High Heat (35 page)

W
e remain a land fascinated by speed. In large part, that's why baseball's top pitch, the fastball, has held the public's attention since the game's beginnings more than a century ago. Go to a ballpark today and it is still the fastball, now clocked by stadium radar and spelled out on the JumboTron scoreboard at the big-league locales that gets the crowd buzzing. Often in baseball lore, pitchers like Ryan and Feller, Johnson and Dalkowski, Tim Lincecum and David Price, are cast as loners, individual players forever set apart by their gift. But if we again gather them together in a lineup, and then take a step back to look at the group as a whole, we can see that the lives and career trajectories of these athletes are often intertwined. When it comes to the question of who is the fastest of the fast, finding an answer takes more than simply assessing them individually. It requires a larger perspective, a sense of what separates but also what binds these players together.

The names above form a top-12 list of the fastest pitchers of all time—a consensus of the experts I spoke to in writing
High Heat
. Now it also serves as the homestretch in a journey that took me from
Brooklyn to Cooperstown, Birmingham to Los Angeles, Durham to Dallas. Everywhere along the way, I asked for a rundown of the top fireballers ever. Some that I interviewed complained that it's next to impossible to compare pitchers from different eras and levels of competition. Others protested that there is no definitive way to measure a phenomenon that often borders upon the supernatural. These concerns are certainly valid.

“It's not an easy question to answer,” says Phil Pote. Once again we're on the phone, talking baseball. “Folks probably hemmed and hawed about giving you answers.”

“Some did.”

“But in the end they still had an opinion, didn't they? It's always been that intriguing a proposition. The game's ultimate can of worms.”

Indeed, almost everyone I spoke with, from historians like John Thorn to Hank Thomas, and former players like Jeff Torborg and Tommy John, came up with a list of the top fireballers ever. With that in mind, let's consider once again perhaps the most arbitrary and yet captivating of baseball questions: Who is the fastest of all time? To reach a conclusion we need to navigate a few more twists in the road, answer a few additional remaining questions.

First, would Walter Johnson be a star in today's game? For much of his career, the Big Train got big-league hitters out with nothing but a fastball. It can be argued that in baseball, unlike in other sports, one actually can compare stars from different eras. Until the steroids scandal made headlines, you could discuss Babe Ruth, Roger Maris, Mark McGwire, and Barry Bonds in a conversation about the best home-run hitters ever. Yet even before performance-enhancing drugs began to take over such conversations, some maintained that the stars of yesteryear don't measure up to superstars of the modern era. The old-timers weren't as big physically and they didn't benefit from today's modern training techniques.

“Outside of Rod Carew and Tony Oliva, I didn't have to worry about the kinds of hitters that you find throughout the game today,” says Dick Bosman, who pitched at the major-league level and now coaches in the Tampa Bay Rays organization. “You're looking at the very best
athletes who ever put on a uniform right now. The steroids issues aside, they're bigger, they're stronger, better nourished, and hopefully they're better informed and better coached.”

Bosman adds, “The way they teach hitting is so different now, too. They teach them to wait on the ball, let it travel back into the strike zone more. An example is Derek Jeter's inside-out swing. It's damn hard to pitch to a guy like that. I had plenty of guys I pitched to—Harmon Killebrew, Bobby Allison—they were looking to do one thing and one thing only and that was to drive a ball out of the ballpark. You knew if you made your pitches low and away to those guys, you'd probably get them out.”

While others agree that the approach at the plate has changed, with hitters usually more disciplined and much better prepared, they maintain Johnson would have been just as successful today as he was in the 1910s.

“He not only threw the ball hard, he won,” says Washington Nationals broadcaster and historian Phil Wood. “To me, he's still the greatest pitcher who ever lived.”

“Walter Johnson would have adapted to today's hitters,” adds author Peter Golenbock. “He was an incredible fireballer. That talent translates down through the years.”

If you agree with Wood, Golenbock, and those in that camp, you have your answer. There's no need to go any further. But if any sliver of doubt remains, let's move on to the next fork in the road.

Do we underestimate Bob Feller? At first, that question seems to border upon the ridiculous. After all, how can anyone underestimate a Hall of Famer who finished his career with a 266–162 record, leading the American League in strikeouts seven times?

Yet World War II cost “Rapid Robert” nearly four seasons in the majors. Unlike other ballplayers who kept playing until they were drafted, Feller enlisted in the U.S. Navy soon after Pearl Harbor. He had won a league-leading 25 games the season before and returned to strike out a league-leading 348 in 1946. Who knows what he could have accomplished without the time away from home? It's likely that he would have easily surpassed 300 career victories and perhaps even put up another no-hitter or two.

“Bob Feller threw as hard as anybody,” Nolan Ryan says. “You cannot forget about him.”

But for many, Feller was, perhaps inadvertently, knocked down a peg or two by Johnson. Soon after Feller came up with the Cleveland Indians, sportswriter Shirley Povich asked the Big Train to assess the new phenom. Was Feller as fast as him? Johnson studied Feller and finally replied, “No.” No matter that Johnson also said, “That kid sure is fast.” Povich, who often championed the Big Train's accomplishments, made sure the world knew of Johnson's verdict. If that statement rings true, then the case is closed. But again, if you're still uncertain, let's continue along to the next question.

If we don't give Feller enough credit, do we perhaps give Steve Dalkowski too much?

The bespectacled left-hander gained a mythic reputation for his exploits on and off the field in the Baltimore Orioles' farm system. By studying still photographs of Dalkowski (to date no footage has been found of the fireballer in action), John-William Greenbaum calculates that this phenom threw as hard as 105–109 miles per hour. Dalkowski's great promise and even his epic failures speak to something deep inside all of us. Dalko was the lovable loser so many of us can identify with.

“Based on the comments I've heard, based on the other contenders, those being Bob Feller, Herb Score, Sandy Koufax, Nolan Ryan, Bob Gibson, I would believe that Steve was the fastest ever, prior to his 1963 arm injury,” Greenbaum says. “He's my choice.”

But even those who were in Dalkowski's corner during his struggle to reach the major leagues wonder if he really belongs on the top rung.

“I believed in Steve Dalkowski as much as anybody,” says longtime Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver. “With some better luck, I'm certain he would have been remembered as one of the best, maybe even
the
best, hard-thrower in baseball history.

“It was like he never got comfortable with this remarkable gift that he had been given. He didn't give it a chance. He wasted it all. Because of that you can't say he was the fastest ever. He didn't reach the big leagues.”

Pat Gillick, who was once Dalkowski's roommate and went on to be the general manager for the world champion Toronto Blue Jays and Philadelphia Phillies, agrees with his old manager. “Nobody wanted him to succeed more than the guys who played with him,” Gillick says. “Even though I have no doubt that Steve Dalkowski was a hard thrower, he didn't quite make it.”

Such comments prompt Greenbaum to reply, “OK, I can say he was the fastest professional pitcher. . . . Think a left-handed Joel Zumaya, only a bit faster.”

Yet even Ron Shelton, who transformed the tall tales he heard while in the Baltimore Orioles' farm system into the movie
Bull Durham,
has second thoughts about rating Dalkowski as the top fireballer ever. “That is what haunts us,” he wrote in the
Los Angeles Times
in July 2009. “He had it all and didn't know it. That's why Steve Dalkowski stays in our minds. In his sport, he had the equivalent of Michelangelo's gift but could never finish the painting.”

Perhaps, in a way, that's why all these fireballers enthrall us so. In this realm of the surreal, often the inexplicable, each struggled to find a way to make all the pieces fit, and none of them had a perfect path to the top. Satchel Paige spent his prime in the separate and unequal domain of the old Negro Leagues. Amos Rusie and Jim Creighton pitched more than a century ago, in a netherworld that's now difficult to comprehend. Sandy Koufax's dozen years in the major leagues were split almost evenly between pedestrian and then Hall of Fame numbers.

During the 2009 season, the year of my search, David Price reached the majors on Memorial Day, but even though the promising left-hander often pitched well, especially at home, Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon was still waiting for that “moment of epiphany.” Meanwhile, the Detroit Tigers' Joel Zumaya was once again sidelined by injury, and Billy Wagner returned from Tommy John surgery only to find he would be joining the playoff hunt with the Boston Red Sox in the unaccustomed role of setup man. And yet elsewhere, newcomer Neftali Feliz of the Texas Rangers was clocked at 101 miles per hour in his major-league debut; teams were lining up to bid for the services of Cuban defector Aroldis Chapman,
whose fastball hit 102 miles per hour; and phenom Stephen Strasburg signed at the 11th hour with the Washington Nationals, finalizing a record-breaking deal that arguably placed the weight of the franchise squarely on his shoulders. The allure of speed, however fleeting or capricious, remained one of the game's constants. It was still, as it had been for much of the game's history, very much the coin of the realm.

Ironically, few of the pitchers featured in these pages asked for the largesse of high heat. Due to the expectations and pressure of possessing such rare talent, arguably more have suffered and even failed than have succeeded. If what binds them all together is the gift they've been provided with, then what truly separates them is the ability to harness and to honor it. And so, after glancing down this lineup of fireballers for the ages, adjusting our focus to get a sense of the bigger picture, perhaps that is what our final question should be about: gifts and blessings, curses and missed opportunities. Who persevered the most with what was bestowed upon them?

 

 

Y
ears ago, before the Baltimore Orioles moved to Camden Yards, I often drove up to old Memorial Stadium before the Sunday home games. It was a good time to do interviews as the players had time on their hands. During the 1992 season, the Texas Rangers were in town, and after talking with several players in the visiting clubhouse, I went up the tunnel to the dugout. A steady drizzle had soaked the field and nobody was sure if the afternoon's game would be played. A few of us sat there, watching the storm clouds roll in.

That's when I noticed two figures out in center field. They were running, doing calisthenics, in the gray mist. Due to the elements and distance, I couldn't make out who it was and finally asked one of the players sitting nearby.

“It's Ryan,” he replied. “He's out there with the trainer.”

Even though Ryan had pitched and won the night before, he was the only one making sure he got his workout on this gloomy morning. Perhaps that's why so many of today's young guns drop his name when the talk turns to throwing hard, with purpose and intention.

Umpire Ron Luciano once said that Ryan's fastball left the pitcher's mound “as big as a golf ball.” Yet by the time it reached home plate, the sheer velocity caused an optical illusion to take place. The ball seemed to explode “into a million blinding white specks,” and after it smacked into the catcher's mitt the batters would look back at Luciano in disbelief.

 

 

“S
o Ryan's your guy?” Pote asks. “Your top choice? The fastest of all time?”

“Look at what he went through,” I reply. “How close he came to quitting in those early years, how he made himself into a Hall of Fame pitcher. It was like he wasn't going to let this greatness he was given slip away. Now, I know you love Dalkowski and think the world of Paige and Feller. But I don't see how they're ahead of Ryan. Not when you consider what's been given and how that gift has been honored, so to speak.”

There is a pause on the other end of the line.

“Sounds like you've done some serious thinking during your travels,” Pote finally says.

“I guess I have.”

“They say that's what traveling is good for, babe,” Pote adds. “See some of the world, put your thoughts together. I like your criteria—the gift given and all. Nolan Ryan? You'll find no argument from me on this one, partner. Not with a guy who could throw with that kind of velocity.”

Hanging up the phone, I know I'll soon be hearing from Phil Pote again. Our conversation about fireballers is far from over, and that's probably how it should be.