I was a casual Met fan when I was a kid growing up in a New Jersey town shadowed by the Twin Towers and NYC skyline, but in 1984 the Mets called up Dwight Gooden and everything changed.

I think I caught 140 games on the radio or television that year, which was still possible because cable hadn't absorbed local games at that time. WOR channel 9 broadcast games with Fran Healy, Tim McCarver, and Ralph Kiner handling the coverage, and that became The Way to Enjoy Baseball.

In 1985, I was a complete Doc Gooden fan. I caught all his games and probably the other 130 Mets games as well. I knew every statistic, could still tell you the line on him: 1.53 ERA and 24-4. I always mix up his K totals but it was either 276 or 267, some incredible number you use with words like "Koufax" and "Ryan".

1986 was the culmination of my Doc frenzy; thereafter it was merely hope against hope. I missed three games that year, not of my own doing but owed to the fact that I was still in high school and couldn't catch the few day games on the radio. The Mets as a team accomplished everything a fan could wish, but Doc was beginning to show vulnerability. By 1988, Met fans and NY sportswriters all wondered what happened to his arm.

To this day, we still don't know. Tweaking his natural delivery might have been the real downfall; your arm develops along certain lines when your a kid, and if that essential motion is cemented by adulthood, any change will throw it off. It's not a release-point tweak or a grip change, it's about moving that arm through its natural slot at its natural speed.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps it was the cocaine, the speedballs, the alcohol, the lack of focus. We may never know, but I remember computing his stats back in 1985 in geometry class and figuring that he could catch Nolan Ryan in strikeouts, maybe throw three no-hitters, and end up with about 400 wins.

What did I know, anyway.