.”
“But,” he added, “if I had to pay to see someone play in a three-game series, I’d rather see me.”

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I asked Henry Aaron if he had any regrets. A career as perfect as his should be without regrets, at least that’s what you would think. But he said that he did have one.
He regretted that he never won a triple crown.
“I do think about it,” he said. “I missed it three years — not in a row, but three years. And I think if I had really concentrated, really focused on it, I would have won one or two triple crowns.”
Aaron, for the record, won two batting titles, four home run titles and four RBI titles. But, alas, he never put the three together in one season.
In 1957, he led the league in homers and RBIs, but his .322 average was fourth behind three of the greatest hitters who ever lived — Musial, Mays and Frank Robinson.
In 1959, he led the league in hitting at .355 but his 39 homers and 123 RBIs fell short. He finished seven homers behind his Hall of Fame teammate Mathews, and finished 20 RBIs shy of Hall of Famer Ernie Banks.
In 1963, he led the league in homers and RBIs, but his .319 average was seven points behind the Dodgers’ Tommy Davis. He has always regretted hitting .263 the last two weeks of that season to lose the batting title.
In 1966, he again led the league in homers and RBIs, but he hit just .279 that year — he was getting used to a new ballpark in Atlanta and had shifted his game to take advantage of the home run dimensions.
Of course, what could that matter? What could a triple crown or two add to a career like Aaron’s?
“I just felt … I just felt like there was something missing in my career,” he said. “I just felt like if I had done what I was supposed to do, I could have won at least one or two triple crowns. And that just would have been something …”
He paused here and never finished the thought. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it. I remember years ago, Bob Greene wrote a story about Frank Gifford and how he’d had pretty much the biggest American life imaginable — big man on campus at USC, superstar NFL player, handsome television star, coolest man in the room. But in the end, Greene found that even Gifford looked back wistfully. In his case, Gifford wished he could have been the quarterback rather than the halfback.
This is at the heart of human nature, I guess. I don’t believe anyone has had a more perfect career than Aaron — perfect in that he never had a down season and he has several of the most important records. But even Hank Aaron wishes he could have accomplished just one more extraordinary thing.

---

Let’s go back to April 8, 1974. It was the end of the worst time of Aaron’s life. He had never wanted to chase Babe Ruth’s record. It’s just that one day, right around when he turned 32, he began to realize that he had a chance to put up numbers that would match him up with the greatest to ever play the game. And that was too tempting to pass up.
A writer named Lee Allen explained to him that if he stuck around for three or four more seasons, he’d have a real shot at 500 home runs. At that point, only four players ever — Ruth, Foxx, Williams and Mel Ott — had 500 home runs.
And then if he stuck around for another year or two, he’d get to 3,000 hits. That was a big one; only eight players — eight of the greatest players — had 3,000 hits. Even Ruth and Williams had not done that.
So he kept doing what he always did, and he hit his 500th homer in 1968. He got 3,000th hit in 1970, but the thing is, that year he began closing in on 600 homers. So he had to do that. He stuck around in 1971 and led the league in slugging and OPS while bashing 47 home runs. What was he going to do? Stop there? No, of course not. So he kept going, and suddenly 700 home runs were in sight, and if 700 homers were in sight, that meant that Ruth’s unbreakable record of 714 home runs was in sight.
What was he going to do? Stop?
“If I played out my career in typical fashion … the record would show that I had been one of the best ballplayers to come along,” Aaron wrote in “I Had a Hammer.” “My credentials would put me in the company of Ruth and Mays and all the others. But I also knew that in the final analysis — in the books and sports columns and barbershops — I wouldn’t be in their class, To be in their class, my numbers had to be better than theirs. I didn’t agree with it, and I didn’t accept it, but it was reality, and I had to deal with it.”
And so he dared. He went after Babe Ruth, a black man chasing after a white legend in 1970s America. He hated every minute of it. He hated the racist mail that poured in.

“All I do is lay in bed and stare at the ceiling,” he told one reporter who asked how well he slept.
“Well, isn’t it worth it?” he asked.
“I really don’t know,” he said. “If I go to bed half berzerk, it’s not.”
No, he didn’t sleep. He ate every night in his hotel room alone. He felt alone. Yet he kept on hitting — and hitting home runs — because somewhere along the way he came to a powerful and painful and undeniable realization.
The only thing worse than breaking the record would be not breaking the record.
On April 8, 1974, while a misty rain fell, Henry Aaron came up in the fourth inning. He was the new all-time National League leader in runs. He stepped in against Al Downing. The crowd stood and cheered madly. He shut out the sound like only he could do. The first pitch was a slider and it was down in the dirt.
Then came the next pitch. Downing said it was a fastball up. Aaron remembered it as a slider down. They both remember Aaron turning on it and hitting a long and high fly ball to left field. Neither knew it was gone off the bat. “But,” Downing said, “it kept carrying and carrying.”
When it cleared the fence and landed in the glove of relief pitcher Tom House, fireworks exploded. The crowd exploded. Aaron’s heart exploded. He didn’t show it. He rounded the bases the way he always did, unsmiling, undaunted. He took a moment to shake hands with Dodgers first baseman Steve Garvey and second baseman Davey Lopes. Even when two college kids ran on the field and surrounded him — they had run on to congratulate him — he showed no fear or emotion.
He just kept running.
“What a marvelous moment for baseball,” Vin Scully said in the booth after letting the crowd tell the story. “What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia, what a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking the record of an all-time baseball idol.”

So many people have asked Henry Aaron what he was thinking in that exact moment. I asked him that, too. He shrugged. How do you explain it? He doesn’t have any better answer now than he did that very day when the crowd cheered for 11 straight minutes, and his mother raced on the field and gave him a bear hug that choked the breath out of him, and he was handed a microphone to say what came to mind now that he had passed the Babe.

“Thank God it’s over,” he said.

---

I've been playing since 1994

I have been playing since a fellow scoresheet player introduced me to the game in 94,I finished in last place the first two years, but learned some valuably lessions. One was, get the rules first before you try and draft a team. I have been playing now for 26 years and have won 5 trophies, one in AL Brett, two for AL Winfield and one each for hockey and football.


When people ask me what’s my favorite type of fantasy format to play in, I usually tell them it’s Scoresheet. This isn’t to say that playing in a standard 5x5 mixed format can’t be a blast as well — that’s how I spend nearly all of my time as a fantasy analyst — but there’s something extra special about being able to think about all facets of the game.
I’ve been meaning to write a column about Scoresheet for years, but the unrelenting MLB schedule always made that very difficult. However, with the 2020 season pushed back indefinitely, this is the perfect time to dig in and provide an introduction to those who haven’t experienced this wonderful and addictive game.

What is Scoresheet?

The best way to describe it is a head-to-head simulation league using real-time statistics. Really, the perfect mixture of Strat-O-Matic and fantasy baseball. This isn’t your typical fantasy league where you are trying to win specific categories like RBI and saves. You are trying to win actual games in a simulation 162-game schedule. As opposed to the typical fantasy set-up, defense is a factor to consider as you build your roster. There’s plenty of room to nerd out here, as you can have separate lineups against right-handed and left-handed pitching as well as a full rotation and bullpen to deploy. Basically, it’s like you are running an MLB front office, except you don’t have to feel guilty about manipulating a player’s service time or trying to beat them in arbitration. This is all about having fun.

Making lists is essential

Things to consider

- There are a variety of ways to play Scoresheet, including AL-only, NL-only, and mixed (or BL, “both leagues”) formats. Many leagues are keeper formats and there’s the ability to join continuing leagues, but there are also redraft leagues. Keepers are much more fun here. Drafts can be set-up in a snake format, but there’s plenty of room for flexibility with the interface. I’m in one league where we do an auction with a salary cap, contracts, and minor league depth. Rosters are then entered manually. You can really make it what you want.

 One notable difference between Scoresheet and other fantasy platforms are the platoon advantages. With the option for separate lineups for right-handed and left-handed pitching, it can be utilized to maximize your roster. Players get adjustments to batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage depending on the handedness of the opposing pitcher. For example, Shin Soo Choo is an asset against right-handed pitching (gaining 9 points in BA, 15 points in OBP and 29 points in slugging) compared to losing 24 points in batting average, 40 in OBP, and 75 points in slugging percentage against southpaws. Meanwhile, new Rays slugger Jose Martinez gains 23 points in batting average, 27 points in OBP, and 62 points in slugging against southpaws while being a liability against right-handers. It’s important to note that these platoon adjustments will stick regardless of how these players are doing against righties or lefties during the actual season.
 Keeping the platoon advantages in mind, going with platoons is a viable and sometimes necessary strategy in this format, even more so in a deeper format. It can also enable what’s often called a “stars and scrubs” approach, focusing resources on a few top players while filling in the gaps with complementary pieces. Be careful about getting too cute with that strategy, though.
 Why be careful? Roster depth is incredibly important in this format. Scoresheet will roll over some at-bats from previous weeks, but largely the numbers used are from the most recent week, so you are going to want players who play a lot. If there’s an injury, Scoresheet will slot in players at different positions, though you will be penalized defensively for playing someone out of position. If you don’t have the proper roster depth, a default AAA player will be put into a position. You don’t want this, as they are going to hurt you all around. Having a couple of players who are multi-position eligible can help you avoid this scenario, at least assuming they play regularly.

I’ve already noted on a couple of occasions that defense matters here. How much? First, I need to explain the context. Each position player has a fielding number assigned to them for the entire season. The bigger the number, the better. Having a player with good center field range is a huge bonus. Victor Robles and Byron Buxton are more attractive here than they would normally be. As explained within Scoresheet’s rules, “the range of the player in center field for you is about 1.4 times as important as either the left or right fielder when figuring your overall team range.” That’s big. On the other end of the spectrum, you probably wouldn’t have guys like Yordan Alvarez, J.D. Martinez, or Jose Martinez in your outfield. Catchers’ fielding numbers are based on opposing runners stealing per nine innings and runners caught per nine innings. You probably want J.T. Realmuto anyway, but he’s even more appealing when you consider his fielding numbers.
- The slightest tweaks matter in Scoresheet. Just as they can help you as far as platoon advantages, they can hurt you in regard to fielding, especially when you add up your team’s overall range. You’ll see this reflect in the “fielding range bonus” when you receive the box score results of your games. A negative “fielding range bonus” means that more hits will drop and your pitchers’ ERAs will suffer relative to their real-life results.

  You often hear that you can never have enough pitching. That’s especially true with Scoresheet. The best advice I can give people is to draft more than you think you will need. Injuries pop up, pitchers can be demoted for a time or have starts skipped to watch workloads. Chances are you will utilize all of your depth and more. If you run out of pitchers, you’ll be assigned a AAA pitcher as a placeholder. Per Scoresheet, they will have an ERA “2 times the league average,” which is a recipe for disaster.
 As for relievers, throw out what you normally think about closers in fantasy leagues. Sure, most closers are elite relievers and you will want them here too, but you can really set up your bullpen as you want. If you want to use Seth Lugo as your closer over Kenley Jansen, you can do that here. The other thing to think about is which relievers are likely to have safe roster spots and big workloads. Promising, young relievers might not necessarily fit this criterion. Again, you don’t want to have a AAA placeholder.

God gives Fantasy Baseball to Man, man drops the ball

- As mentioned on a couple of occasions, you are trying to win actual games and not categories, so be careful about which players you give the green light to for stolen bases.

 Unless you are getting an elite defender — which might be applicable in some cases because of their speed — stolen bases just aren’t a big deal here.

I should be on a cruise right now

Me enjoying breakfast with Cindy

  Well, it's been 26 days since I have been out of the house, and I admit to be getting a little stir crazy. I started writing this blog a few years ago, at the urging of Mike DeCiantis and Clark Luby, two co workers of mine. They thought of me as somewhat of an expert in sports, and with something to say about it. They urged me to put in writing, actually introduced me to the world of blogs.
Actually I have been laying low for quite a while longer than that, except for occasional walks around the back pathways leading to the school where my two kids started their road on.
I passed walkers , dogs on leashes, mommies pushing carriages, and bike riders, always giving them more than adequate space, or just turning around in the opposite direction.

My interest in blogging has waned substantially over the past 30 odd days, well ever since the season came to an abrupt halt, both hockey and the upcoming baseball season. Not to mention the expectation surrounding the Raptors run to the finish line. My whole day became about the next blog, thinking about an angle to write about, and then formulating sentences and paragraphs. It's just nowadays , my thoughts have turned to "how long will I be cooped up".

First off, the was winter , the snow, the cold weather, that prohibited me from getting out, except for the usual grocery shopping, turns at the walking track, and other errands until my wife's retirement.
Then she retired, then the virus took hold of the world, with an icy grip, and refused to let go.

Daily blogs turned into every other day, turned into every 3 days, then once a week. But the worst part of this experience has been not seeing my family, my two kids, my two grand-kids.

Well, enough is enough, I have decided to break out and start writing again, to illustrate, to illuminate, to recognize, to lionize what I have missed on a daily basis. Sports is a diversion, a temporary distraction from daily strife and daily burdens.

Starting tomorrow, and each day after that ,I promise to write a blog a day. I should be on a cruise right now, with Cindy's neice Linda and her husband Andy, but as you guessedit, I am writing a blog.

Why ? because it's what I do, that's why.

The last bit of land as you venture out to sea from Florida

The strange story of Steve Dalkowski

Skip: He walked 18.
Larry: A new league record!
Skip: He struck out 18.
Larry: Another new league record. … In addition, he hit the sportswriters, the public address announcer, the Bull mascot — twice. Also new league records. But Joe, this guy’s got some serious #@$%#.



Sure, Steve Dalkowski threw a no-hitter where he walked 18 and struck out 18. You know what he called that? A Tuesday. Dalkowski did stuff like that all the time. He threw six no-hitters in high school, counting his time in summer ball, and he struck out and walked double digits in three or four of them. He had a game where he struck out 20 and walked 19.
And high school was just the beginning.
In 62 innings in Kingsport, Tenn., he gave up 22 hits … and threw 39 wild pitches.
In Class-C Aberdeen, he threw another no-hitter and struck out 21 batters even though he threw only one curveball the entire game (“Almost hit a batter,” he said).
In Knoxville, he struck out 82 batters in 42 innings and didn’t allow a home run. And his ERA was still 7.93 because he walked 95 batters.
In Stockton, he set a California League record with 262 strikeouts in only 170 innings. He also set a California League record with 262 walks.
Dalkowski once threw six wild pitches in a row, once walked the first nine batters he faced, once allowed 21 stolen bases in a single game, once broke a guy’s arm with a fastball, once tore off a batter’s earlobe with a fastball, and once threw a pitch that glanced off the top of catcher Cal Ripken Sr.’s glove and hit umpire John Lipini in the head, sending Lipini back 18 feet and knocking him out cold.
“Hey Dalkowski,” a fan sitting behind home plate yelled before a game. “You pitching tonight?”
“Sure looks that way,” Dalkowski said.
The man’s face went white. Dalkowski had pitched the night before and on three consecutive pitches, he’d thrown the ball high over the catcher’s head into the wire netting. All three balls had torn through the netting and smashed into a seat.
“If that’s the case,” the man yelled, “I’m getting the hell out of here, and I’m taking my kids with me.”
Dalkowski nodded. Couldn’t blame the guy.
Steve Dalkowski? Yeah, this guy had some serious #@$%#.

Check out the walk totals

---

The thing you have to remember through all of this is that he is very real. Nothing about Steve Dalkowski sounds real or feels real. But he pitched not so long ago. He was born just two months before Carl Yastrzemski and just a little more than 100 miles away. We are not talking about a Negro Leagues player or 19th-century player whose legends have been carried through the years. No, Bobby Cox played against this guy. Davey Johnson played against this guy. Pat Gillick was a teammate of this guy.
He grew up in New Britain, Conn., the same area as George Springer and Carl Pavano and Rob Dibble. He was an athletic prodigy. Dalkowski was the star quarterback and halfback of two undefeated New Britain High football teams. He was a slugger who crushed long home runs even as a 14-year-old playing in the summer leagues.
And that arm — well, you already know about that left arm.
All 16 big-league teams made a pitch to him. Dalkowski ended up signing with Baltimore after scout Beauty McGowan gave him a $4,000 signing bonus, the largest allowed at the time. Yes, it’s true that the other 15 teams probably also offered him the maximum bonus, but I’m not sure how many of the others paid him 12 grand under the table and bought him a new car. Anyway, that’s how the story went.
Whatever the Orioles paid, they undoubtedly would have paid more. An arm like that comes along once a century — maybe not even that often. “Steve is faster than any pitcher I’ve ever seen,” former big leaguer Billy DeMars said, “and I played against Bob Feller and Rex Barney.”
The pitch was an absurdity. It’s not like Dalkowski was some giant. He was a sturdy 5-foot-11, weighed 175 pounds or so, but there was something about his arm action, something about his wrist action, the baseball just jumped to light speed when it left his hand.
And he had no earthly idea where it was going.
Oh, he had a decent sense of the width of the plate. Of course, he wasn’t exactly going to pitch to corners, but in general, his problem was not longitude. He could get somewhat over the plate.
But how far over? Well, that was a problem. The Orioles would tell him to aim for the dirt in front of the plate, he’d throw the pitch nine feet over the catcher’s head. There was some thought among the Orioles coaches that he simply put too much backspin on the ball and that made it rise beyond his ability to control it.
Was the ball really rising? It’s actually a more interesting question than it might seem because you’ve probably heard that rising fastballs don’t actually rise. The baseball simply doesn’t fall at the expected pace, which gives the illusion of rising.

This is also true of 100-meter sprinters who appear to be going faster at the end of the race when they pull away. In fact, they are just slowing down less than the other runners.
But this fascinating story by David Kagan, a physics professor, shows that actually it is possible — if you throw the ball hard enough and with enough backspin — to make the ball rise. The reason nobody talks about this is that nobody actually throws the ball even close to hard enough to make it happen. Kagan looked at pitchers in 2016 and found the closest was (obviously) Aroldis Chapman, who threw the fastball at an average of 104 mph with 2,360 rpm of backspin. This was not enough to make the ball rise, but Kagan figured that if he could throw the ball 113 mph and push up the backspin to 3,100 rpm, he could get it to rise.
Did Dalkowski achieve that seemingly unimaginable level of speed and spin?
People who saw him pitch swear that he did. Even going back to when he was a kid — his junior high coach told the Baltimore Sun his fastball “made a loud buzzing sound.” Cal Ripken Sr., who you know caught (or sometimes didn’t catch) Dalkowski’s fastball, estimated it went 110 mph. Cincinnati Reds manager Birdie Tebbetts called it a “radio pitch,” — “can’t see it, but you can hear it” — after his team faced Dalkowski in an exhibition game.
That was quite the scene. Dalkowski threw eight warm-up pitches. Five of them hit the screen behind home plate. He faced three batters that day — Don Hoak, Dee Fondy and Alex Grammas — and all three struck out happily and quickly because their only goal was to not get killed.
“I’ve been playing ball for 10 years,” Grammas said. “And nobody can throw a baseball harder than that.”
The story goes that an aging Ted Williams was curious and stepped into the batting cage* against Dalkowski, saw one pitch, dropped his bat and said that he didn’t need to see that pitch again. He’d survived this long in baseball, he didn’t need to take any more chances.
*People who saw Dalkowski pitch say that when he threw to hitters in a cage, he sometimes missed the cage.
Sportswriter George Vecsey tells a story of seeing a New York Yankees team with Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle face Dalkowski in spring training … and he watched as they jumped out of the way, pitch after pitch, and then went to the dugout to compare their bailout techniques.
The Orioles did everything they could think of to help Dalkowski find his control. Everything. They had a coach standing behind him during simulated games offering positive reinforcement between pitches. Didn’t work. They had two batters standing on each side of the plate at the same time to give him a tunnel view of home plate. Didn’t work. They tried to tire him out by having him warm up for an hour or two before the game, hoping that would exhaust him so he wouldn’t overthrow the ball. Didn’t work. The kid was inexhaustible. He’d throw 200 or 250 pitches in a game, and the last of them was just as hard and wild as the first.
They tried to break down every part of his pitching motion, trying to change his arm angle, his stride, his grip, where he stood on the rubber, on and on. But nothing worked. And as time went on and each experiment failed, Dalkowski’s personal life began to disintegrate. He’d always lived close to the edge — “Playboy Dalkowski,” the newspaper writers called him — but over time, he lost control. He began to show up at ballparks hungover … or drunk. One teammate, Herm Starrette, recalled that rooming with Dalkowski was just like rooming with a suitcase.
But the Orioles couldn’t give up. “Stick with him,” Hall of Fame pitcher Hal Newhouser said. “You’re never going to see another arm like that.”
Finally, Earl Weaver took over. Weaver was still young then, full of fury, yes, but also full of ideas. He managed Dalkowski in Elmira and he figured the Orioles had been handling the kid all wrong. They kept throwing all these different ideas at Dalkowski, but Steve couldn’t process all that. The only way to get through to Dalkowski was to give him one simple directive.
So Weaver told Dalkowski to pitch nice and easy and into the catcher’s glove. Just play catch out there. Weaver insisted he didn’t care how hard the pitch was — lob it in there if necessary — just throw the ball to the glove.
And when the time was right, when he got two strikes on a hitter, Weaver would whistle — and that was a signal for Dalkowski to throw the next pitch as hard as he could.
Incredibly, it worked, at least for a while. What Weaver knew was that even if Dalkowski thought he was throwing the ball easy, it was still going very, very fast. Dalkowski had that sort of arm. And he knew that Dalkowski would do everything in his power to throw those strikes because that would mean Weaver would whistle and let him unleash.
“He loved to hear that whistle,” Weaver would say.
In 1962 in Elmira, Steve Dalkowski was an entirely different pitcher than he had been his first five seasons in the minor leagues. He was still close to unhittable — he pitched 160 innings and allowed just 117 hits, only two of those being home runs. He struck out 192 — that 10.8 strikeouts per nine innings was well below his typical pace, but it was plenty good enough when you added in his newfound control.
He walked only 114 batters in those 160 innings.
For just about any other pitcher in baseball history, 114 walks in 160 innings would not be seen as a breakthrough. It would be seen as career-ending. But for Dalkowski, well, I’ve shown this in stories before but it’s so incredible that it’s worth seeing again. Here is Dalkowski’s walks per nine innings through his minor-league career leading up to Elmira:

He was an entirely different pitcher — he even threw a complete game without walking anybody. “I just don’t know,” Dalkowski said of his transformation. “I sure hope it continues.” At age 23, he was a full-fledged prospect, so much so that Topps put him on a Rookie Stars baseball card. He came to spring training in 1963 and pitched well enough to make the club. But then he hurt his arm and never got to throw a single big-league pitch.
His arm was never the same again. He did pitch three more years in the minor leagues, trying his luck with Pittsburgh, California and Baltimore again, but the fastball was no longer as hot.
Dalkowski’s life after baseball has been sad and difficult; he suffered from alcoholism, couldn’t keep a job and disappeared for a time. He now lives in an assisted living facility in Connecticut. When Jon Hock directed the movie “Fastball,” he caught up with Dalkowski and asked him to show the pitching motion. Dalkowski held out his arm.
“What are we looking at,” Jon asked him. “What did that arm do?”
“Threw the ball faster than anybody that ever lived,” Dalkowski said. “Anybody.”
For the movie, Jon obviously tried to find some film of Dalkowski pitching. He looked everywhere. The Hall of Fame. Local television stations. He even put out a request to any hobbyists who might have filmed Dalkowski pitching with their home movie camera.
Yes, Steve Dalkowski was very real.
But as far as anybody knows, there is no footage of him throwing a baseball.