Search for fastest pitcher ever makes a good read

Baseball is so obsessed with statistics you might think it's easy to identify who threw the fastest fastball.

Not so, Tim Wendel tells us in "High Heat: The Secret History of the Fastball and the Improbable Search for the Fastest Pitcher of All Time." In fact, he says, Major League Baseball doesn't recognize radar gun readings as official. And what's more, some of the most famous fireballers showed their stuff long before radar guns were first aimed at pitchers in the 1970s.

So Wendel did his own research, including interviews with players and scouts. He settled on 10 candidates, including such famous names as Bob Feller, Satchel Paige and Nolan Ryan, and less-known ones, like Steve Dalkowski and Amos Rusie. And then he made his choice.

Feel free to disagree with his conclusion, but be sure to enjoy the book. Far from just a statistical inquiry, it's packed with stories about baseball and some of its extraordinary players.

We read about men throwing a baseball through a wooden fence or a wire-mesh backstop, knocking over a surprised hot dog vendor in at least one case. Rusie was said to have hunted jack rabbits with stones when he was a child, throwing with deadly speed and accuracy. Ryan tells about the day when, as a ninth-grader, he threw a softball the length of a football field. Sandy Koufax, as a kid in New York City, peppered his buddies with softballs from so far away they couldn't fire back.

That kind of arm is a gift, but Wendel shows it's not enough for major-league success. He concludes that the expectations that come with the talent are so great that it may have led to suffering and even failure more often than success.

He traces how fireballers left their marks on the game, spurring such innovations as the walk and a lengthening of the distance from the mound to home plate. (Another innovation, the elbow operation known as Tommy John surgery, is reflected on by former pitcher Tommy John himself.) Wendel talks about the fear batters feel when they face those lightning bolts from the mound, and how Ty Cobb exploited Walter Johnson's own fear of hurting somebody when Cobb stepped to the plate.

This is a fascinating book for a baseball fan. And it shows Feller had the right idea when Wendel told him about his quest.

"Who was the fastest pitcher of all time?" Feller mused. "The world will never know, may never agree, but it sure is fun to talk about, isn't it?"