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Mets great Dwight Gooden talks autographs, collecting baseball cards and his MLB idols
A teenage pitching phenom named Dwight Gooden exploded onto the scene with the New York Mets in 1984 and was on the fast track to Cooperstown after a dominating five-year start to his career that stacks up with any in the history of the sport.
As a 19-year-old rookie, Gooden won 17 games and struck out 276 batters, breaking Herb Score’s 29-year-old rookie record for strikeouts.
Doc won 194 games during his 16-year big-league career. More than half of those wins came before his 25th birthday. Nicknamed “Dr. K,” Gooden struck out nearly 2,300 batters and finished his stellar career with an 3.51 ERA.
Those borderline Hall of Fame numbers don’t begin to tell the story of how absolutely dominant Gooden was during his first five seasons with the Mets. Gooden was a four-time All Star, two-time World Series champion, 1984 NL Rookie of the Year and 1985 NL Cy Young Award winner.
His magical 1985 season will go down as one of the greatest ever by a pitcher. He captured the pitching Triple Crown, leading MLB in wins (24), ERA (1.53) and strikeouts (268). Gooden was the runaway winner of the NL Cy Young Award that season.
The long, lanky phenom fired a seemingly unhittable fastball that was coupled with a filthy curveball that is ranked as one of the greatest 12-6 knee-benders of all time.
Gooden spent a decade with the Mets before signing in 1996 with the Yankees, where he threw his first career no-hitter against the Mariners and helped the Yankees to a World Series title.
Off-field issues and injuries derailed what would have been a surefire Hall of Fame career.
In this exclusive interview with Sports Collectors Digest, the Mets all-time great talks about seeing himself on a trading card for the first time, the importance of giving fans a nice autograph, his admiration for Pete Rose, his most memorable fans and much more.
You were an absolute megastar during your career and you are still a star to this day. What has been the most memorable fan you’ve met over the course of your career?
I met this kid, well he was a kid then, my rookie year in Houston. He would always be outside of the hotel getting autographs. Then he would get into the ballpark. He would be in the Astro Dome. We stayed friends. Now he is 40-something years old. He has a family of his own. He still lives in the Houston area. We text. We call each other once a week. Whenever I am in Houston we meet up for dinner. We have maintained our friendship over all these years, from my rookie year until now.
Do you remember the first time a fan asked you for your autograph?
It was in Kingsport, Tennessee. It was 1982 when I got drafted. It was a players meet the fans thing at the local mall. Signing an autograph for the first time was unreal. It’s something you dream of. You don’t think you will ever actually be doing it. It was surreal. I called my parents afterward and told them ‘You won’t believe it. Someone asked for my autograph today.’
You have such a great signature. How much pride do you take in that signature and making a fan’s day just by signing your name?
As you get older you understand the importance of it. Sometimes you see other player’s signatures and you can’t even tell who it is. Especially when people are paying money for it, you want them to be able to enjoy it. As I got older, toward the end of my career, I started making sure I got even neater writing it.
Your XRCs came out in 1984 Fleer Update and Topps traded. Your RCs came out the next year as you appeared in 1985 Donruss, Fleer and Topps, among others. What was it like to see yourself on a trading card for the first time?
The first baseball card I saw of myself was in Kingsport, Tennessee during my rookie year. It was a black-and-white card. They gave us 100 cards each. I remember putting a hole in one of the cards and hanging it on my rearview mirror in my car. That was my first card. It wasn’t a Topps or Donruss. That is when you feel like you really made it.
As a kid, you buy packs of cards and collect cards. You trade with friends or put them in your bike spokes. When you see your own picture on a card that is when you feel like you really made it. I would just pass them out to everyone in the neighborhood. When I got to the majors a few years later and you start getting the Topps and Donurss cards in Spring Training, I remember giving them out to all of my neighbors. It was a really cool thing. Even now, they come out with different cards. It’s cool to see the new cards that you haven’t seen before.
You have 3,742 different cards that have been produced over the years. Do you have a favorite card of yourself?
The other year Topps did the Project 2020 and they had different artists paint the cards. Because of Covid, they did a card of me wearing a mask. That became my all-time favorite. It was pretty cool.
The 1984 NL Rookie of the Year, 1985 National League Cy Young Award winner, four-time All-Star, two-time World Series Champion, a New York Mets Hall of Famer, the list of your accomplishment goes on and on. Do you have any of that special memorabilia that you held on to over the years?
It’s funny you ask that. I’m just starting to get all of my stuff now. My mom passed away about four years ago. She turned one of the bedrooms into a shrine were she had all of my Little League stuff, my high school stuff and all my awards and trophies, including my Cy Young Awards, from Little League to my professional career. Now I have all my stuff. I live in New York now. I am trying to finish my basement and put everything down there so when my friends and family come over they can see everything right there.
As a young baseball player growing up, what ball players inspired you?
Pete Rose was my guy. Pete and Nolan Ryan were my two guys. Pete Rose was the first autograph I ever got. Growing up in Tampa in the ‘60s and ’70s, the Cincinnati Reds had Spring Training in Tampa. My dad took me to a lot of the Spring Training games. I was nine or 10 years old. We were leaving a game early and Pete was leaving the game early. I got an autograph and took a picture with him. My dad had one of those Polaroid instant cameras where you snap the picture and the picture comes right out. I got the picture with Pete and he signed a piece of paper.
Fast forward ten years to 1984. I make the team. We open up in Cincinnati. Pete comes over. Pete doesn’t know I’m that same kid. He’s congratulating me on making it to the majors and tells me he’s been following my career. I told him the story when I got his autograph. He didn’t remember. Later that summer when they came to New York to play I had my dad bring the picture and Pete signed it.
If you could go back in time and swap jerseys with an opponent after a game who would you ask to swap with and why?
Nolan Ryan was my favorite pitcher as a kid. He was my guy. If I could have stopped him after our Game 5 in the playoffs in 1986, where I pitched against Nolan, he went nine innings and I went 10 innings, we both got no-decisions. That would have been pretty awesome to swap jerseys with him on the mound after the game.
