Ron Shelton has been to Bakersfield. You don't do movies like The Best of Times without spending some time here. He is better known as the director of Bull Durham, White Men Can't Jump and Tin Cup. He was in the Baltimore Orioles organization for quite few years and wrote a great piece on a Bakersfield legend, Steve Dalkowski. Here is a unique story published in the Los Angeles Times today with serious local color written by Ron Shelton.

He was a little guy, which was shocking at first, with short arms, thick glasses and an easy smile. They called him "Dalko" and guys liked to hang with him and women wanted to take care of him and if he walked in a room in those days he was probably drunk.

He had a record 14 feet long inside the Bakersfield police station, all barroom brawls, nothing serious, the cops said. He rode the trucks out at dawn to pick grapes with the migrant farm workers of Kern County -- and finally couldn't even hold that job.

This was the legend; this was Steve Dalkowski, the hardest thrower who ever lived.

Many years ago, playing professional baseball in the bush leagues for the Baltimore Orioles, in the wake of the great players who preceded me -- Brooks Robinson, Boog Powell, Jim Palmer and the rest -- the stories passed on by bus drivers and groundskeepers and minor league players and managers were not about the exploits of those Hall of Famers, they were about an obscure pitcher named Dalkowski.

Orioles manager Earl Weaver saw Nolan Ryan and Sandy Koufax and "Sudden" Sam McDowell and Dick Radatz and said, "Dalko threw harder than all of 'em."

Ted Williams stepped in for one pitch during a spring training game and walked away. "Fastest I ever saw," he said. Teddy Ballgame, who regularly faced Bob Feller and Herb Score and Ryne Duren, wanted no part of Dalko.

In Wilson, N.C., Dalkowski threw a pitch so high and hard that it broke through the narrow welded wire backstop, 50 feet behind home plate and 30 feet up. On a $5 bet he threw a baseball through a wooden fence. On a $10 bet he threw a baseball from the center-field fence toward home plate, over the 40-foot-high backstop screen.

He threw high and tight and ripped off a guy's ear in Elmira, N.Y. Or was it Appleton, Wis.? Or Stockton? When the legend becomes fact, print the legend, it is said in a John Ford movie. But with Dalkowski the mythology and the inarguable facts of baseball statistics are inseparable.

Look at the numbers and weep. In his first two seasons of pro baseball in the Appalachian and South Atlantic Leagues, he averaged 19 strikeouts and 18 walks per nine innings. Playing for the Aberdeen Pheasants in a low Class-A league in South Dakota in 1959, he averaged 20 walks and 15 strikeouts for nine innings. In the Eastern League, he struck out 27, walked 16 and threw an astounding 283 pitches in a game.

Then there was the time at Elmira when he was pulled from the game after throwing 120 pitches -- it was still the second inning.

Though he terrified hitters, he rarely hit a batter. Cal Ripken Sr., his catcher through much of the minor leagues (and one of my managers), said, "Dalko was the easiest pitcher I ever caught. He was only wild high and low, rarely inside or out -- but the batters didn't know that."

Weaver thought Dalkowski was overcoached and when he finally made it to double-A Elmira after nine years in the remote outposts of the minors, he persuaded Dalko to "take a little off the fastball."

Dalkowski still threw in the high 90s, maybe higher, and for one brief stretch pitched better than any kid ever dreamed. In a 52-inning span, he struck out 104 batters with only 10 walks and a single earned run.

He finished the 1962 season with the triple-A Rochester Red Wings and the following spring made the Orioles' roster, his nearly decade-long journey in the wilderness finally over, it seemed. That's where the retired Williams stepped in -- and out -- of the box against him. That's where scouts and reporters gathered to buzz about the phenomenon, only to see this explosive arm die in a whimper, fielding a bunt by Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton of all people -- the same Bouton who would later write the classic "Ball Four."

Dalko picked up the bunt, flipped the toss to first . . . and his arm went dead.

From his earliest days as a baseball and football star in New Britain, Conn., Dalkowski's real problem wasn't controlling a baseball, but controlling the bottle.

Playing baseball in Stockton and Bakersfield several years behind Dalko, but increasingly aware of the legend, I would see a figure standing in the dark down the right-field line at old Sam Lynn Park in Oildale, a paper bag in hand. Sometimes he'd come to the clubhouse to beg for money.

Our manager, Joe Altobelli, would talk to him, give him some change, then come back and report, "That was Steve Dalkowski." And a clubhouse full of cocky, young, testosterone-driven baseball players sat in awe -- of the unimaginable gift, the legend, the fall.

Altobelli, a career minor leaguer with some big league experience, was finishing out a career in Rochester when Dalko finally made it to triple A. He was assigned to be Dalko's roommate with the mandate to "help mature the kid."

Joe said he loved Dalko but he never saw him except at the park -- he was out drinking all night all the time. But come game time, somehow, Dalko showed up and threw his 100-mph heaters.

This relationship -- the veteran who loved a game more than the game loved him, and the God-gifted rookie who was otherwise a lost soul -- was the inspiration for "Bull Durham," though nothing specific in Altobelli or Dalkowski's character is applicable.

Dalko pitched before radar guns, so nobody is really sure how fast he threw. But the Orioles took him to the Aberdeen Proving Ground, a military test site near Baltimore, and lined him up 60 feet 6 inches from a tube that judged wind speed. Without a mound, in sneakers, Dalko fired away for nearly an hour, his pitches registering in the mid-90s.

Some guess his fastball from a mound approached 110 mph. We'll never know.

When Dalkowski's career ended, after he'd bounced around trying for a comeback with his aching shoulder -- he threw more than 90 mph with a bad arm -- he submitted completely to whatever solace the bottle held and began a lost journey that led him to the migrant farmworker fields of Bakersfield.

Wandering the streets of L.A. years later on Christmas Eve, he was rescued and reunited with his wife from Bakersfield who thought he'd been dead for years. She died shortly thereafter and finally his family from Connecticut discovered he was still breathing, barely, and brought him home.

Couldn't help but notice the article in today's on line edition of The Bakersfield Californian discussing the new business model for the NBA D-(as in development) League. As I understand the math, the lowest ticket, which will include access to a cigar room, access to an open bar, a dinner meal and a D-League game will run more than $140. Suites, which accommodate a party of up to twelve people, are being sold at roughly $1,900  per game.

Good luck, Stan Ellis and David Higdon! Maybe a game and dinner with a hefty cover charge for 550 of your friends out on Rosedale Highway is a great way to network these days. Have you guys thought about just going old school, and putting a polo field or fox hunting grounds for your friends to enjoy at reasonable rates here in the area?  Or, have you considered an opera season this year as a way to patronize and entertain your peers?    

You certainly have announced the riff-raff will not be attending this season.

Early mornings I pour the java to better putter from chore to chore getting the space properly prepped for my mid-afternoon iced-coffee extravaganza that allows me to keep going until a reasonable hour before hitting the horizontal button for the night. In between I peruse online news sources for interesting stories (well interesting to me) to pad my brain while the flavored caffeine kicks in. This morning I hit the trifecta in the on-line edition of the San Francisco Chronicle.

The First story finds news that student fees at all CSUs might go up  by 20% to help cover an $813 million budget cut for the coming year. 

CSU Chancellor Charles Reed said he will also ask for layoffs, unpaid furloughs and a range of other measures Tuesday to save the university system $584 million.

"It's nothing short of a mega-meltdown financially," Reed said.

If you interested in more of the gory details you can check the story out at sfgate.com.

The next stories are pure fun, because the characters are so strong.

Charles Barkley on the golf course. By the time he reached the No. 6 tee, Charles Barkley realized the gallery was in danger. So, when he spotted two spectators obliviously wandering down an adjacent cart path - about 100 yards away, left of the fairway, outside the ropes - Barkley offered a loud, friendly warning.

I just saw this clip from the  Bill Moyers Journal. This clip is an interview with Wendell Potter, a former health insurance executive at CIGNA, one of the largest health insurance companies in America.  The health insurance industry in America knew everything Michael Moore depicted in the film Sicko was accurate.

A lot of people have expressed very strong opinions against Michael Moore on this blog site for a number of years. If Michael Moore doubters/naysayers dare to watch this clip you will find the cause of your hostility toward Moore and his message on health insurance. You were manipulated by very powerful public relations firms paid by very powerful insurance companies to discredit Michael Moore.

Want to know why health care costs so much in America? Much of your hard earned money spent on health insurance premiums goes to big public relations firms who lie to you 24 hours a day 7 days a week. The loud constant lie has more impact than the hard fought truth.

And the proof is in the clip.