NEW YORK -- Like so many, Dwight Gooden tuned in Friday evening to watch Jacob deGrom pitch. Gooden follows nearly all of deGrom’s starts out of respect and admiration for a pitcher who has become this generation’s version of himself.

“A lot of times, I run across fans or family and they say, ‘Man, it was fun to watch you. When you were pitching, everything stopped. I made sure I was in front of the TV every fifth day,’” Gooden said in a telephone interview on Saturday morning. “And now, I get to experience what they talked about, watching Jake pitch. I mean, I have my calendar marked. My schedule works around when he’s pitching.”

Of all those who witnessed deGrom’s two-hit, 15-strikeout shutout on Friday, only a precious few could truly understand what was going through deGrom’s brain, what it felt like to be in his cleats. Gooden can. He estimated that in his Cy Young season of 1985, he felt like he was in a zone where he could do whatever he wanted maybe half the time. Over the rest of his career, he felt that way on perhaps a few dozen occasions.

“It’s very difficult because you’re playing against professional hitters at the highest level,” Gooden said. “To be totally focused and totally locked in on every pitch -- not only every batter, but every pitch, just quality pitch after quality pitch, to be totally in that zone … there’s no better feeling than doing that, especially doing that at home in New York in front of the New York fans.

“Sometimes you’ve got to win when you’re not really in a zone, but you make pitches when you have to. When I pitched the no-hitter [with the Yankees in 1996], I didn’t have my best stuff, but I just made pitches when I had to. But watching deGrom, it seems like he’s been in a zone for almost three years straight. If he gives up two runs, you think that something’s wrong.”

At this point, Tom Seaver remains unquestionably the most accomplished pitcher in Mets history -- a first-ballot Hall of Famer who set franchise wins, innings, complete-game and shutout records that may never be broken. Second-best has become a heated debate between Gooden and deGrom -- with the former amassing 1,875 strikeouts over 11 years as a Met, but the latter excelling when viewed through the lens of rate stats and advanced metrics that attempt to compare eras. For example, deGrom’s career adjusted ERA+, which normalizes for league and ballpark factors, is third in history among qualified starters behind Pedro Martínez and Clayton Kershaw.

In Flushing, the legacy of generational pitchers has gone from Seaver in the 1960s and ‘70s, to Gooden in the ‘80s and ‘90s, to deGrom in the 2010s and ‘20s.

“It’s amazing to watch because when Seaver was in his prime, I was very young, so I don’t remember watching too much of him,” Gooden said. “And then myself, when you’re going through that, you’re not aware at the time of what you’re actually doing. You’re just going out, having fun, and trying to help the team win.”

Even though Gooden can uniquely relate to what deGrom is achieving, in some ways, even he struggles to comprehend it. Gooden says a radar gun clocked him at 100 mph once in his career, in a 1988 game at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. deGrom, whose velocity gains over the past four seasons are well documented, has hit triple digits 37 times this season alone.

“Incredible,” was how Gooden described it. “It’s like he’s getting better and better every start. Every start you say, ‘He can’t get better than what he did, but then he does get better. It’s amazing.”

Now 56 years old, Gooden recently became a great-grandfather. He splits his time between New York, where he resides most of the year, and Tampa and Maryland, where members of his family live. No matter where he is, Gooden makes certain to watch deGrom’s starts.

Two years ago, Gooden presented the 2018 National League Cy Young Award to deGrom at the Baseball Writers’ Association of America’s annual awards dinner in Manhattan. The two offered each other their mutual respect, with Gooden telling deGrom that he expected the younger pitcher to break many of his records. Watching deGrom that season, Gooden became convinced that deGrom might even approach his franchise ERA record of 1.53 in 1985. Ultimately, deGrom fell a bit short, finishing at 1.70.

“I had him laughing -- I said, 'I’m rooting for you, but I don’t want you to break the record,'” Gooden said of deGrom, who owns a 0.31 ERA through four starts this season. “A lot of people always say records are made to be broken. But to be honest, you have to hold onto those records. I do, anyway. But this guy’s shattering everything. To watch him and what he’s doing … I don’t know if I’ve had a streak like he’s had right now. With the exception of complete games and wins, he’s totally dominated all of my stats, I think.”