Word: gooden
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...between the Dodgers and Angels. Cincinnati's Pete Rose was closing in on one of the game's most cherished records, Ty Cobb's standard of 4,191 base hits; as the weekend began, he needed only three more to break it. The young Met fireballer, Dwight Gooden, a 20-game winner at the age of 20, was prompting comparisons with the greatest pitchers of the past. But the drug disclosures could not help putting the game under a cloud. Not since the "Black Sox" scandal of 1919, when eight Chicago White Sox players admitted taking bribes from gamblers...
...perhaps the greatest thing about the end of the strike is that all the fabulous seasons will not be lost. So Dwight Gooden can keep his winning streak going, Don Mattingly can drive in 150 runs, Vince Coleman can steal 100 bases as a rookie, and Wade Boggs can get 250 hits...
...Valenzuela seven springs ago in Mexico. He went there to observe a skinny infielder, but could not help noticing an ample lefthanded breaking-ball pitcher with more than a teenager's command. "Both these guys / seem to have been born with poise and control," he says. In addition, Gooden has a 94-m.p.h. fast ball in the eighth inning...
...pressed into the lineup by injuries. Maybe because he spent three seasons in Japan, his hitting theories are serenely uncomplicated. "A lot of players think at the plate," he says. "I just hack. I go up there, I see the ball, I hit it." What he will see from Gooden, if he can see them, are all fast balls, and all strikes. Catcher Carter stopped proposing anything else after Gooden shook off two curves. "If he wants to throw something you don't want him to throw," Manager Johnson has advised Carter, "try it his way for a while...
...fouls those off, Whitfield finally strikes out on the fifth. After nine pitches, without ever leaving the strike zone, the Mets' emergency ends and the Dodgers' begins. In the top of the ninth, Valenzuela also loads the bases with no outs. But they are emptied by singles that include Gooden's third of the game. The final score is 4-1. "That's the first time in my career that I ever saw a pitcher fire up the offense," muses Hernandez afterward. He refers to Gooden's pitching, not his hitting. "Oh, I love to hit," Gooden says. "When...