How fast did pitchers throw in the 1960s?
The estimates I've seen indicate that most successful pitchers fastball ranged from the high 80s to mid 90s. Steve Dalkowski was the hardest thrower in the 60s. He threw a fastball at 100 mph or better in his prime.
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How fast did Sandy Koufax throw?
100-mph
Koufax was an American baseball legend. He possessed a 100-mph fastball and what announcer Vin Scully called “a twelve-to-six curveball” that started at 12 o'clock then dropped to 6 o'clock. From 1963–1966, he had the best four-year span of any pitcher in baseball history.
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How fast was Bob Feller's fastball?
Best estimates are at least 98 mph and quite possibly several miles an hour over 100 mph. Among them is footage of a Feller fastball being clocked by Army ordnance equipment (used to measure artillery shell velocity) and registering at 98.6 mph (158.7 km/h).
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It’s impossible to know, so when you hear someone making pronouncements like, “They threw 85 mph,” you can be sure they are full of ****. They cannot possibly know at all.
What we do know is that Bob Feller’s fastball was timed at a widely reported 98.6 mph when tested against a speeding motorcycle. People who have seen the film of that demonstration unanimously agree that the speeding cycle had a head start on Feller’s delivery, yet Bob’s fastball still beat the cycle to the target. (See John Finn’s post to this question.) Some people claim that Feller’s fastball may have reached 107 mph. Additionally, Feller threw that pitch in street clothes and from a flat surface, not a mound. It’s certainly reasonable to say that his fastball easily exceeded 100 mph.
Now Babe Ruth played his last game in 1935. Bob Feller pitched his first game one year later, 1936. In fact, Lou Gehrig played his last game in 1939, three years after Feller started. That’s all the confirmation you need that there were pitchers in Ruth’s day who could throw at speeds equal to today’s pitchers. So we know that there was a pitcher in Ruth and Gehrig’s time who was at least as fast as Koufax and Gibson in the 1960s, and at least as fast as Clemens in the 1980s, and at least as fast as Aroldis Chapman today. And all Aroldis ever pitches is one, occasionally two, innings.
But Feller wasn’t the only one. There were hitters who said that Lefty Grove was faster than Bob Feller, guys who’d batted against both. And Grove was at his peak during the same time that Ruth was at his peak. He led the league in strikeouts seven years in a row.
In the National League, Dazzy Vance may have been as fast as Grove. Dazzy led the league in Ks seven years in a row, as well. Also in the 1930s was Dizzy Dean with the Cardinals. Diz was known for his speed and for two great phrases: “I’m gonna fog it in there,” and the phrase he used for firing his fastball, “Let’s play some good old country hard ball.” He was the last 30-game winner in the NL.
So that’s four guys that come quickly to mind when I think of past pitchers who threw 100 mph. But there are more. People like Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker who saw all these pitchers up through about the 1960s say none of them could throw as hard as Walter Johnson. All I had to see was a photo of Johnson in a baggy uniform to tell how powerfully built and how immensely strong he was. Also, watching film of his easy windup and almost sidearm throw you can see how smooth his delivery was and how easily he zipped the ball. Similar delivery to the fire-balling Don Drysdale of the 1960s, but obviously smoother and faster.
And yet there are others, including Rube Waddell, who had the most incredible strikeout records of anyone ever, considering the time he played in when all batters choked up on the bat and despised striking out. It took 60 years for someone (Koufax) to finally beat Rube’s single-season record of 349 Ks in one year. How many other major seasonal records can you think of that lasted 60 years?
So, for old-time pitchers who were as fast as anyone today, there’s Feller, Grove, Vance, Dean, W. Johnson, and Waddell, just for starters. There were others, not as great as these six but maybe just as fast, like Rex Barney and Van Lingle Mungo (both of the Dodgers), and Herb Score (1950s) of the Indians. And I’m sure other guys I don’t even know about. These men didn’t lift weights. They got strong the old-fashioned way, through hard work. Many were rawboned farm boys, like Feller and Johnson, some worked in factories or mines. And they could throw the hell out of a baseball.
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There is no way to prove it was not possible but without the radar guns used now you believe it or you do not for ones reason, no proof it is not true. Some where in this menagerie of baseball posts last year I pasted a site that listed all the pitcher from the get-go that were fireball pitchers, look it up .