Word: gooden
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...daydreamer," he confesses. "When I'd step into the Little League batter's box, I'd think, 'I'm Pete Rose, I'm Al Kaline.' " For hitting two home runs in a forgotten spring-training game 15 years ago at Lakeland, Detroit's Hall of Fame rightfielder is Gooden's ideal still. "I just fell in love with him for the way he played that one game when I was six." Why? "He dominated...
From the age of eight, Gooden and his closest neighborhood friend, Floyd Youmans, filled Tampa's afternoons with pepper. Using a battered aluminum can for a ball, they waged endless rounds of home-run derby or argued themselves angry over a game called Strikeout that featured a hard rubber ball, a red brick wall and a chalk-drawn strike zone. "Just me and him," Youmans whispers conspiratorially. "We weren't supposed to--the coaches all the way down the line told us not to--but we'd sneak out and practice throwing curve balls. When he was twelve, I knew...
There were other good athletes around the neighborhood. Without Gooden, whose birthday came just a little too late for the 1975 Williamsport World Series, the Belmont Little Leaguers made it all the way to the finals before losing to Taiwan. But Gooden could be so critical of his teammates' mistakes that a visitor to the practice field might have taken him for the only competent player. One day nobody remembered to bring a ball. The team was awkwardly waiting when Gooden suddenly said, "I'm sorry for the way I act sometimes." After that he seemed not to notice...
...never wanted to pitch," Gooden says. "I wanted to be involved. Even now, if I had my choice, I'd rather play every day. Given the chance, I honestly think I could put up some hitting statistics." His preference would be to swing lefthanded, but to safeguard his priceless arm from inside pitches, the Mets require him to bat from the right. Nonetheless, he has cracked three hits in the same game off no less than Los Angeles Rival Fernando Valenzuela. "I'm lucky to have one hit in two years off him," grins Fernando, a grizzled veteran...
Other pitchers have been capable hitters, but none ever twirled a bat more eagerly than Gooden. Once, in a six-inning Little League game, he struck out 16 of 18 batters and hit two home runs. But the homers were what kept him awake all night. (He is prone to delight and insomnia.) "Sometimes in school I'd come in from right field or third base to relieve, and maybe even go back again. That was the best." Before Floyd and Dwight could be seniors together at Hillsborough, Youmans moved with his family to California. For Gooden, the mound felt...