“This is the last time we’re going to have an American sports legend to talk about,” Brian Vikander, the pitching coach who wrote the book with Bill Dembski and Alex Thomas, tells the Guardian.

“They just didn’t have the technology back then to prove it.” Although several rudimentary attempts were made to measure the speed of his pitches, Dalkowski ended his pro career nearly a decade before a radar gun was first used for Nolan Ryan, the Hall of Fame pitcher.

The director and screenwriter Ron Shelton, a former Orioles’ farmhand, said he based the fast, wild and immature character “Nuke” LaLoosh, played by Tim Robbins, on Dalkowski in the classic 1988 baseball film Bull Durham.

Though Dalkowski did briefly have a solid father-son-type relationship with Earl Weaver, who would later become the Orioles’ legendary manager, virtually no attention was paid back then to an athlete’s mental state, especially to those who struggled with high expectations.

He did, however, have a piece of scrap paper with the phone number of a former teammate, Frank Zupo, and his life would change for the better because of help he received from his sister, Pat, and the Baseball Assistance Team, among many others.

“I’m ashamed of just going down the drain, and I don’t have to do that to stop this Mickey Mouse drinking stuff to get my act together,” Dalkowski said in an interview with Chiappetta earlier in 1992 that is included in the documentary.