The New York Mets’ scouting director in 1982, Joe McIlvaine was met with grief across the industry when he used the fifth overall pick in the country that year on a high school pitcher out of Tampa, Fla. McIlvaine, however, believed he knew that kid better than most and so his ears naturally perked up when that pitcher, Dwight Gooden, told him over and over and over that he had to see his nephew play.
So McIlvaine did — on many occasions.
The most notable was an alumni game when that nephew, a high school junior, bagged three hits off the reigning NL Rookie of the Year as he ramped up for spring training.