In the mid- to late ‘80s, it made perfect sense to begin amassing a Dwight Gooden archive. After all, he was, in spite of arm weariness and personal problems, putting up the greatest career winning percentage going back to the very beginning of time (provided you didn't count a young entrepreneur named Al Spalding). After the 1989 season, his lifetime record stood at 119-46, a .721 success rate. Sure, all his other numbers weren't what they'd been in the halcyon days of 1984 and 1985, but it seemed like a 25-year old off to that kind of start could roll downhill to Cooperstown.

The rest did not go according to plan, however, leaving this 7,000-piece accumulation of Gooden memorabilia to seem ironic in its massiveness.