April 19, 1984: The New York Mets host the Montreal Expos at Shea Stadium. Dwight Gooden, a 19-year-old righthanded pitcher from Tampa, makes his 3rd major league appearance and start, his 1st at home. The temperature was in the 40s, and there was drizzling rain throughout the day, including during the game. The Mets were coming off their 7th straight lousy season. And only 10,705 people showed up.
When the game was over, Gooden had pitched 5 innings, allowing 4 runs on 5 hits and 4 walks, and was not the pitcher of record. His career stats at this point: 1-1, an ERA of 4.73, a WHIP of 1.800 -- and 16 strikeouts, or 10.8 per 9 innings.
The strikeout average aside, he has not produced good results yet. But, on that chilly, drizzly night in Flushing Meadow-Corona Park in Queens, a legend was born. Dennis Scalzitti and Bob Belle, two teenagers from North Haledon, Passaic County, New Jersey, were in Section 44, hard near the left-field pole, 2 fans among 10,705, a size explained by the facts at hand: It was a cold Thursday night, with the Mets playing a team with whom, despite being a Divisional opponent, they had little rivalry; and with Gooden having made just 2 big-league starts, with an ERA of 7.56.
But, interviewed about it in 2020 by Mike Vaccaro of the New York Post, Scalzitti said, "We knew we had this kid, this phenom, on the way. We knew he'd struck out 300 in Lynchburg the year before, and even though that was Class-A ball, you could just sense he was bringing something special with him when he joined the Mets."
Vaccaro wrote:
The kids came anyway. They brought a few friends with them -- a pile of white poster boards, with a large "K" in red paint on each one. They would use seven of them that night, Gooden pitching just five innings, allowing four unearned runs and earning a no-decision in a 7-6 Mets win over the Expos.
They were a curious sight.
Across the next three summers, however, they would become something else: an anchor of New York’s sporting pop culture, a magnet for camera lenses and fellow Mets fans. The Mets' marketing department recognized quickly how much a part of Gooden's aura they were, right behind his rising 96 mph heater and his nose-to-knees curve. They actually offered better seats for a time.
Scalzitti and Belle preferred Section 44. That was their corner of heaven. That was the K Korner.
There are 27 outs in a baseball game. At that point, the major league record for strikeouts in a game was 21; in a game going the regulation 9 innings, 19. Still, every game, they brought 27 placards. On 2 occasions, they would hang 16. In other words, Gooden didn't get all that close to the record -- which Steve Carlton had done against the Mets in 1969 but still lost, Tom Seaver of the Mets had tied in 1970, and Roger Clemens would break in 1986 -- but he seemed to have a high total every night, with that fastball, and a curveball so good that, instead of the traditional nickname of "Uncle Charlie," it was called "Lord Charles."
In 1984, he broke the major league rookie record by striking out 276 batters, going 17-9 with a 2.60 ERA and a 1.073 WHIP, being selected to start the All-Star Game for the National League, and winning its Rookie of the Year award. The Mets, who had finished at or near the bottom of the NL Eastern Division every year from 1977 to 1983, surged to 2nd place, 6 1/2 games behind the Chicago Cubs.
In 1985, Gooden, now nicknamed "Doctor K," eventually shortened to just "Doc," he again led the majors with 268 K's, going 24-4, with a 1.53 ERA and an 0.965 WHIP. He won the Cy Young Award, and the Mets finished 3 games behind the St. Louis Cardinals.
Gooden was about to turn 21 years old, and he had already put up as good a 2 years as any pitcher had in the post-1920 Lively Ball Era. The sky seemed to be the limit. The whole time, Scalzitti and Belle were affixing K placards to the railing with masking tape. Met fans began to believe they invented standing up and clapping when a pitcher got 2 strikes, even though it was Yankee fans who had done that for Ron Guidry in 1978.
They even came up with variations. For Sid Fernandez, it was the letter S: Eight strikeouts would read "SSSSSSSSID." When David Cone came up in 1987, they alternated between ice cream cones and traffic cones. It would have been difficult to come up with something for Ron Darling, although I suppose that, instead of finding a representation of "darling," they could have used pictures of the President at the time, Ronald Reagan.
In 1985, Gooden made 18 starts at Shea Stadium. The average attendance for those starts was 40,016, at a time when NL attendance was strictly listed by turnstile count, not ticket sales. Met attendance was good, anyway, since they were in a Pennant race. But, in their home games not started by Gooden, the average was 32,401. In other words, Gooden was good for an additional 7,600 fans per night.
Vaccaro wrote:
Scalzitti understands better than anyone how lucky they were to exist in a pre-social media world. After a while, there would have been blowback, and fake Twitter accounts, and the very thing that made them popular -- their sheer visibility -- would've bitten them, and badly.
But that stuff didn't exist then, so mostly what Scalzitti remembers is an unaffected, unbridled innocence. The newspaper and TV folks would occasionally visit. They got to meet Gooden on the field. One of their K cards found a home in Cooperstown.
Scalzitti still remembers the first time he emerged through the Lincoln Tunnel, looked up and saw the enormous Gooden Nike ad -- 95 feet high, 42 feet wide -- that covered the side of the Holland Hotel building at 351 W. 42nd Street for almost 10 years, until a similar mural of Charles Oakley replaced it. "You don't easily forget a thing like that," he says.
The Mets won the World Series in 1986. And yet, Gooden wasn't spectacular that season: He was 17-6, 200 K's, 2.84, 1.108. A good season, but hardly suggesting the ace on a World Champion. He didn't show up for the World Series parade, because he was on the cocaine equivalent of a hangover. Just before the start of the 1987 season, he went to drug rehab. It didn't take.
At the ages of 19 and 20, Dwight Gooden was the best pitcher on the planet. From 21 to 28, he was a very good pitcher, battling substance abuse (having added alcoholism to the mix) and a shoulder injury (so, as with his teammate and friend Darryl Strawberry, it wasn't just the drugs). At 29, he was busted for cocaine again, suspended for a year, and released by the Mets. Not only would there be no Hall of Fame for him, but it looked like his career was over.
I remember being on a bus heading into Port Authority Bus Terminal, and instead of the ever-intimidating giant mural of Gooden, there was the beginning of a new mural, showing Charles Oakley Number 34 Knicks jersey, but nothing else. When I made my next trip into the City, the mural was complete, showing Oakley in full. It was, literally, a cover-up.
In 1996, Yankee owner George Steinbrenner, always a sucker for a redemption story and having already given one to Strawberry, signed Gooden. He pitched a no-hitter, and helped the Yankees win the World Series. That really pissed Met fans off.
But Scalzitti, who now runs a DJ business in North Haledon, said, "Those memories have lasted a lifetime for me. It was such an incredible time."
UPDATE: In 2023, the Mets converted the McFadden's location at Citi Field, closed since the chain went out of business, into "The K Korner." In hindsight, naming a bar after a feature of Dwight Gooden, a recovering alcoholic, is in bad taste, yet another in a long line of dumb decisions made by the Met organization.
*
April 19, 1984 was a Thursday. These 7 other Major League Baseball games were played that day:
* The Texas Rangers beat the Boston Red Sox, 7-4 at Fenway Park in Boston. The Rangers scored 3 runs in the 9th inning to win it. Tony Armas Sr. hit 2 home runs. Wade Boggs went 2-for-3 with a walk and an RBI.
* The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Baltimore Orioles, 2-1 at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto. Jim Clancy out pitched Scott McGregor. Garth Iorg went 4-for-4 with both Blue Jay RBIs. Eddie Murray went 1-for-4. Cal Ripken Jr. went 0-for-3 with a walk.
* The Kansas City Royals beat the Detroit Tigers, 5-2 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. George Brett did not play. This turned out to be a preview of the American League Championship Series, but the Tigers won that.
* The Chicago Cubs beat their arch-rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals, 6-1 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.
* The Chicago White Sox beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 3-1 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Robin Yount went 1-for-4. Paul Molitor was injured and did not play.
* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the San Diego Padres, 4-0 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Alejandro Peña pitched a 5-hit shutout. Steve Sax and Greg Brock hit home runs. Tony Gwynn got 2 of the 5 hits, and was hit by a pitch.
* And the San Francisco Giants beat the Cincinnati Reds, 3-1 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.
The NFL was out of season. The United States Football League (USFL) was in the 2nd of its 3 seasons, but no games were scheduled for this day. The Stanley Cup Playoffs were in progress, but no games were scheduled. There were 5 games played in the NBA Playoffs:
* The New York Knicks lost to the Detroit Pistons, 113-105 at the Silverdome in the Detroit suburb of Pontiac, Michigan. Bill Laimbeer led the Pistons with 31 points. Bernard King scored 46 points in defeat.
* The Boston Celtics beat the Washington Bullets, 88-85 at the Boston Garden.
* The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Atlanta Hawks, 101-87 at the Milwaukee Exposition and Convention Center Arena,
a.k.a. The MECCA (now the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena).
* The Seattle SuperSonics beat the Dallas Mavericks, 95-92 at the Reunion Arena in Dallas.
* And the Denver Nuggets beat their geographical rivals, the Utah Jazz, 132-116 at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City, Utah. Dan Issel scored 33 points.
No comments:
Post a Comment