Read Online Doc: A Memoir by Dwight Gooden, Ellis Henican - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Dwight Gooden, Ellis Henican
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I’m gonna use you in the seventh.”
Before I trotted to the bullpen, I asked one of the clubhouse kids to get my stuff out of my dad’s car and put it on the bus to the airport. I went into the game and struck out four of the six batters I faced.
After the game, I told my dad I made the team.
He had the same look on his face he did the day I was drafted, like this dream of ours kept coming true. I was on my way to the majors—drafted, signed, and tested—a full-fledged member of the New York Mets. I was heading off to opening day in Cincinnati, ready to face the team my dad and I had watched on television in the family den.
Truly, everything after that was gravy.
PART II
Playing
5
Rookie Season
W HEN I WAS CALLED UP to the big team, I felt like a whole lot of people had been waiting around for me, and I thought I understood why. To the players, the fans, and the sportswriters who’d been following my progress in the minors, I was the bright, shiny hope for a baseball team that desperately needed some.
These were tough times all around in New York, and not just for the Mets. Crack was exploding. Crime was high. People felt jittery in their own neighborhoods. When the rest of life is difficult, sports can bring important relief. That was true in Georgia in my father’s and grandfather’s days. Maybe it would be true again in New York, a city with two professional baseball teams. But being a sports fan is a whole lot more fun when your team has a shot at winning. Given all the hype about me in the minors, Mets fans were thinking I could help turn some things around for them, maybe bring back some of the fun thathad been sadly absent since the Mets’ World Series season of 1969. Of course, I wasn’t going to rescue the struggling franchise alone. That would take a team effort, literally. I was nineteen years old. But I could help. I knew I could. And I was about to learn something else: if I could do that for New York, there was almost nothing New York wouldn’t do for me.
This was a city in search of a savior. Maybe it was wishful thinking. But coming into the 1984 season, a whole lot of Mets fans thought that savior might be me.
The Mets’ idea was to let me get a taste of major-league life before I actually took the mound, especially in front of the home crowd in New York. Everyone knew what a pressure cooker Shea Stadium could be. Our first nine games that season—fourteen of our first seventeen—were away games. So I had some time to ease in.
We opened at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati on April 2. I’d grown up watching the Reds in spring training at Al Lopez Field. I’d played that one minor-league exhibition game at Shea, but this was my first time in a major-league park as a major-league player. I was totally in awe at how huge and perfect everything seemed. So that’s what 46,000 people looked like? The center-field fence might have been in Cleveland or Chicago, it looked so far away. As I walked onto the turf, one of the first players I saw was Pete Rose. The legendary “Charlie Hustle” was walking from behind the batting cage directly over to me. When I was growing up in Tampa, Pete was like a god. I could still remember my father and his friends, grilling steaks in the backyard and laughing about how Pete terrified pitchers across the National League. Now he was reaching out to shake my hand, welcoming me to the majors.
“Hey, kid,” he said. “You had a heck of a year, didn’t you? Hope it continues. I look forward to facing you out there.”
I told him I came from Tampa and had shaken his hand one day outside Lopez Field. He didn’t remember that, of course. But he couldn’thave been nicer. And I could hardly believe this wasn’t a dream. I hadn’t even played a game yet, and Pete Rose knew who I was.
“Good luck to you,” Pete said.
“Thanks,” was all I could think of to answer.
Clearly, I was a long way from Tidewater, Lynchburg, and Kingsport. I couldn’t get
Before I trotted to the bullpen, I asked one of the clubhouse kids to get my stuff out of my dad’s car and put it on the bus to the airport. I went into the game and struck out four of the six batters I faced.
After the game, I told my dad I made the team.
He had the same look on his face he did the day I was drafted, like this dream of ours kept coming true. I was on my way to the majors—drafted, signed, and tested—a full-fledged member of the New York Mets. I was heading off to opening day in Cincinnati, ready to face the team my dad and I had watched on television in the family den.
Truly, everything after that was gravy.
PART II
Playing
5
Rookie Season
W HEN I WAS CALLED UP to the big team, I felt like a whole lot of people had been waiting around for me, and I thought I understood why. To the players, the fans, and the sportswriters who’d been following my progress in the minors, I was the bright, shiny hope for a baseball team that desperately needed some.
These were tough times all around in New York, and not just for the Mets. Crack was exploding. Crime was high. People felt jittery in their own neighborhoods. When the rest of life is difficult, sports can bring important relief. That was true in Georgia in my father’s and grandfather’s days. Maybe it would be true again in New York, a city with two professional baseball teams. But being a sports fan is a whole lot more fun when your team has a shot at winning. Given all the hype about me in the minors, Mets fans were thinking I could help turn some things around for them, maybe bring back some of the fun thathad been sadly absent since the Mets’ World Series season of 1969. Of course, I wasn’t going to rescue the struggling franchise alone. That would take a team effort, literally. I was nineteen years old. But I could help. I knew I could. And I was about to learn something else: if I could do that for New York, there was almost nothing New York wouldn’t do for me.
This was a city in search of a savior. Maybe it was wishful thinking. But coming into the 1984 season, a whole lot of Mets fans thought that savior might be me.
The Mets’ idea was to let me get a taste of major-league life before I actually took the mound, especially in front of the home crowd in New York. Everyone knew what a pressure cooker Shea Stadium could be. Our first nine games that season—fourteen of our first seventeen—were away games. So I had some time to ease in.
We opened at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati on April 2. I’d grown up watching the Reds in spring training at Al Lopez Field. I’d played that one minor-league exhibition game at Shea, but this was my first time in a major-league park as a major-league player. I was totally in awe at how huge and perfect everything seemed. So that’s what 46,000 people looked like? The center-field fence might have been in Cleveland or Chicago, it looked so far away. As I walked onto the turf, one of the first players I saw was Pete Rose. The legendary “Charlie Hustle” was walking from behind the batting cage directly over to me. When I was growing up in Tampa, Pete was like a god. I could still remember my father and his friends, grilling steaks in the backyard and laughing about how Pete terrified pitchers across the National League. Now he was reaching out to shake my hand, welcoming me to the majors.
“Hey, kid,” he said. “You had a heck of a year, didn’t you? Hope it continues. I look forward to facing you out there.”
I told him I came from Tampa and had shaken his hand one day outside Lopez Field. He didn’t remember that, of course. But he couldn’thave been nicer. And I could hardly believe this wasn’t a dream. I hadn’t even played a game yet, and Pete Rose knew who I was.
“Good luck to you,” Pete said.
“Thanks,” was all I could think of to answer.
Clearly, I was a long way from Tidewater, Lynchburg, and Kingsport. I couldn’t get