New York Mets Pitcher Matt Harvey Drawing 'Doc' Gooden-Level Attendance Numbers at Citi Field

The last time Matt Harvey threw a pitch at Citi Field was Saturday, Aug. 24, 2013. It wasn't a good outing. The powerhouse Detroit Tigers laid a beatdown on him. Up until that point, Harvey was great and it turned out the shelling was due to a partially torn ulnar collateral ligament in his pitching elbow. Now that Harvey has returned, though, the New York Mets are hoping for him to bounce back in a big way. As a matter of fact, they expect him to be the second coming of Dwight "Doc" Gooden by being a top ace in the league and having the ability to draw fans to the ballpark. He's beginning to draw Gooden-level attendance numbers. Knowing Harvey is taking his cannonball right arm to the mound for the second game at Citi Field, ticket sales soared. The "Harvey Effect," much like the "Gooden Effect," helped draw more than 40,000 people to the seats for the Tuesday game. That's only a few thousand off from the 2013 All-Star Game's number of 43,947 fans. Gooden's attendance numbers were eerily similar. In the 18 games he started at Shea Stadium, he drew an average of 40,072 fans. For every other game, the average attendance was 34,005.

If anybody had doubts about Harvey's performance, he shut the doubters down just as he shut down the Washington Nationals for six straight innings in his return game. The outing was a small look into the Harvey of old. More importantly for Mets fans, it was a look into the future.

"We're ready for it," Harvey told the (New York) Daily News. "Once we got to spring training, we knew we wanted to win and bring a championship back to Queens, so we're all excited for this home opener, for the start of the long homestand. Hopefully, we can come out with a bunch of wins."

Who said Sunday was a day of rest. #Sundayfunday @mets Photo and workout partner @dberni33

A photo posted by Matt Harvey (@mattharvey33) on Dec 7, 2014 at 1:01pm PST