Doc’s Remedy: Just Say No-No : Gooden Dazzles Mariners

NEW YORK — Dwight Gooden reached back with everything he had, fired and delivered a lesson on believing. He showed why he never stopped believing in himself and justified the Yankees’ trust in him, and at the end, he jumped off the mound with arms raised. It was a leap of faith.

Gooden pitched a no-hitter.

At 31, after all kinds of trouble and about 10 years after he really stopped being a great pitcher, Gooden couldn’t simply stand and watch the end of his 2-0 win over the Seattle Mariners at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday night. He bounced up and down when Paul Sorrento popped the ball to shortstop Derek Jeter. Before he knew it, he was being carried off the field by his teammates, gesturing to the fans and thinking . . .

“I just kept thinking about where I was a year and a half ago, a situation where I didn’t know if I was going to pitch again,” said Gooden, who was suspended for nearly a year and a half for violating the terms of his aftercare for drug abuse.

He was thinking, too, about getting out of a jam and winning the game. Runners were on second and third because he had walked two and thrown a wild pitch as the crowd of 31,025 (including nearly 11,000 who redeemed vouchers from snow-encrusted opening day) produced a tumultuous roar. Gooden waved. “I was kind of acknowledging the fans, saying thanks for all the support,” he said.

And he was thinking about his father, Dan, in a hospital near the family’s St. Petersburg home, getting ready for open-heart surgery today. “I’m flying down there,” he said, adding that his new, sober life didn’t allow him much celebrating. “Just another day. I just want to make sure my father is OK [today].”

Gooden threw the ninth no-hitter in Yankee history (counting Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series), and the first since Jim Abbott no-hit the Indians at Yankee Stadium on Sept. 4, 1993. It was the second no-hitter in the majors this season. Al Leiter had the first Saturday in the Florida Marlins’ 11-0 victory over the Colorado Rockies.

Gooden was helped by a stellar play from center fielder Gerald Williams in the first inning, turning one way, then another to track down Alex Rodriguez’s deep fly, and turning it into a double play.

“Spectacular,” Manager Joe Torre said. “That was as good a catch as I remember seeing a center fielder make under the circumstances.” Added Williams, a replacement for injured starter Bernie Williams: “I just got back to a spot where I could try to jump and make the catch. The ball moved that sharply, I was trying to get it to my glove side.”

Gooden (2-3) had little trouble most of the game, with a darting fastball, precise slider and vexing curve. Then came the ninth, when the electricity and noise swelled with each of his 24 pitches. He walked Rodriguez, retired Ken Griffey Jr. (whom he had struck out twice on fastballs, and who interrupted Gooden’s postgame news conference with a hug) on a slow roller to first that required former Mariner Tino Martinez to crawl to the bag.

Edgar Martinez walked and both runners moved up on a wild pitch. Gooden was visited by pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre, an old friend from their time together with the Mets and possibly Gooden’s biggest booster. Stottlemyre told him: “If something’s going to happen, make it a good pitch.”

Gooden struck out Jay Buhner on a 2-and-2 fastball, then ran the count to 2-and-1 on Sorrento. Before he knew it, the public-address system was spilling out the song, “Simply the Best.”

It was quite a departure from spring training and the early season, when Gooden’s performances were awful. Torre and Stottlemyre never gave up on him, but they had reason to. The club that had signed Gooden in October--seemingly more for publicity than anything--did lose trust enough to banish him to the bullpen, but he regained his place in the rotation after David Cone’s circulatory problem.

“I never lost confidence in my ability,” Gooden said, “but I couldn’t imagine this.”

Anyone could have imagined it 11 or 12 years ago, when Gooden was a phenom for the Mets. That was before his first involvement with drugs, before he had several injuries, before he grew all but irrelevant. The Yankees knew all of that, and they were moved.

“I think this is my best moment in baseball,” catcher Joe Girardi said. “I’ve been to the playoffs, but I think this is better.”

Stottlemyre was alsosatisfied. “We saw a lot of positive things in spring training, even though the results weren’t very good,” he said, adding that it was his job to keep Gooden’s confidence up. “That was the only hard part.”