You love baseball. Tim Kurkjian loves baseball. So while we await its return, every day we’ll provide you with a story or two tied to this date in baseball history.
ON THIS DATE IN 2001, Doc Gooden retired. Dwight Gooden was so good in his prime, “there were times,” he said, “when I’d be on the bench between innings, and I’d be rooting for our guys to make quick outs so I could get back out there and pitch. I wasn’t really rooting against them, you know what I mean.”
Yes, we do. Gooden, as an 18-year-old, was overpowering in dominating Class A ball in 1983.
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“The next spring, [the Mets’ front office] told me they didn’t want me to take him north [make the team] because he wasn’t ready,” said then-Mets manager Davey Johnson. “I told them, ‘That stuff plays anywhere.’ Finally, I convinced them. But they were always telling me to protect him. I said, ‘I’ll protect him. Just let me have him. Please.”’
Gooden’s rookie year, at age 19 in 1984, was a joke: 276 strikeouts in 218 innings. He won the National League Rookie of the Year and finished second in the Cy Young Award voting. His combination of an explosive fastball in the upper 90s and an overhand curveball was breathtaking. In 1985, Gooden had one of the best seasons in baseball history: 24-4, a 1.53 ERA, a WHIP of 0.965, 268 strikeouts and eight shutouts.
“I faced him in ’84, and I caught him in ’85, and I’ve never seen anything like him,” catcher Gary Carter said. “He was … a nightmare.”
Roger Clemens faced Gooden in the 1986 All-Star Game. Clemens, an American League pitcher, had barely taken an at-bat since high school. Naturally, he struck out. The first pitch by Gooden was a fastball that jumped. Clemens, astonished, looked at home plate umpire Bruce Froemming.
“Do I throw that hard?” Clemens asked Froemming.
“Yes, Roger,” Froemming, “you do.”
Clemens said that at-bat against Gooden helped change his thinking about pitching. He had seen Gooden’s stuff, which was the best he’d ever seen, and one at-bat told him that no one could possibly hit that. So Clemens was even more emboldened to throw as hard as possible.
Other baseball notes from March 30
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In 1966, Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale ended their dual holdouts. They signed for a $255,000 for the season: $120,000 for Koufax, $105,000 for Drysdale.
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In 2000, Rickey Henderson joined Ted Williams as the only players to steal a base in four decades.
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In 1956, Jack Lazorko was born. After Greg Maddux, he is the best fielding pitcher I’ve ever seen. He was a hockey goalie in high school. On the mound, it was a kick save — and a beauty.
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In 2019, the Diamondbacks and Dodgers, their pitching staffs ravaged from playing 13 innings the night before, each pitched a position player, catcher John Ryan Murphy for Arizona and catcher Russell Martin for LA. Martin became the first position player to pitch in a nine-inning game that his team won since Andrew Romine the day he played all nine positions in 2017.
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In 1992, the Cubs acquired Sammy Sosa and reliever Ken Patterson from the White Sox for George Bell. Patterson was a geophysics major from Baylor. He spent a lot of time in his career examining the dirt in bullpens. “I can pick up a rock and tell my teammates what kind it is, and no one cares,” Patterson said. “I can tell everyone how the earth looked before the continental drift, and my teammates will say, ‘What are you talking about?”’