Foolish Baseball

The Hardest Thrower That Never Was (2025x8)

Air date: Sep 28, 2025

Steve Dalkowski. That is the name of the hardest thrower that never was. Turns out that baseball's hardest thrower never played in MLB. It's a cautionary tale to same degree. Dalkowski's struggles on and off the field were well-documented, most recently in the biography "Dalko" from Dembski, Thomas, and Vikander. But they were also documented in fiction. Steve Dalkowski was the inspiration for the character Nuke LaLoosh in Bull Durham. In this episode of Baseball Bits, a Foolish Baseball production, we'll tell the story of Steve Dalkowski chronologically while also doing our own baseball stat analysis of why never reached the big leagues.