He became a star pitcher in high school and signed with the Orioles after graduating in 1957, receiving a $4,000 bonus.

Pitching for the Kingsport, Tenn., team of the Appalachian League in his rookie season, Dalkowski hit a batter in the head, leaving him unconscious. He struck out 121 batters and walked 129 in 62 innings with a 1-8 record.

The following season, pitching for three teams, he struck out 203 batters and walked 207 in 104 innings. And so it went, though he showed some improvement in his control while pitching for Baltimore’s farm club in Elmira, N.Y., for Earl Weaver, the future Hall of Fame manager of the Orioles. Weaver tried to keep things simple for Dalkowski, telling him to concentrate on taking something off his fastball in order to find home plate.

Dalkowski’s pitches, thrown from a 5-foot-11-inch, 175-pound frame, were likely to arrive high or low rather than bearing in on a hitter or straying wide of the plate. But the Yankees were taking no chances when they faced him in a March 1963 exhibition night game with the Orioles when Dalkowski was being considered for a call to the majors.

George Vecsey, who covered the game for Newsday and later became a sports columnist for The New York Times, interviewed Dalkowski before his induction in 2009 into the Shrine of the Eternals, an alternate hall of fame in Pasadena, Calif. His account recalled the moment when Roger Maris came to the plate.

“Maris was a legend for having hit a record 61 homers in 1961; Dalkowski was a legend for being perhaps the fastest pitcher ever,” he wrote. “When they met, Maris was theoretically standing near home plate in Miami, but his fanny was more or less in the Bahamas.”

“Three straight pitches,” Dalkowski remarked in that interview, recalling his easy strikeout.

“After the game, the Yankees stars all yukked it up in the clubhouse, imitating each other’s bailout moves,” Vecsey remembered.