Word: gooden
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...wire room of the Tampa Tribune, where the news was handy. Shawon Dunston, a Brooklyn shortstop with an interstate reputation, was selected first of all by the Cubs. (A rating, incidentally, with which the Mets concurred.) "After four picks, I wasn't even letting myself hope yet," Gooden says, "and when my name came up fifth, I couldn't believe it--the No. 1 draft choice of the New York Mets!" He would sign for $85,000. "First I had to call New York to make sure that I was the right Dwight Gooden. Then I couldn't even drive...
Kingsport, Tenn., rookie ball in the Appalachian League, is a typical first professional depot on the tour to the majors--"a one-mall town," as described by Gooden in the modern tongue. Youmans recalls, "The night I walked in, he was waiting for me. We just hugged and cried." The team's transportation around the mountains was a bus, of course, but for some reason the two friends found it endlessly funny that it was a school bus (no air conditioner). Every day Dwight called home. "Sometimes twice a day," Dan Gooden says. "One month we had a $460 phone...
After striking out 66 hitters in 66 innings, attracting thoughtful attention from a "roving instructor" named Davey Johnson, Gooden was summoned to Little Falls, N.Y., for a taste of lower A ball. The following season he was assigned to the higher A team at Lynchburg, Va., managed by Sam Perlozzo...
...could sense the energy was when, say, there was a man on third with one out and he didn't want a ground ball to score a run. That's when he started pumping up his velocity, pulling out something extra. You could see it." A base runner juked Gooden into balking once. "That rattled him," Perlozzo remembers with a smile: a valuable lesson learned. But when he cooled out, Gooden strung together 15 victories that included a 46-inning stretch without an earned...
Come the season's final day, after only 184 innings, he stood just 14 strikeouts from 300. During doubleheaders, minor league games are shortened to seven innings. "No way possible," Gooden thought, "can I get 14 strikeouts in seven innings." But the fervor of his teammates stirred him. "Each time I came back into the dugout, our players would count them up. It was the only game I ever played where I tried to strike out every man I faced." The Hagerstown Suns were the opponents, but Gooden remembers none of the hitters. He saw only the bats. "Every pitch...