One of the best ways to illustrate this is for me to reprint an article by BOB KLAPISCH a RECORD COLUMNIST from Wednesday, March 24, 2010 entitled “The monster will always find Doc Gooden” It follows.
“The voice on the other end of the phone was doing a lousy job of sounding hopeful. “I’m not going to let one day of bad judgment ruin four good years [of sobriety],” Doc Gooden said, surely realizing what an empty proclamation that was.
Gooden is facing universal condemnation today for yet another arrest involving drugs and alcohol. We’ve all become immune to Doc’s relapses, except this one revealed how monstrously deep his addiction still runs: The former Met and Yankee star had his 5-year-old son in the back seat – unharnessed, according to police – when he rear-ended another car in Franklin Lakes on Tuesday morning.
Gooden is scrambling for legal help, although there’s no defense for risking the life of his own kid. Hackensack-based attorney Neal Frank said, “I have not seen the charges yet. … I still haven’t been retained.” Just wait until the lawyer gets a whiff of Gooden’s self-destruct mechanism.
The charges that have been referred to the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office include: under the influence of a controlled dangerous substance; endangering the welfare of a child; driving while under the influence of drugs; DWI with a child passenger; leaving the scene of a motor vehicle accident.
Gooden could end up in jail for the second time in his life. Custody of his son, Dylan, also is at stake. Doc’s closest friends couldn’t rationalize the behavior of the fallen celebrity. Said one, “As much as I hate to say it, whatever Dwight’s got coming to him, he deserves it this time.”
The irony, of course, is that Gooden succumbed to booze and drugs in the toniest neighborhood of Bergen County. He was a thousand miles away from Tampa, Fla., where he used to turn into a monster on a nightly basis. Gooden moved to New Jersey to escape the bad influences in his life, the dealers, the dirtbags, the so-called friends who loved to get high with him.
Turns out, the bad influence always has lived within Gooden’s bones. The monster will find Doc wherever he goes – any zip code, any time, any setting. The beast, of course, is Gooden himself.
Doc said he’d been clean since 2006, and everyone in his universe believed it. He’d gotten married in 2009, and became a father again just a month ago. Doc was invited to spring training by the Mets, but politely declined because of his responsibilities at home. Good dad, good citizen, clean and sober, were the messages he broadcast to the baseball community.
Gooden even planned to open a baseball academy in Ho-Ho-Kus, but his investors slipped away last fall when the recession hit. Still, Gooden was undeterred. He had an offer from the Mets to return as an adviser, a role he held with the Yankees in 2004. The Mets forgave Gooden for all his past transgressions — the drinking, the drugging, the shame he brought upon the franchise in the ’80s and ’90s, even for wearing pinstripes in the second part of his career. Absolution came in the form of admission to the Mets’ Hall of Fame in January.
Gooden seemed at peace with all of it, able to laugh at what a pudgy middle-aged man he’d become. “Man, I got to get to the gym one of these days,” Doc said, sporting a gut that, by his admission, had ballooned him 60 pounds beyond his playing weight.
It was only a few weeks ago that Darryl Strawberry was recalling the once-in-a-generation gift that’d been bestowed on Gooden – the brilliant right arm that should’ve delivered him directly to Cooperstown’s doorstep.
“Doc used to embarrass grown men,” Strawberry said. Gooden wasn’t just great, he was beautiful with a baseball in his hand. His arms and legs were a symphony, huge and flowing in their delivery. Together they produced a fastball unlike anything we’ve seen nowadays, rising from the belt to the neck so violently it would overwhelm a hitter’s synapses.
Gooden was Tim Lincecum with attitude; he was Randy Johnson with more talent. He was CC Sabathia with better velocity.
Strawberry went as far as to say Gooden would’ve humiliated the 2009 Yankees in a showdown with the 1986 Mets. I asked Gooden about that; we previously spoke as recently as Monday morning. He seemed alert and lucid. Clearly sober.
Could he actually have shamed the great Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez?
“I don’t know if I could’ve embarrassed them, but we would’ve definitely won,” Gooden said of last year’s Bombers. “The ’98 Yankees would’ve been tougher. I don’t think that’s a team we could’ve beaten.”
The memories came from the healthier hemisphere in Gooden’s brain. No one ever had a more likeable good side. But the darker angels of his soul always seemed to win out – Gooden’s addiction was deeper and more sinister than Strawberry’s. And that’s today’s dark lesson: If Doc can’t stop getting high, even in the company of his toddler son, he never will.
Drug rehab hasn’t worked. The threat of prison hasn’t been enough of a deterrent. Public condemnation barely wounds him. Nothing can match the long, seductive tentacles of the next drink, the next hit.
Many years ago, Gooden would dream about the rest of his life as a beautiful vista: Hall of Fame dominance on the mound, championship parades in lower Manhattan, wealth and fame. Doc lost all that — his career and reputation were shot years ago — and was willing to settle for a peaceful retirement. That’s history, too.
All that’s left is the monster that stalks him now, and apparently forever.
