Forty years after he had to sneak into the Astrodome as a teenager to make his first start in the big leagues for the Mets, a year before he was as dominating and dazzling as any right-handed pitcher you will ever see in your life, Dwight Gooden will be young again on Sunday at Citi Field when his No. 16 is finally retired.
It will happen in the year when he will somehow — amazingly — turn 60, after the long and hard road that brought him to a day like this, a moment like this, one that will be filled with memory and also regret.
“So much of this doesn’t seem real,” he told me the other day. “You know what really doesn’t seem real? That I’m going to be 60. I mean, are you kidding me?”
He has still made it here, after all the days and nights when he lit up old Shea Stadium, and jump-started The K Korner all over again, and seemed perfectly capable of throwing fastballs past the world. After that, of course, because of the power of his addictions and his own weaknesses, he famously tried to throw it all away.
But on Sunday, when people should come out to see him at Citi Field the way they used to come to see him at old Shea, he won’t just be young again. He will be a Met again, one of the most important they ever had, despite all the heartbreak later.
I asked him what the best of it was for him in 1985, the year before his Mets won the World Series, when he was 24-4 and every start felt like a compelling as the ones we would get much later when Aaron Judge was trying to break home run records in September of 2022.
“You know what I remember the best, out of everything?” he said. “I remember what Shea would sound like when I got to two strikes, when they’d get up and ask me for another strikeout.”
He laughed and said, “Or another K, I guess I should say.”
It wasn’t just the strikeouts that year. It was all of it, a stat line that even now gives off a beam of light. The earned run average of 1.53. The 16 complete games, a real good number, because it was his. And eight shutouts. This was what Tom Seaver was like when he was young. Doc was that good. And, truly, you didn’t want to miss a start, even if you were just watching on television, because you were afraid that would be the game when he would pitch the no-hitter he would, ironically, later pitch for the Yankees.
That would be the night when he struck out 20.
“I’ve got grandkids now,” he said. “I’ve got two great grandkids, if you can believe it. On Sunday, I want my grandkids to experience, even for one day, what I did for a living once.
“But it’s more than that for me. After I cut ties with the Mets in ’94, I felt like I never got the chance to say goodbye to the fans who had been such a big part of my success, the ones who didn’t just cheer me like they did, but stayed with me through all my struggles. This is my chance on Sunday to let them know how thankful I still am to them, and also how sorry I am that I let them down.”
He paused and said, “I want this to be a celebration. To me, this is about way more than just a number.”
It will be. If you were around the city in the middle ’80s, you know it almost has to be, despite what happened to Gooden and the Mets later on.
“Listen, I know what I did off the field,” he said. “I know some people are going to hold that against me forever, all the things I did to myself, missing the World Series parade and rehab and all the rest of it. And that’s their right. Nobody knows better than I did how much I screwed up. But I also never thought I should get a life sentence because of my past.”
He was still just 20 in 1985. There have been other young pitchers with his kind of arm and his kind of talent and his kind of fastball. No one was ever better at that age than Gooden was. We were sure that he was going to the Hall of Fame. But at least he has made it to this day, what will hopefully be a day in the sun across the parking lot from where Shea Stadium once stood.
“When you’re playing,” he said, “you never really understand what you’re doing. But now I’ve been removed from the game for twenty-four years. I’m able to look back at what I did and, even more, how much it meant to people. That’s why I’m determined on Sunday to enjoy the moment. I keep trying to imagine what it’s going to be like, play a tape inside my head. But I can’t visualize it, no matter how hard I try. It’s just gonna have to be like what it was like when I took the mound. I’m just gonna let it happen.”
Dwight Gooden on what it means to have his No. 16 retired and to finally thank Mets fans
There really should be a big crowd on Sunday at Citi Field. When Dwight Gooden, pushing 60 now, is on the field, the ones in the stands can feel in the spring of 2024 as if it is the summer of 1985 again, when he was young and made them feel even younger. The day won’t be about the mistakes he made and what he did to himself and what absolutely should have been a Hall of Fame career. This is about how much he mattered, on a team that mattered.
“I just want to hear that sound again,” Dwight Gooden said.
