Looking Beyond Gooden

As successful as Dwight Gooden has been against the Dodgers, two other New York Mets pitchers are liable to be every bit as difficult to hit when the National League playoffs open next Tuesday.

Right-handed starter David Cone is 19-3 with a 2.23 earned-run average, while left-handed reliever Randy Myers has the lowest earned run average in baseball at 1.45.

Both pitchers are 25, but there the similarities end.

“Cone looks like the nice, shy little kid on the block, but he’s got everybody fooled. He’s really the rascal,” Keith Hernandez of the Mets told Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post. “He’s not afraid to throw his fastball to anybody. He’s got guts and buckles down better under pressure.

“Myers is a gamer, a guy who wants the ball. But his intensity is so incredible it’s almost a fault. You don’t want him to burn himself out. He’s every bit as intense as Al Hrabosky, but Al would loosen down off the mound.

“Hrabosky was The Mad Hungarian. Myers is just mad.”

Add Myers: The pitcher told Hernandez that he always has a hand grenade connected to his car ignition at his home in Queens, so thieves will blow themselves up if they try to rob him.

“A lot of his stories are just that--stories,” Hernandez said. “I think.”

When the Oakland A’s clinched the American League West a week ago today, the Minnesota Twins were 83-67, 12 1/2 games behind. A year ago at the same time, the Twins were 79-70, 3 1/2 games ahead.

The Twins, who have 87 wins, became the seventh World Series winner to improve their record and fail to finish first. Last season the Twins won 85 games. The 1953 Yankees were the last to do so.

How does $3 million a year sound for Larry Bird, who is negotiating a 2-year contract extension with the Boston Celtics before training camp starts?

“He’s worth more than that,” Bird’s agent, Bob Woolf, told Peter May of the Hartford Courant. “They could certainly get it done and I’d think they’d want him for an additional two years. He’ll only be 35.

“These next 2 weeks could be very interesting.”

Washington Redskin fans are advised to be patient with quarterback Mark Rypien, the second-stringer pressed into action because of Doug Williams’ appendectomy.

When Rypien was at Washington State, he threw 5 interceptions in the first half of a game against USC, and was nearly booed off the field in Pullman. In the third quarter, he threw 4 touchdown passes.

Pink slip-pers: With the firing of Cookie Rojas by the Angels and Lee Elia by the Phillies on Friday, eight major league managers have lost their jobs since Opening Day.

That prompted this calculation by Richard Justice of the Washington Post. Excluding Tommy Lasorda, Whitey Herzog, Sparky Anderson and Davey Johnson--who have totaled more than 5,000 games with their teams--the average tenure for a manager is 302 games, or less than two full seasons.

Quotebook

Cliff Stoudt, the sore-backed Phoenix quarterback who filled in for Neil Lomax after Lomax went out because of an arthritic hip: “With Neil’s hip and my back, maybe we can run the limp-and-shoot offense.”