If you want to understand just how big Dwight Gooden was in 1985 how he went from Tampa teenager to the most unhittable pitcher on planet Earth you don’t have to watch a highlight reel, or read a stat sheet, or listen to your Mets-fan uncle explain that he “hasn’t been the same since Doc left.”

All you have to do is go back to Sunday, August 18, 1985, when one of the most powerful institutions in American journalism, 60 Minutes, showed up and said: Yep. This kid belongs here.

Remember, 60 Minutes didn’t just cover presidents, wars, and corporate scandals. They were the national mirror — if you landed on that stopwatch-cold-open stage, you weren’t just famous. You were America-famous. And in the summer of ’85, Harry Reasoner delivered a profile of Dwight Gooden that captured something no radar gun or box score ever could: the surreal calm at the center of a baseball hurricane.

He opened with the simplest observation imaginable: “I knew who Dwight Gooden was last spring. This spring he couldn't turn around without finding a camera in his face.” If you were alive then, you remember. If you weren’t, that single line tells the whole story. Gooden wasn’t just a pitcher he was a national event disguised in a Mets uniform.

Spring training became Woodstock with palm trees. Reasoner noted, “The Mets attracted the biggest crowds they've ever had for spring training this year, and Dwight was the man they came to see.” Kids flocked to him like he was the world’s first 20-year-old superhero. One little boy told him, “My dad told me he'll take me and see you guys so I can get some baseball autographs.” Gooden, impossibly gracious, did the Gooden thing: “Okay, what's your name? Joey. Okay, come there, tell me your name, I'll give you a ball, okay?”

And all this was happening because of one very specific moment the year before.

Reasoner doing his best Warner Wolf went to the video tape of September 12, 1984 — the night Ralph Kiner hollered, “The record! Dwight Gooden has set a new Major League record for strikeouts by a rookie pitcher…” and Shea Stadium nearly levitated.

Reasoner added the most Gooden-esque detail ever committed to television: “The only one in Shea that night who wasn't excited was the 19-year-old kid on the mound. He seemed to be saying, where's the next batter?”

That was Gooden. History happening around him, and he was bored because the inning wasn’t over.

He struck out 246 batters as a teenager — then, as Reasoner put it, “just as calmly, Dwight went on to strike out 30 more.”

One of the best portions of the segment dives into Casa Gooden in Tampa — mom Ella, dad Dan, and the son who still called home like a freshman away at college. Reasoner delivered it exactly as it happened: “He was young enough and smart enough to call home after every game.”Dad chimed in: “He'll call me after every game, win or lose.”Mom added the critique sessions: “He shouldn't have done this, he should have done that.”

The Goodens were universally stunned by Doc’s fame. Reasoner asked, “Has it turned his head?”

Ella answered: “No, he's still calm and cool. Nothing excites him.”

Dan confirmed: “No, he still acts the same. Just eats more.”

And yes — Gooden bought a Mercedes. Reasoner didn’t judge him. He just delivered the perfectly deadpan one-liner:

“You would, too, if you made $40,000 the summer you were 19.”

Inside the Mets clubhouse, Gooden’s nickname — as Darryl Strawberry gleefully told Reasoner — was, “Knucklehead. Oh, yeah, he's most definitely Knucklehead.” Straw added the crucial reminder: “The locker room's not going to let him get too self-important.”

Davey Johnson offered the managerial version: “He's very well-adjusted… He's the least of my worries. He's my security blanket.”

Gary Carter? “The guy is really a pleasure to catch.”

Reasoner, translating with a wink: “I'd rather catch him than bat against him.”

Dan Gooden talked about little Dwight following him to semi-pro games:

“I used to sit him on the bench… He used to throw me the ball, and I'd roll it back, and ever since then, I fell in love with baseball.”

Doc himself confessed, in that soft, straightforward way of his:

“I love to throw baseball… without baseball, I don't know what I'd be doing.”

A Little League coach — “lost in history,” as Reasoner put it — stuck him on the mound at 12. That anonymous man should have a statue.

By 19, Gooden was throwing 95 with what Reasoner described as a rising fastball: the baseball equivalent of a jump scare.

The fans understood immediately. Shea invented the K Corner — and as Reasoner noted, “When Dwight pitched, the stadium was sometimes filled with Ks.”

Doc had bad games because everyone has bad games, even the future Doctor of Strikeouts. When he called home after losses, his father said, “He'd be kind of down in the dump,” but reassured him:

“Well, you ain't going to win them all.”

When the sophomore jinx conversation surfaced — because of course it did — Reasoner reminded us that hype sometimes eats rookies alive. Strawberry explained:

“A player has to go out and perform on the field… It's kind of hard, especially playing in New York with all the media hype.”

Gooden, with the maturity of a 20-year-old Buddhist monk, responded:

“I just want to go in and learn from the mistakes I made last year… and not put any added pressure on myself and just try to have fun at the same time.”

His 1985 Numbers? Forget Video Games — They Look Fake

When the segment aired, Gooden was already 18–3.

He finished 24–4 with a 1.53 ERA, 16 complete games, 268 strikeouts, and a 12.2 WAR season — the highest for any pitcher that decade and the greatest season a 20-year-old has ever had in any sport, anywhere, full stop.

He won the Cy Young Award. He finished 4th in MVP voting. He became a myth you could slot into a rotation every fifth day.

If 1984 made him a phenomenon, 1985 made him a god.

Harry Reasoner — the steady voice who once explained Watergate and Vietnam to the nation — ended up explaining a 20-year-old Mets pitcher with the same gravity.

That’s what made the piece so incredible: it treated Gooden with the respect that his pitching commanded. No hype. No clichés. Just the story of a kid who threw baseballs like Zeus threw lightning bolts.

And within all the fame, Reasoner left us with the simplest truth of all — from Dan Gooden, the man who made Doc who he was:

“You got to have it. You got to give it to get it.”

Go back and watch that segment now,forty years later. You’ll feel the joy, the awe, the innocence — and the impossible weight that would follow in later years. But in that moment, that summer, that magical 1985 season?

Dwight Gooden was invincible.

The Mets were rising.

The city was convinced nothing bad could ever happen again.

And Harry Reasoner?

He was right there with all of us, saying:

“Where’s the next batter?”

Here is the 60 Minutes piece in it's entirety :