“Once a person becomes legendary there are untruths repeated over time, building energy, until the real story is lost and they become fact. The internet has become the standard for research and once something is logged in it is available for repeating whether it is correct or not.

The most reported and repeated has Steve being the model for Tim Robbins character, Nuke Laloosh, in Ron Shelton’s classic movie, “Bull Durham”. The real character was probably a combination of Dalkowski and Greg Arnold.

Greg was a wild right hander who played a guitar and drove a red sports car, same as Nuke. Steve was a left hander who couldn’t carry a note let alone play the guitar and didn’t have a driver’s license because of his drinking problem. Arnold and Shelton playing together four seasons makes sense to me. Dalkowski was long gone before Shelton signed and word of mouth stories about Steve were a decade old. Arnold fits the description of Nuke far better than Dalkowski but Shelton probably blended the two together for his character.

The most blatant abuse of the truth can be found on the website, http://www.sportshollywood.com. “One of his wilder pitches hit an announcer—up in the announcer’s booth, and he finished one season at Stockton with 262 strikeouts and 262 walks. Writer/director Ron Shelton was playing on that team with Dalkowski in 1960, and he used the announcer incident and these exact statistics in his screenplay for Bull Durham. He used Dalkowski as the model for the films character Nuke Laloosh”. In 1960 Shelton might have been old enough to be the bat boy since his professional debut in the Orioles system wasn’t until 1966.

It was time to celebrate our win and on the return to the hotel Steve asked if I would be his partner for the night. This was not an unusual request since there was no one else for him to turn to except me and I had lent him twenty dollars. His performance raised questions in my mind and there was no hesitation in agreeing to join him.

Lewiston had the appearance and feel of being one of the last Wild West cities left in America since urban renewal and freeways were decades away and we were staying at the Lewis and Clark Hotel. Both the city and hotel were aging but provided a strong feeling as to their past. It took little imagination to see the legendary explorers traveling through and what they might have observed.

Ripken wisely placed every bar off limits within the city. Cowboys seldom mixed well with Native Americans, tourists or ball players. In order to party, one had to rent a cab and travel far from the comfort zone of our hotel. This was the only city I played in with the possibility of total team celibacy. We were staying at a hotel near a night club seating two hundred and a live band. Steve decided this is where we were going to celebrate his win and there was no negotiating

Females were in abundance and we had no worry about time except for our departure to the park the next day. Perfect seating became available at the center of the bar close to the dance floor. It was only eleven and we had three hours to find companionship for the evening and Steve was my leader.”

Tim Sommer
Author of Beating About the Bushes