Wendel - High Heat: the Secret History of the Fastball and the Improbable Search for the Fastest Pitcher of All Time

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Table of Contents

Praise for High Heat

A blazing fastball of a storycompelling, relentless, riveting.

KEN BURNS

High Heat is a great idea brilliantly executed. Tim Wendel, one of my favorite baseball writers, delivers this fastball with a winning mix of science, biography, and mythology.

DAVID MARANISS, author of Clemente and When Pride Still Mattered

In the wonderful High Heat, Wendel leverages that tensionthe fastball as both blessing and baneto mine a stunning amount of drama.... Wendels writing is also all fastballs. Sensitive and scrupulous, he never forgets that for every [Nolan] Ryan and Sandy Koufax, lucky to have their unearned gifts, there are flameouts like Steve Dalkowski.... High Heat is a sance with the games past, an almost literary fantasy in which all the great pitchers throw side by side on the same diamond.

New York Times Book Review

Wendel draws you in right from the first pitch.

New York Post (Required Reading)

[Wendel] explores the fastballs history and powerful mystique, from the beginnings of baseball to the present.... A delight for baseball fanatics.

Boston Globe

[A] highly entertaining exploration of the pitch that has made so many careers (and destroyed so many arms). Fascinating details emerge.

San Francisco Chronicle

High Heat hums when Wendel profiles the fastest of the fastball pitchers, tracing the lineage of the pitch from Amos Rusie in the 19th century to Walter Johnson in the 1920s to Sandy Koufax in the 1960s and, finally, to the Washington Nationals 100-mile-an-hour prospect Stephen Strasburg.

Los Angeles Times

[A] book of delightful digressions.

Washington Post

Like its subject, High Heat emits a disarming hum... [It] takes a historical, statistical, and mechanical look at baseballs most sacred skill... At the end you may disagree with Wendels choice for the fastest ever. But the pages will go by quicker than a David Price aspirin tablet.

Sports Illustrated

A sportswriters search for the unknowable, and why 105-mph Steve Dalkowski, the inspiration for Bull Durhams Nuke LaLoosh, never made the majors.

USA Today

Entertaining.

Newsday

In our era of moneyball and sabermetrics, its refreshing to read a book so vividly written that we can easily envision the old-time players and scouts spit tobacco juice to punctuate their opinions while disdaining mere radar readings. Wendel teaches us as much about the evolution of the values of our society as he does the development of the national pastime.... Highly recommended.

Library Journal

[Wendel] presents a satisfying search for the ultimate fastball pitcher, with a result thats just conclusive enough... while leaving plenty of room for baseball die-hards second-favorite sport: debating other fans.

Publishers Weekly

Feel free to disagree with [Wendels] conclusion, but be sure to enjoy the book. Far from just a statistical inquiry, its packed with stories about baseball and some of its extraordinary players.... A fascinating book for a baseball fan.

Associated Press

Engrossing.

Booklist

Any book that sets out to name the top... fastball pitchers of all time is sure to provoke controversy and Tim Wendel accomplishes just that in his somewhat quirky, somewhat biased, freewheeling, and always entertaining book.... Wendel travels his own road, and he excels at bringing us along with him.

Spitball

Endlessly interesting... [Wendels] brief profiles of each hard thrower resonate, because they explain what its like to meet the high expectations established when an arm can throw a baseball at an astounding velocity.

Raleigh News & Observer

The joy of [Wendels] quest, and of its telling, lies in baseballs rich lore and legend.... As with the game itself, the fun of the book is more in taking part than in the outcome.

Roanoke Times

High Heat is more than just a cursory ranking of baseballs fastest arms, its a fun and fact-filled flip through baseballs record books that brings to life the players we previously only knew from our baseball card collections.

ForeWord magazine

A journey through the past and present of our national pastime, and a vivid reminder of why we love the game.

Smoke magazine

Tim Wendel, one of baseballs leading contemporary chroniclers, here dissects the fastball and those who would throw it.... High Heat is a fascinating book written with passion and aplomb by someone who clearly loves the sport nearly as much as he loves writing about it.

January magazine

Destined to be [a] hardball classic.

Washington Times

Also by Tim Wendel

Nonfiction

Going for the Gold
The New Face of Baseball
Far From Home
Buffalo, Home of the Braves

Fiction

Castros Curveball
Red Rain

For my children, Sarah and Christopher,
and my wife, Jacqueline.

In memory of Bill Glavin,
who helped show me the way.

Preface

On an autumn night, a few years ago, I got to talking baseball with Frank Howard. Even at the age of 72, Howard looked like he just strolled down from Mount Olympus. What the gods had in mind for a major-league slugger. Although the passing years have forced him to hunch a bit, at 6-foot-7, with his square jaw and broad shoulders, Howard still towered over the rest of us mere mortals that evening at the Presidents Club bar in the Nationals Park in Washington, D.C.

The occasion was a reception for major-league ballplayers who also served in World War II. Their ranks ranged from longtime New York Yankee Jerry Coleman to the hard-throwing Hall of Famer Bob Feller. There had been a momentary hitch as the bartenders couldnt locate any vermouth, thus ruling out such mixed drinks as manhattans and martinis. But after a bit of grumbling, the old ballplayers, who had been joined by 50 or so wounded warriors from Walter Reed Medical Hospital, shifted to beer or wine.

It was a night when legend and fable mingled, with the telling of one tall tale after another. Perhaps it was because Feller was in attendance, but I couldnt resist asking Howard who he thought was the fastest pitcher ever.

Of course, some consider that a loaded, even unfair question. Instead of trying to give a straight answer, some baseball experts and aficionados run and spin, emphasizing how difficult it is to compare players from different eras. How even in this era when every pitch is graded by scouts and clocked on radar guns, a comprehensive, reliable testing of high heat remains so problematic. And, indeed, most of those complaints are valid. But, to his credit, or perhaps because of the open bar, on this evening Howard was game.

Now thats a story that takes a bit of telling, doesnt it? he said, with a smile.

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