Second baseman Wally Backman would storm through the visiting team locker room like a growling dog, yelling that the guys we were playing were “horseshit” or “fucking pussies” who didn’t have a chance against studs like us. Sometimes, he’d look at me and just shake his head.
“You know these fuckers are scared of you, don’t ya?” he’d say about opposing batters. “Your fastball comes in at their belt and ends up near their face. Half the time they’re swinging in self-defense. Use that to your advantage, Doc. Don’t back down from anyone.”
Ever since spring training, Darryl Strawberry had been working on my attitude. Two years older than I was, with way more life experience, Darryl specialized in attitude. “You’re a professional now,” he told me. “So carry yourself like one. Act like you belong here. Walk with your head held high.”
Darryl and I often got compared with each other. But we were very different people. I was Tampa. He was LA. I’d grown up with a doting father. He’d barely known his. What I took as nice and friendly, he saw as naive and vulnerable. He could be a kind mentor one moment and a loose cannon the next, spewing random venom from the corner of the locker room or the back of the plane. Darryl had no problem communicating exactly what was on his mind, even if he wasn’t always 100 percent certain what that might be. Frequently, he’d rip guys apart to reporters, then turn around the next day and quietly apologize. It took me a while to realize that if he was trash-talking other guys behind their backs, he might be doing the same to me.
Darryl and I had a lot in common. But I also had the sense that I might be complicating things for him as I staked out my own place on the team. A year before I’d shown up, he’d been the Mets’ bright, shiny object of 1983, winning Rookie of the Year and crushing National League pitchers with twenty-six home runs. After I turned up, a lot of the talk wasn’t just “Darryl” anymore. It was “Darryl and Doc.” Once in a while it was even “Doc and Darryl” who were going to save the Mets. I don’t think he really liked that.
Some of the older players could see that my confidence still didn’t quite match up to my talent. They made genuine and generous efforts to help. During Mets at bats, first baseman Keith Hernandez would stand at the top of the dugout swearing at the opposing pitcher for some perceived injustice. Then when we were on the field, he was constantly advising me about what pitches to throw. Most of that season, I was throwing to a young catcher, Mike Fitzgerald, who didn’t know the hitters much better than I did. Keith was a computer with a glove. He knew all the National League batters. He didn’t need Ralph Kiner’s TV stats. He had all the hitters’ quirks obsessively cataloged in his head.
“Throw him fastballs down and away,” Keith muttered into his glove as he strolled to the mound the first time I faced the Braves’ six-foot-six power hitter Dale Murphy. “He gets caught chasing that shit. You make a mistake with that, he’s only gonna hit a grounder anyway, if he even makes contact. Then throw him bad curveballs. Make him chase them.”
Keith’s intel was almost always right, as I learned when Dale sent my one breaking ball into the right-field seats.
When I wasn’t pitching, Keith would hunt me down and point out little details I wouldn’t notice on the mound. He demanded that I watch Mike Schmidt, the Phillies’ Hall of Fame third baseman, “every fucking at bat, okay?”
“Take a look at his stance,” Keith said. “When he spreads his legs, he gets extension with his arms. He’s thinking fastball. When he stands more straight up? He’s thinking curve.” Keith’s lessons never stopped.
Mike Torrez was the same way. A veteran player in his last year with the team, Mike had no hint of resentment at us younger guys coming up. “As long as I’m on the team, I’m gonna help you out,” he told me. He was passionate about playing and teaching the game the right way. He often had me sit with him in the dugout. As the games progressed, there would be pop quizzes. He would stop and ask, “Okay, what would you throw in this situation?”
However I answered, Mike would ask, “Why would you do that?”
I felt like I was back in Tampa with my father, analyzing the game of the week. Mike’s advice was ten times more useful than any scouting report. Keith and Mike were extraordinary resources, influencing how I pitched and, more important, how I thought about pitching.
Rusty Staub was just as generous, a real Mets great who still had a passion for baseball and always had time for me. Nearing retirement and mostly being used to pinch-hit, Rusty liked to get to the ballpark early, just like I did. We developed a ritual of going into the clubhouse and playing a card game called Casino. Once I started winning games and Rusty had a pinch-hitting streak, we had no choice but to keep playing. Both of us were too superstitious to stop.
Rusty tried to show me how to handle myself like a pro—on and off the field. His approach was exactly the opposite of Darryl’s. In May, I got shelled by the Astros when they came to New York. Nolan Ryan, one of my real idols, pitched a complete game, and I was gone by the second inning. Before the game was over, I had already showered and dressed. I left the stadium without talking to any of the reporters.
The next day, Rusty pulled me into the trainer’s room. He sat me down and gave me an earful. “You can’t just leave like that,” he said. “You’re in front of your locker when you pitch well. When things don’t go well, you still gotta be in front of your locker. Good, bad, or anything in between, you have to talk to the writers—even when you stink.”
Like me, Rusty came up to the majors at nineteen and had to learn everything on the fly. He played 150 games his first year. It took him a while to become the great hitter he turned into. Truly, he pushed himself there. In me, I think he saw a young and naive ballplayer who could easily get eaten alive.
As a rookie, my salary was still $40,000, which wasn’t bad for a single nineteen-year-old in 1984 who was being comped in all the New York restaurants. But Rusty was making seven or eight times that, and he didn’t mind spending on elaborate meals. He took me to the legendary Chicago steakhouse Ron of Japan on Ontario Street. It was like Benihana, only better. It blew my mind when the chef came right out and started cooking at our table. Rusty ordered two or three dinners, then looked at me.
“Whatever we eat here, stays here,” he said, winking. “It’s nobody’s business.” I knew the team was on him to watch his weight. His secret was safe with me.
There were so many big-league rules to learn. It was Hubie Brooks who decided to share his grand-slam dating advice. Walking off the bus into the hotel in Montreal, Hubie tapped my shoulder and smiled.
“Lemme tell you a little somethin’ about the road, Doc,” he said. “You gotta learn this early, ’cause I don’t want to hear about you getting tangled up in some bullshit.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. We kept walking into the lobby, where a dozen young women seemed to be waiting for us. And it was still early in the day.
“Look around,” he said, his eyes scanning the couches and chairs. “It’s gonna be pretty easy to get laid out here, but it’ll be a little bit tougher to stay out of trouble.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re gonna be going to a lot of cities,” he explained. “You mess around with a gal, you can’t let them think it means anything, right?”
“Sure,” I said, “I hear you.”
“So you pick one, then bang ’em and get ’em out of your room,” he advised. “Politely. Don’t lead them on. Don’t give ’em any souvenirs. Don’t cuddle excessively. God knows what can happen if some chick gets mad at you, hunting you down, claiming she’s pregnant, or making up stories about you.”
“Okay,” I said. But this was all new to me. In the minors, there wasn’t much of a groupie scene. Certainly not out on the road. There weren’t too many women hoping to meet A-ball players from out of town. And we weren’t staying in fancy hotels or unwinding in velvet-rope nightclubs. After games, we often got on the bus and drove to a truck stop for dinner or went straight to the next town.
I couldn’t imagine I’d be needing Hubie’s advice. As a rookie, I was much too shy to be trolling hotel bars for groupies. And I had a girlfriend. Carlene was coming up regularly. For me that first season, a big night of running around was a beer with Keith. But Hubie seemed eager to share.
“Some of the guys have an old reliable in a city,” he went on. “You’ve been with her. She’s cool. You can call her when you’re in town and not expect a headache. Unless, of course, you replace her with a new old reliable, and she finds out.”
Hubie just shook his head at that.
“Then you got fuckin’ problems,” he said.
I said thank you and left it at that.
Throughout April, May, and June, my fame was building in New York. But it was at the 1984 All-Star Game at Candlestick Park in San Francisco where the national media got their first close look at me. For weeks, the New York reporters had been reminding me, “Kid, if you get in the game, you’ll be the youngest ever to play in an All-Star Game.”
I didn’t want to start getting cocky. I’d been in New York just three months. But I got voted onto the team, and I was hoping I’d do something more than warm the bench.
During an interview session with the players, one writer kept asking me: “Are you sure you’re nineteen?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You’re the most mature nineteen-year-old I’ve ever seen. Are you really just nineteen?”
“Yes, sir. I’m sure.”
I heard he called down to the Hillsborough County Health Department to get ahold of my birth certificate.
ABC had Howard Cosell interview me before the game. I was totally in awe of him and his long, complex questions like the ones he used to ask of Muhammad Ali.
“Excuse me, can you repeat that?” I had to ask the legendary broadcaster when he stopped for my answer. I was too busy staring. I hadn’t paid attention to whatever he’d said.
With the All-Star Game, I really felt like I had arrived, arrived somewhere I hadn’t even dared imagine I would be. There were Nolan Ryan and Mike Schmidt, Dave Winfield and Reggie Jackson, George Brett and all the others in the same ballpark. Some of them even complimented me, saying, “I hear you’re tough to hit,” or “You’re off to a great career, keep it up.”
I appreciated the kind words and the attention. But some of it made me feel strange. It wasn’t that I had no faith in my pitching. I knew I could usually bring it on the mound. But people were starting to expect an awful lot from me, maybe even more than I could deliver yet.
I snapped at one sportswriter who called me great. “Don’t use the word ‘great’ around me,” I told him. “You can’t be great until you’ve done it for ten years.”
The National League manager Paul Owens sent me in to pitch the fifth inning of the game. Gary Carter, the sure-footed catcher for the Montreal Expos, caught me that day. With very little fuss, I struck out the side.
After the game was over, Gary came over and tapped my chest. “Man,” he said, “wouldn’t it be great to do this every fifth day?”
I didn’t hesitate a second.
“Hell, yes, it would,” I said.
6
Cy Season
I FINISHED OUT MY ROOKIE year with a nice pile of numbers and a big boost in confidence. “I guess I can play at this level,” I told my dad. At the end of the season, I was 17–9 with 276 strikeouts, the most ever by a rookie pitcher and the most I would ever record in my career. For my efforts, I was voted National League Rookie of the Year. Dad was impressed with the honor but not the trophy. “I thought for sure it would be a great, big, fancy thing,” he told me with a shrug. “That doesn’t look like much at all.” The Mets hung with the Cubs as long as we could, but they won the East before losing in the playoffs to San Diego. Still, we gave the fans a genuine turnaround from 1983 and a reason to be hopeful about 1985.
I liked being in New York and spending time with my teammates. I really did feel like I was living the dream. But as soon as the season ended, I jumped on a plane to Tampa and moved back into the house with my mom and dad. That might sound weird, given the rush of what I’d just been through. But I missed them. Gary was around. Betty and Mercedes came over a lot. Forget all your stereotypes about professional athletes and their high-flying lifestyles. Many nights that fall and winter, the 1984 National League Rookie of the Year was sitting on the edge of his parents’ double bed watching The Cosby Show, The Jeffersons, and Good Times.
I think my folks enjoyed having me around—except for the constant phone calls. Fans, reporters, agents checking my availability, high schools wanting me to talk to their students. That last one seemed strange to me. I was only two years older than the seniors. I didn’t know anything about the world. A modeling agency even called, asking me to model some clothes. And girls were calling day and night, whether I was home or not. My dad got a kick out of that—before he got totally sick of it. “He sleeps this time of night, child!” I heard him say from the bedroom at three o’clock one morning. He offered to install a separate line in my bedroom. I convinced my parents to get an unlisted number.
One of those people calling the house was my new agent, Jim Neader, who was working with the Mets on a new contract for me. Jim told me the money was going to get a whole lot better. Just knowing that, I bought myself a new Mercedes 380 SE to drive in Florida and I sent my mom looking for the new house I’d been promising her since before I was throwing curveballs. She found a nice place on East Elm Street with four bedrooms—one for me—and a fenced-in backyard.
I’d go drinking sometimes with my friends from the neighborhood and Hillsborough High, but nothing remotely wild. I didn’t have any need to prove I was still one of the guys. I hadn’t been gone that long. Everything that was happening to me was so new and exciting, it was like it was happening to all of us. And I couldn’t imagine risking what I hoped was coming next. I wanted to see if my rookie season was just a dream or not.
I was following the off-season news in the Tampa and St. Petersburg papers and talking on the phone with some of my teammates. Heading into the 1985 season, we traded Mike Fitzgerald, Herm Winningham, Hubie Brooks (gosh, who’d advise me about women now?), and Floyd Youmans to Montreal for Gary Carter. I was especially sorry to see Floyd slip away. He had still been on the Lynchburg farm team. But he and I had been playing together since Belmont Heights Little League, and he’d been drafted by the Mets right behind me. Still, after pitching to Gary in the All-Star Game, I knew what a phenomenal piece of the puzzle he could be. He seemed to like my throwing style, and I was certain he would draw the best out of me.
Just before spring training, Jim finalized my new deal, $275,000 plus $200,000 in bonus money. When I got back to New York, I bought an even fancier new Mercedes to drive up there, trading in my pimped-out Camaro Z28 for a silver 500 SEL with tinted windows and flashy rims. I moved into a larger, two-bedroom apartment in Roslyn, Long Island. I bought a nice new gold watch, and for my other wrist, a gold bracelet inlaid with diamonds.
For the first time in my life, I had real money, and I was learning to spend it.
Darryl, who’d been Rookie of the Year in 1983, and his wife, Lisa, came over a lot. When the Mets were at home, my girlfriend Carlene usually came up and stayed with me, although we did have a temporary roommate. It was Lenny Dykstra. Now came my turn to look after a rookie. I’d played with Lenny in Lynchburg and was with him at Mets spring training in 1984. This year, he got called up after the season started. I knew he was talented and completely nuts. I had no problem offering him my spare bedroom until he could land an apartment of his own. When we came back from an early road trip, he asked if his girlfriend, Terri, could stay for a few days.
“Knock yourself out,” I said. I guess Lenny took that literally.
The night Terri arrived, the four of us went out for drinks together. Then, we all headed home. As Carlene and I were settling into bed, we heard a giant racket in the other bedroom. It sounded like people
screaming and maybe lamps being thrown.
“You should go check on them,” Carlene said, nudging me out of bed. “It sounds like they’re killing each other in there.”
I could definitely hear some heavy stuff breaking. I didn’t want the neighbors to call the police. I got up, put my clothes back on, and knocked. It took a minute. Then a sweaty but smiling Lenny opened the bedroom door a crack, looking like he’d just pulled up his jockey shorts.
“Everything okay in there?” I whispered.
“Sorry, dude,” Lenny said. He called everyone dude. “I think I broke your bed. Actually, we broke your bed.” Then he started laughing. “I hope you understand,” he said. “Terri and I haven’t seen each other for a while.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I shrugged. Finally I understood why the fans called Lenny by the nickname “Nails.” I knew he’d bring that same pounding passion onto the field.
Much has been written and said about my wins that season, my various records and awards. But it was the simple joy of playing well that I loved the most. I took the mound. I threw the ball. My fastball kept rising. My curveball got even filthier than it was. People had trouble hitting me. I struck a lot of them out. I had some good fielders behind me. And working the other half of the innings, our hitters put runs on the board. After a so-so 6–3 start, I won and I won and won.
And then I won some more.
In Gary Carter, I had the perfect partner to bring out the fire in me. I was quiet and focused on the pitcher’s mound. He was the Energizer Bunny behind the plate. He was aggressive, and he never shut up. On the days I had my good stuff, he kept demanding more of it. On the days I struggled, he would pop his fist in his glove and yell at me: “Come on, Doc! What the fuck are you doing? You’re better than this!”
He had a single standard, and he always stuck to it. He wanted me to dominate. Every game, every batter, every pitch.
There is no stardom like New York stardom, and I was becoming a real New York star. After that 6–3 start, I began a breathless 18–1 run. It was a mad dash into the hearts of Mets fans, and it really wasn’t even that hard. Even I could see what a hell of a year this was going to be. Fans were eager for my autograph. Kids kept asking for pictures with me. I was raised to be polite and accommodating. I always tried to oblige. Everywhere I went people shook my hand and knew my name.
Doc: A Memoir Page 7