In My Write Mind

Phenomenal. Out of this world. Amazing.

All of those words — and many more just like them — describe what it was like to watch the 20-year old right hander of the New York Mets twenty years ago last summer. The summer when the world stood still every five days as “the next big thing” took the mound and menaced, baffled and downright befuddled National League hitters.

Fastball.
Curveball.
Changeup (had to give them a waste pitch).
Curve.

Back to the dugout. That’s how it seemed during one of the most magical baseball summers ever witnessed, one of the best New York and all of baseball will ever see.

That, of course, was the summer of 1985. The phenom? Dwight Eugene Gooden.

He was electric, on top of the world. A marquee attraction for fans both at home and on the road. All of this during his first summer removed from his teens. A mercenary in complete control, with a smooth delivery and hellacious arsenal. He spent the better part of six months mercilessly handicapping batter after batter, racking up 268 strikeouts after a supernatural 1984 Rookie of the Year campaign where he chalked up 276. And by the way, he had a microscopic 1.53 ERA. To be this good, this young was unheard of.

He was two years removed from the baseball diamonds of Tampa, Florida. Now, he was a diamond in the rough. Making life rough for others.

Twenty-four wins. Sixteen complete games. Untouchable.

That year ended with Dwight picking up the League’s Cy Young award. He was without a doubt baseball’s best pitcher. He had the numbers. He had the fans by his side, pitch-for-pitch, strikeout-for-strikeout. Dubbed Doctor K. He made the cover of both Time and Newsweek. Went on Letterman. Partied under the brightest lights and with the biggest stars. He was The Man.

He had his whole future ahead of him.

Twenty years plus one great summer ago, what seems like two lifetimes ago for Dwight … he could do no wrong. He had his fastball and the fast life. Little did he know—did anybody know—that he also had a whole bunch of changeups and curves in store as well.

Starting in 1986, the proverbial wheels fell off. He wasn’t as overpowering anymore. Didn’t dominate like he did during that magical summer. Sure, the Mets won the World Series that year, but it was more in spite of Gooden than because of him. His post season numbers were horrible, going 0-3 with two of those losses coming during the Series.

That following offseason was the beginning of the end for Gooden. It began with him, along with nephew Gary Sheffield, being beaten by the Tampa police, and culminated with Gooden starting the ‘87 season inside a drug rehabilitation facility after testing positive for cocaine.

He was there for two months.

The pattern of self-destruction continued from there. Truly a downward spiral. He suffered arm injuries in both 1989 and 1991, forcing the team to alter his throwing motion. Over the next seven years, Gooden was in and out of baseball due to injuries and drug suspensions. In 1994, baseball commissioner Bud Selig threw him out for the remainder of that season and all of the next.

It was then that Gooden was the farthest removed from that magical summer of 1985, the year when, to borrow from one of Jay-Z lyrics, he was “the best who ever done it.” At what had to be deemed a low point of his life, the day after his ‘94 suspension, Doc sat in his bedroom with a nine-millimeter gun shoved next to his head, waiting to pull the trigger.

He’d gone from throwing virtual bullets to almost literally swallowing them.

Yes, he made a comeback in 1996 with the Yankees, hurling a no-hitter in May but not doing much after that. In fact, he was left off the team’s postseason roster due to ineffectiveness. He bounced around to a few teams after that, but did nothing of relevance at any of his stops.

Although his career mercifully ended, unfortunately his run-ins with the law did not. Just last year — in fact almost a year to the day — he was arrested in Tampa for punching his girlfriend after she threw a telephone at his head. He was let go two days later on a misdemeanor battery charge. Then, in August, he drove away from a traffic stop in Tampa, after being pulled over for driving eratically. He gave the officer his driver’s license, twice refused to leave his car, then drove away.

The officer remarked in his report that Gooden’s eyes were glassy and bloodshot, his speech was slurred, and a “strong” odor of alcohol was present on him. Three days after the traffic stop, Gooden turned himself in to police.

Just this week, he was arrested again. Violated his probation for testing positive for cocaine. Again.

All of this hurts my heart. His rise to fame was during my formative years. I was 13 when he was Doctor K. When he was on top of the world, starting All-Star games every season, regularly taking his team to the playoffs and even watching his Mets win a championship ring. He had 100 wins before his 25th birthday, on pace for 300 and setting several strikeout records. was the wheels on the bus that went prematurely bald and ultimately ran off the road and crashed into a pole.

Now, 22 years later, to still see his name in print for all the wrong reasons, well … I can’t even describe how it makes me feel. He tragically went from young, gifted and black to old, shiftless and addicted to crack.

From magical to marginal to missing in a span of only a few years. All the chances in the world, all the people in his corner, and still nothing could stop him from self-destruction.

Makes you sit still and wonder what could’ve been if it weren’t for the drugs and alcohol. Makes you realize that he was given too much too fast. Was overwelmed by it all. Makes you upset that someone so good so young just couldn’t sustain the magic. Couldn’t make it last. Makes you numb watching it all unfold like a cautionary Hollywood movie tale.

Dwight Eugene Gooden is the real life “Crash.” A story with a tagline that would probably read: “He was good. Very good. Just not good enough.”