Five innings. Three hits. One run, earned. Two walks. Five strikeouts.
And one dustup with a security guard.
Dwight Gooden’s major league debut, which occurred 36 years ago Tuesday at the (still standing!) Astrodome, didn’t fully prepare us for what the 19-year-old would bring to baseball in both that 1984 season and, even more so, 1985. He pitched well enough to beat the Astros, 3-2, yet he didn’t dominate them, as he would start to do to opponents shortly after with regularity.
Instead, this much-hyped arrival wound up serving as a soft opening for the greatness of the man who would come to be known as Dr. K, or just Doc. And the behind-the-scenes story of that day underlined how, despite his obvious athletic prowess, Gooden always carried himself with a likeable, underdog quality, one that compels us to root for him, still, against his demons.
“I was so nervous, so anxious that day,” Gooden recalled in a recent telephone interview. “I had lunch with my parents at the hotel restaurant, and then the bus wasn’t leaving until 5 o’clock. At 3 o’clock, I remember asking the hotel concierge, ‘How far is the Astrodome? How can I get there?’ It was about three miles away. I actually walked to the Astrodome.
“There was an 8-foot fence [around the ballpark]. I didn’t know how to get in, so I climbed the fence. A security guard saw me and said, ‘What are you doing, son?’ ”
Thankfully for Gooden, Mets trainer Steve Garland already was working in the visitors’ clubhouse and vouched for the identity of that night’s starting pitcher.
“Pitching in your first start, and you get busted by a security guard,” Gooden said, laughing. “I’ve never been so nervous in my life.”
After the Mets didn’t score off Astros starter Bob Knepper in the top of the first, Gooden began his major league career by inducing Houston’s first two batters, Bill Doran and Terry Puhl, to ground out to his second baseman and that night’s leadoff hitter, Ron Gardenhire.
“It was fun to stand back there and watch him throw, that’s for sure,” Gardenhire said last week.
Gardenhire first saw Gooden pitch in the fall of 1983, when the Mets promoted the right-hander from Single-A Lynchburg all the way to Triple-A Tidewater to help Davey Johnson’s Tides win the Triple-A World Series. Hence Gardenhire wasn’t surprised when Johnson, having been promoted to Mets manager, pushed for the young Gooden to join his club.
“He was a big, tall kid with a long arm, and he could really wing it,” Gardenhire said. “He was the nicest kid, the greatest personality in the world, but on the mound, he was fierce. Why wouldn’t you be if you were him?”
Gooden recalled the third out of that first inning, a strikeout of Dickie Thon for his first big-league K, as a turning point. “I was able to relax after that,” he said.
Interestingly, Mets reliever Dick Tidrow, who later helped the Giants win three World Series as a front-office executive, nearly blew the 3-1 lead he inherited, only to see Mets left fielder George Foster keep it at 3-2 by throwing out Jose Cruz at home in the sixth inning.
In his next start, as Gooden noted, he suffered his first loss, 11-2 to the Cubs at Wrigley Field.
“Just that fast, I learned how the game will humble you,” he said.
By the end of the season, though, he had compiled a 2.60 ERA and 276 strikeouts in his 218 innings, and that served as a mere appetizer for his historic 1985 (a 1.53 ERA and 268 strikeouts in 276 innings).
His roller-coaster ride since then, his drug addiction resulting in many arrests and even time in jail, has been well-documented. We keep cheering Doc on. Especially those of us of a certain age who remember how exciting it was when he took the mound in Houston — even if we didn’t know the adventure he endured that very day.
This week’s Pop Quiz Question came from Harry Sapienza of Minneapolis: In the 2018 film “Green Book,” some characters watch Game 6 of the 1962 World Series. Name the pitcher, a future Hall of Famer, who lost that game.
In the spirit of people turning to Strat-O-Matic baseball during this shutdown, old pal Josh Lewin, whom you remember from his days as Howie Rose’s partner in the Mets broadcast booth as well as a Fox “Game of the Week” guy, is running a podcast, “The Throwback League”, which pits World Series champions, and selected pennant winners, from 1974 through 2006 against each other. My money is on the 1998 Yankees.
Your Pop Quiz answer is Whitey Ford.
If you have a tidbit that connects baseball with popular culture, please send it to me at kdavidoff@nypost.com.