Doc: A Memoir by Dwight Gooden, Ellis Henican Read Free Book Online

the mound. At the start of the season, I was his number five pitcher. When major-league scouts came to check out the Terriers, they weren’t coming to see me.
    But Coach Reed started to notice that every time he’d put me in to pitch, no one seemed to hit the ball. And one afternoon, the coach pulled me aside. “You may have something, kid,” he said.
    That made me feel pretty good.
    It was a lucky break that I got noticed at all. Early in my first season, several scouts came to see my friend Vance Lovelace, who was a senior and had also been on a nice pitching run. But Vance had a couple of rocky innings that day, and Coach Reed pulled him out.
    “Get in there,” the coach said to me.
    As the pro scouts were walking out of the stadium, they must have heard my heat popping in the catcher’s mitt. My dad might have mentioned something too. Whatever first got me noticed, they started paying attention to me. I was winning games, and the local media caught on. By the middle of my junior year season, reporters were writing me up in the papers. Scouts were showing up regularly at my starts. They were even standing behind home plate with radar guns and video cameras. Pretty soon, scouts were calling my house and stopping by the high school, taking me out of class to have me work out for them.
    “Let me see you run a sixty-yard dash,” they’d say.
    “Throw one as hard as you can.”
    “Give me a curve.”
    I felt like I was back in Robles Park, doing sprints and board balances with my dad. And frankly, these scouts didn’t seem to know any more than he did.
    The whole idea of going pro became more real to me when Vance got picked up by the Chicago Cubs in the first round of the 1981 draft. That left me and my pal Floyd Youmans as the star pitchers on the Hillsborough team. But not for long. Coach Reed caught Floyd playing pickup basketball when he was supposed to be at baseball practice and kicked him off the team. Floyd moved to California to live with his dad for senior year and played ball out there.
    That left me. Senior year, I was our best weapon on the mound—pretty much our only weapon. I’d outlasted everyone else. Many weeks, I took the mound three days. One solid start for sure. If we got a lead in that game, I’d stay in at least seven innings. Often, I’d do some mop-up work in the second game of the week. If we were playing another tough team that week, Coach would often have me start a third game, going six or seven innings if I could. That was a crazy lot of pitching for a high school kid, and it wouldn’t be allowed today. But it got me in front of a lot of pro scouts. Our team did wellthat year. We made it to the state tournament. And I was becoming a high school baseball star. I was big man on campus. I got a lot of attention, and I was finally enjoying it. I got my gold tooth that year. And my pitching kept getting better. The University of Miami offered me a baseball scholarship and a free apartment if I wanted to go there after graduation. Mom thought that sounded like a fine idea. I felt like I was on a roll now, and my pitching was getting me there.
    Late on a Monday afternoon, June 7, 1982, my dad tossed me his car keys. Dad drove a 1974 Plymouth Duster, just like I did. But his Duster wasn’t all tricked out like mine. “Go have fun,” he said with a smile. The major-league baseball draft was finally here. My friend Eddie Ganzi and I were heading downtown to the offices of the
Tampa Tribune
to watch my future unfold in real time.
    Yes, I was big news at Hillsborough High School. But this was professional baseball across the whole United States and beyond. Weren’t there guys like me everywhere? My dad didn’t seem worried. “You’ve figured it out so far,” he said. “Just trust all the pieces to fall in place. And tell ol’ Tom I said hello.”
    Tom McEwen was a legendary sportswriter. He knew famous athletes and coaches everywhere. But he was also a true booster for local