Dwight Gooden recalls no-hitter with Yankees in 1996, the last game his father watched him pitch

The iconic image from Dwight Gooden’s no-hitter for the Yankees — which he threw 30 years ago against the Mariners on May 14, 1996, at Yankee Stadium — is Gooden being carried off the field on the shoulders of his teammates, his arms raised in triumph.

What was going through Doc’s mind?

Not much.

Just everything.

Everything he had been through to that point as a 31-year-old former Mets phenom who had been suspended from baseball for the entire 1995 season because of drugs, who had signed with the Yankees as a George Steinbrenner reclamation project, and who wasn’t even sure he should pitch that Tuesday night because his father, Dan, was in a Tampa-area hospital room awaiting open-heart surgery.

“I remember the guys carrying me off the field,” Gooden told Newsday in a recent telephone interview. “All I can think about is being suspended, being back, doing that at Yankee Stadium, all the history. I remember thinking about all of it. ‘Is my dad going to be OK?’ My dad never made it out of the hospital after the surgery. But the last game he saw me pitch was a no-hitter.”

Gooden’s feat came before David Wells threw a perfect game in 1998 and David Cone threw a perfect game in 1999 and before it seemed as if no-hitters or perfect games had become a Yankees fan’s birthright.

The Yankees also hadn’t won a World Series since 1978. Joe Torre was in his first season as a manager. Derek Jeter — who caught the last out of the no-hitter on a pop-up by Paul Sorrento — was in his rookie season.

For Gooden, nothing in 1996 came easy. After his first three starts as a Yankee, he had an 11.48 ERA. It looked as if Steinbrenner’s second mission of ex-Mets mercy (The Boss had signed Darryl Strawberry the year before) was going to be a bust.

But Gooden’s three starts before May 14 were more than solid. He wasn’t the flamethrowing Dr. K of his Mets youth, but he had lowered his ERA to 5.67.

“He still had a really good breaking ball,” Joe Girardi, Gooden’s catcher for the no-hitter who is now a YES Network analyst, told Newsday. “He didn't have the velocity that he had when he was with the Mets. It was probably 91-92 [miles per hour], but he had a really good curveball. He had a really good slider. And he really knew how to compete.”

Dwight Gooden's no-hitter in 1996: Newsday

To compete against a Seattle lineup that featured future Hall of Famers Ken Griffey Jr. and Edgar Martinez and Hall of Fame talent Alex Rodriguez, Gooden had to be able to block out any distractions.

The first was deciding whether to pitch or whether to get on a plane to Florida.

Gooden had already bought the ticket.

“That day, I was supposed to actually fly home to be with him,” he said. “That morning, I thought, ‘You know what? I think my dad would want me to pitch.’ So I called Joe Torre. I told him I was coming in to pitch.

“To throw a no-hitter that day was very special. I remember taking a ball home from the game. I didn’t sleep that night, obviously thinking about my dad, the excitement from the no-hitter. When I got there, he had to have the surgery. He was on life support. And he never made it home.”

The no-hitter and the Yankees’ 2-0 victory turned on two innings: The first, when Gerald Williams (starting in centerfield in place of Bernie Williams) made a spectacular twisting catch on a drive hit by Rodriguez and turned it into a double play; and the ninth, when Rodriguez and Martinez walked (Gooden walked six and struck out five) and both runners moved up on a two-out wild pitch.

The crowd of 31,025, which included 11,000 who had redeemed vouchers given out by Steinbrenner after the Yankees played in the snow on Opening Day, of course wanted to see the Yankees’ first no-hitter since Jim Abbott in 1993.

But it was only 2-0 and the tying runs were in scoring position. It wasn’t just the no-hitter that was in jeopardy.

“I remember [pitching coach] Mel Stottlemyre coming out to the mound, asking me how did I feel?” Gooden said. “I said, ‘It don't matter. I'm not coming out’ because everything that I had been through and then to get to that point, you got to go for it.”

Gooden’s 134th and final pitch, he said, “was a hanging breaking ball. Basically sitting on a tee. It's one of those where you throw it, you're uh-oh, and it just hangs. But he popped it up. It seemed like the ball was in the air forever. I remember holding my arms up, jumping up and down even before Jeter called for the ball.”

Girardi, who also caught Cone’s perfect game, said of Gooden’s feat: “It wasn't easy. I don't think you would say any no-hitter’s easy, but he threw a ton of pitches, he had a number of walks and he faced the tough Seattle lineup. But I think what we remember the most is what he was going through at the time with his father. Nice present to take his dad: a no-hitter ball.”