Ron Shelton, on Greg Goossen
Ron Shelton (linked here), the screenwriter, producer and director of such movies as "Bull Durham," "White Men Can't Jump," "Cobb," "Blue Chips" and "Tim Cup," sent along a remembrance of Greg Goossen, who passed away on Feb. 26 and will have a memorial service this Thursday (6 p.m., St. Frances de Sales Church in Sherman Oaks).
Shelton, shooting a cable TV pilot that he wrote about Triple-A baseball in Nashville, Tenn., called "Hound Dogs," says:
"In my senior year of high school at Santa Barbara (1964) -- the high school of Eddie Mathews, Jesse Orosco, Jamaal Wilkes, and Sam and Randall Cunningham, among others, so in other words, a very good sports school -- we had probably the best team in school history to that time and won the Channel League.
"We were advancing through the CIF playoffs when we played Notre Dame High of Sherman Oaks, who started a pitcher against us named John Herbst who had, I believe, a 0.00 ERA, plus a starting catcher named Greg Goosen, soon to be number one in the draft.
"Needless to say, Herbst threw a shutout at us and ended our quest. But what I remember were two balls that Goosen hit. The first was a line drive over my head at shortstop. I leapt up and caught it in the web, but the force of the liner took my glove into left field.
"The second ball he hit is still going, I believe, way, way out of that old minor league Laguna Park in Santa Barbara.
"Only decades later, as a boxing fan, did I meet the guy who hit those two shots."
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