Steve Dalkowski, a former minor league pitcher who had a legendary and erratic fastball, and served as the inspiration Nuke LaLoosh in the movie "Bull Durham," has died. He was 80 years old.

Dalkowski died Sunday at the Hospital of Central Connecticut, according to the Associated Press, after preexisting conditions he had been dealing with became more complicated due to a COVID-19 infection. His sister, Patricia Cain, confirmed his death to the AP on Friday.

He was best known for his fastball that became that stuff of legend in the minor leagues. Ted Williams described it as the "fastest I ever saw," and an executive who worked with Dalkowski said he had the best fastball of the thousands of pitchers he's looked at.

What prevented a man from making it to the big leagues with a pitch that some estimated could hit 125 mph -- this was before leagues tracked velocity -- was his lack of touch. This is exemplified in both his 1957 season at Class D Kingsport, where he averaged 17.6 strikeouts and 18.7 walks per nine innings, and his 1960 season with Class C Stockton, where he struck out 262 and walked 262 batters in 170 innings. 

Dalkowski's career hit its final bump in the road in 1963 when he injured his elbow pitching in a Spring Training game against the Yankees. The resulting lost velocity combined with his inability to control his pitches started the countdown clock on his time as a professional, which came to an end in 1965.

Per Baseball-Reference, Dalkowski finished with 1,324 strikeouts, 1,236 walks and 145 wild pitches over 956 innings with a 46-80 record. He battled alcoholism for most of his professional career, and after his retirement, but it got to the point where he was unable to find work anymore because of it, according to a 2009 story from Ron Shelton. He was eventually diagnosed with alcoholic dementia, which forced him to live in an assisted living home from 1994 to the end of his life.

Shelton was a minor league infielder with the Orioles from 1967-71 and wrote and directed the 1988 film "Bull Durham" using the stories he heard about Dalkowski as inspiration for Tim Robbins' character.