THE WORLD SERIES : New York Mets vs. Boston Red Sox : Notebook : Dwight Gooden's Location Problem: Locating Postseason Win

By MIKE PENNER

Oct. 23, 1986 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

BOSTON — The reporters were gathered in the interview room near the left-field corner of Fenway Park when a loud pounding was heard at a door leading to the field.

Anyone special?

Just Dwight Gooden, the Mets’ pitcher in Game 5 tonight against Bruce Hurst of the Red Sox.

Gooden fielded questions about his underwhelming performance in Game 2, when he and Boston’s Roger Clemens were both knocked out before the sixth inning in the Red Sox’s 9-3 win.

“You get down,” said Gooden, who has not won in three postseason starts. “It’s different than in the regular season. You never know whether you’re going to get a shot again.”

He’ll get another shot tonight and will be pitching with only three days’ rest for the first time this season. The only other time he pitched on three days’ rest, he said, was last season’s Fourth of July marathon in Atlanta.

“I think it went 24 innings (it went 18),” he said. “I only pitched two, because of rain delays.”

Gooden says the only difference between this season and his Cy Young Award performance in 1985 is his inability to meet heightened expectations.

“My fastball is basically the same,” he said. “My location is just a bit off.”

Game 5 tonight will begin at 8:35 p.m. EDT, 10 minutes later than each of the other World Series games. The reason?

The Bill Cosby Show.

When it comes to NBC programming, the Cosby Show, current leader in the Nielsen ratings, is untouchable. NBC wants the half-hour show to run its entire course, so the Red Sox and Mets were pushed back 10 minutes.

The World Series is big, but not that big.

Bobby Ojeda, who pitched for the Red Sox from 1980 to 1985, was asked if any of his current Met teammates had asked for advice on Boston hitters, Boston pitchers and/or Fenway Park.

“Not really,” Ojeda said. “A few wanted to know about some restaurants. The key question was, ‘Where are we going to eat?’ ”

And what did Ojeda suggest?

“Room service.”

Bowie Kuhn, the man who brought baseball night-time, prime-time World Series and two sets of rules for two different leagues (designated hitter and no designated hitter), threw out the first ball Wednesday night. The appearance of the ex-commissioner drew only a smattering of a response from the Fenway crowd--mostly boos.

Slowly but surely, Met hitters are beginning to rediscover their batting stroke--even Darryl Strawberry, who doubled and scored a run in the fourth inning Wednesday.

Before Game 4, Strawberry was hitting .188 in the postseason (6 for 32) and .100 in the World Series (1 for 10). In those 32 at-bats, he had struck out 17 times--including 5 times in 3 games against Boston.

Before he broke through against Al Nipper, Strawberry had this assessment of his World Series: “I’ve been looking like a fool against their pitchers.”

Keith Hernandez, on the turnabout in the Series: “It’s a best-of-three now, and obviously tomorrow is a pivotal game. I’d rather be in our position than theirs right now, but they are a team with great character. You can’t count them out.

“They made all the plays at Shea and got great clutch hitting. Now, the roles seem reversed, and we’d like to keep it that way.”

Dwight Evans, who grounded out with the bases loaded in the first inning, on Met winner Ron Darling:

“He pitches like an American League pitcher. He looks like an American League pitcher. He throws all that off-speed stuff and has an outstanding forkball. He’s like Ojeda.”

Darling’s streak of 14 Series innings without allowing an earned run is the longest in a World Series since Bob Gibson of St. Louis pitched 19 straight scoreless innings against the Red Sox in 1967.

Boston catcher Rich Gedman said he isn’t surprised by Len Dykstra’s show of power (home runs Tuesday and Wednesday).

“I played with Lenny in Venezuela,” Gedman said. “He’s got some pop in his bat.”

Gedman and Darling both played high school baseball in nearby Worcester. Gedman played at St. Peter’s, Darling at St. John’s.

“All the scouts in their polyester suits like to say that there aren’t any good players in central Massachusetts,” Darling said. “The fact that each of the teams in this World Series has a player from that area proves that it does produce good players.”

Wednesday night, however, Darling was not that thrilled that Gedman had made it.

The catcher doubled and singled, two of the four hits Darling allowed in pitching seven innings of a 6-2 victory. “He was definitely happy to see me again,” Darling said of Gedman.

Before Wednesday’s game, Davey Johnson visited with Shigeo Nagashima, who was his manager when the Mets’ manager played for the Tokyo Giants in 1975 and 1976.

How big is Nagashima in Japan?

“Bigger than Tom Lasorda,” Johnson said.

The Angels left more than their heart here in Boston.

It turns out that they also left their Series credentials for the games in Anaheim, which the PR staff had been working on during the playoff games here.

But when the Angels were eliminated, publicity director Tim Mead said, the credentials were left with the bell captain at the team hotel with instructions to destroy them. Some have survived, however, and fallen into the hands of scalpers who are selling them as admission tickets for the games here, creating problems for the police and Fenway Park officials.

Jim Frey was interviewed again Wednesday for the vacant Minnesota managerial position. The Twins have reportedly narrowed their choices to Frey and Tom Kelly, the interim manager when Ray Miller was fired.

Times staff writers Ross Newhan and Gordon Edes contributed to this story.