Finding Ring He Could Not Win as a Met : Baseball: Working with boxers at Ten Goose Club keeps hard-luck former catcher close to the action.

Greg Goossen plays in an occasional softball game when his family beckons. He is, however, a reluctant participant.

“I used to get paid to embarrass myself,” Goossen said. “I won’t do it for nothing.”

Once upon a time, Goossen did get paid to swing a bat. But he never embarrassed himself. It just seems as though in a rough and rowdy six-year major league career, including four with the infamous New York Mets and Manager Casey Stengel, Goossen was always on the fringe, always one break from becoming a permanent fixture in the lineup.

And the god of timing didn’t exactly hold Goossen in the palm of his hand, either.

He played for the Mets from 1965-68, on teams that still symbolize ineptitude in the major leagues. When you think of bad preachers, Jim Bakker comes to mind. When you think of bad baseball teams, you think of the Mets.

At the end of the 1968 season, the Mets released Goossen. In 1969, they became the Miracle Mets, winning the World Series to culminate a stunning season.

That year, Goossen played for the Seattle Pilots of the American League. After just one season, the Pilots folded, eventually becoming the Milwaukee Brewers. It was the briefest history of a major league baseball team.

And Goossen was a part of it.

“That should have told me something,” he said.

“I remember a bunch of us in a bar that season and a girl comes in and asks who we were. One of my buddies says, real proud, ‘We’re with the Pilots.’ She had never heard of the team. She said, ‘You guys are airline pilots?’

“We said ‘yes.’ ”

Goossen’s entry into the major leagues came suddenly. He was a standout baseball player and football player at Notre Dame High and signed a free-agent contract as a catcher with the Dodgers just weeks after graduating in 1964. After a season in the minor leagues in Pocatello, Ida., and St. Petersburg, Fla., Goossen was invited to the Dodgers’ spring training camp in Vero Beach, Fla., in 1965.

“It was amazing,” Goossen said. “My first major league locker room and I look around and who’s standing next to me? Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale and Tommy Davis and all those guys. It was pretty spectacular.”

Not for long.

The Dodgers released Goossen at the end of training camp. It was maybe the biggest break of his career as, just a few months later, San Francisco Giant pitcher Juan Marichal cracked open the head of Dodger catcher John Roseboro with a bat in one of baseball’s most notable brawls.

That could very well have been Goossen’s head.

After he was released by the Dodgers, he was quickly signed by the Mets, a trend that was to continue throughout his career: He would bounce in and out of the major leagues with alarming frequency, with the Mets and Pilots and Washington Senators and Milwaukee Brewers, and also play in the minor-league systems of the Philadelphia Phillies and Cincinnati Reds.

Altogether, including separate stints with the same teams, Goossen played for 38 clubs in six years. “Either everybody wanted me, or everyone wanted to get rid of me,” Goossen said. “I could never figure out which one it was.”

Both, perhaps.

What he brought to a team was a powerful swing and fine defensive skills. Most teams welcomed that. But he also brought an attitude that placed more importance on having fun than on playing baseball. Common among the players of that era was a desire to play some baseball and visit some bars.

“There were so many good times, I can’t remember many of them,” he said.

But still, even with the late nights, he retained his skills. In 1965, before being called up to the Mets near the end of the season, Goossen batted .305 and pounded 24 home runs for Auburn of the New York-Penn League. In 31 at-bats for the Mets that season, the rookie catcher batted .290.

But he began the 1966 season in the minors again, and this time he cracked 25 home runs and drove in 64 runs in 400 at-bats for triple-A Jacksonville. Brought back to the major league club again, Goossen saw limited action. He got just 32 more at-bats and managed six hits.

“It was impossible to come in, get an at-bat once or twice a week and try to stay sharp,” he said. “Sometimes they’d make me pinch-hit during a count.”

His up-and-down feeling was repeated in 1967, with Goossen playing for Jacksonville all spring and summer and getting the call from the Mets late in the season. After 69 more at-bats, most of the pinch-hit variety, he was batting .159. And the Mets released him.

The next two years were a blur, he said. He played for the Pilots and then got a call from the great Ted Williams, who was managing the Senators. Get here tonight, Williams told Goossen. We just traded for you and we need you immediately. You’re going to be the man against left-handed pitchers.

Goossen, married and the father of a daughter by then, rushed to Williams’ aid. His wife and daughter were forced to struggle to pack up the belongings in their apartment and drive back to California on their own.

“And for two weeks, I sat on the bench,” Goossen recalled. “Never got a single at-bat. He rushes me across the country, makes me leave my family like that, and then doesn’t let me get off the bench.”

Finally, after two weeks, Goossen got the call. To face a right-hander , and the one pitcher that gave most players that season chills, Ted Abernathy, who delivered a wicked submarine pitch.

“Three pitches and I’m outta there,” Goossen recalled. “I’d been batting in practice against left-handers, because that’s what Ted said he wanted me for. Hadn’t faced a right-hander in weeks. All of a sudden I’m up against this maniac throwing with his arm on the ground.”

Williams, apparently, lost confidence in Goossen, who batted sparingly the rest of the way. At the end of the season, Goossen stormed into Williams’ office and demanded to know his status with the team.

“I said, ‘Ted, am I going to be back here next year or not? I want to know right now.’ And you know what Ted Williams said to me? He said, ‘Well, if I were you, I wouldn’t send my clothes out to a cleaner.’ ”

Goossen played for an annual salary of $6,000, the major league minimum, for his first two seasons. In his third season, the Mets brought him into the office and announced that they were raising his salary to $10,000.

“Two weeks later the baseball office announced that the minimum salary was being raised to $10,000,” Goossen said. “Gee, did I feel great.”

When the major league ride ended, Goossen spent a few seasons in the Mexican League, trying to stay in shape, expecting a call from a major league team. No calls came. And by the early ‘70s, he was back home in Sherman Oaks.

He retired with a .241 average and 13 home runs in 460 major league at-bats. The adjustment was, well . . . difficult is a gross understatement.

“I had been playing ball in Shea Stadium and Dodger Stadium, the dream of my entire life,” Goossen said. “And suddenly I’m in Van Nuys selling women’s shoes. It was more than a shock.”

He left that job the day his boss told him to take the toothpick out of his mouth. There were other jobs, including a telephone marketing job, selling pens, pencils and other office supplies.

But just when he thought the bottom was falling out of his world, he and several of his brothers, led by Dan and Joe, formed the Ten Goose Boxing Club and got into the fight business. They have trained and managed ex-middleweight champion Michael Nunn and now have a stable of promising fighters.

Greg launched a bit of a side business too. He teaches boxing to those who just want to learn self-defense.

He works with his students in the Ten Goose gym in Van Nuys several days a week, his muscular frame and huge shoulders demonstrating the art of throwing a punch, an art he learned in more than a few base-brawls.

Among his students is actor Gene Hackman. The two have become friends, and Goossen was, five years ago, lured into the acting business by Hackman.

Goossen has appeared in several films, including “Class Action,” “The Package,” and “Split Decisions.” He has also worked as a stand-in and an occasional double for Hackman in all of the veteran actor’s recent films, including “Mississippi Burning.”

“It was tough, but I made the transition from baseball,” Goossen said. “There were some bad years, but I always had a great family to help me, to encourage me. And now, with acting, I find the same feeling I had as a baseball player, the same heart-pounding feeling of nervousness, the same adrenaline rush.

“I’m not sure why, but I just didn’t get that feeling selling ladies’ shoes.”