Forty years after astonishing the New York fans with the power of his pitches, Dwight Gooden will return to the Mets park today to be honored with the retirement of the uniform number 16 that he wore with that club throughout eleven of his 16 seasons in the Major Leagues.
In a ceremony prior to the game against the Kansas City Royals at Citi Field, Gooden will become the ninth player in the history of the franchise that has been in operation for 62 years (1962) whose number is immortalized, along with Casey Stengel (37/ 1965), Gil Hodges (14/1973), Tom Seaver (41/1988), Jackie Robinson (42/1997), Mike Piazza (31/2016), Jerry Koosman (36/2021), Keith Hernandez (17/2022) and (Willie Mays 24/2022).
Just 19 years old and with 49 minor league games since turning professional in 1982, Gooden earned a spot on the Mets’ big team at the end of spring training in 1984, when manager Davey Johnson assigned him the fourth shift of the starting rotation.
On Saturday, April 7, 1984, he received the opportunity to start against the Astros at the Houston Astrodome. In five innings, with 82 pitches, he allowed five hits, scored a run, walked twice and struck out five, in the game that the visiting New Yorkers won with a score of 3-2.
From then on he spent eleven years with the Mets. He was Rookie of the Year in 1984, a season in which he set a rookie record of 276 strikeouts. The following year he won the MLB Pitching Triple Crown with 24 wins, 268 strikeouts and 153 ERA and became the youngest pitcher to win the Cy Young trophy.
In the mid-eighties he began to experience ups and downs in his career due to substance abuse such as alcohol and drugs.
Gooden is among the best pitchers in Mets history, second in wins (157) and strikeouts (1,875) and third in innings (2,169.2), complete games, games started (303) and quality starts (67). He also pitched for the Yankees, Indians, Astros and Rays. His lifetime record was 194-112 in 430 games between 1984 and 2000.
Padrón Panza’s pupil failed with the prospectus
In the summer of 1983, while he was making his usual tour of different cities in the United States evaluating candidates with the option to put together the import of his baseball team, Pedro Padrón Panza, owner of the Tiburones de La Guaira, contacted his friend Lou Gorman , who since he worked with the Baltimore Orioles in the mid-sixties recommended players to him.
On this occasion, Gorman worked as talent development manager for the New York Mets and showed great interest in Padrón Panza taking young Dwight Gooden to Venezuela, whose main credential in the middle of his third minor league campaign was that for that At that time, around the beginning of August, he already exceeded 200 strikeouts in more than 150 innings.
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Considering that it was too “green,” Padrón Panza discarded Gorman’s recommendation. It was one of the few mistakes that the sharks’ boss made throughout his successful management. He preferred that Dominican strategist Oswaldo Virgil manage the rotation with Mike Witt, Bryan Clark, Phill Huffman, James Lewis and Panamanian Juan Berenguer. Tiburones qualified in second place with a 38-26 record in the playoffs and lost the semifinal in six games to Cardenales de Lara.
Probably, if they had hired the young Dwight Gooden, they could have gone to the final against Águilas del Zulia. Who knows.
2024-04-14 21:28:14
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