Doc: A Memoir

by Dwight Gooden

  “As a pitcher,” my dad said, “you want to build the smaller muscles. The small muscles are where you get your speed. If you get bulky, everything’s tight and the extension’s going to be shorter. You may look good on the beach, but it won’t help your pitching.” Dad never said anything specifically about steroids. They weren’t even being talked about back in the 1970s. But knowing how they build up the body, I’m sure he would have warned me to steer clear. And when steroids were being described as the number one substance abuse problem in baseball, my dad’s early lessons were still in my head. Steroids were one drug I was never tempted to play around with.

  Dad used different techniques in the park with Gary, helping him develop his hitting and fielding. But for me it was always “Pitchers have to train like pitchers.”

  Today, training like this is common, up to the highest levels of baseball. But back in the 1970s it was unheard of. I don’t know where my father learned it. I don’t remember him studying anatomy manuals or reading many baseball books. He wasn’t getting it from TV analysts. They were not talking baseball mechanics the way they do today. I never asked my dad how he knew so much.

  All I know is, with me at least, his teaching was starting to work.

  2

  Dark Side

  I GOT A HUGE SENSE of security growing up in such a tight family. Never once did I doubt that both my parents loved me and wanted what was best for me. I worshiped my dad, who seemed to worship me back. And my mom was the family glue, running the house, encouraging her kids to do well, and making sure we all felt special in individual ways. I’ve always felt sympathy for children growing up without that kind of support. It’s a terrible burden to overcome.

  That said, just beneath the surface—and sometimes bursting right into the open—the Goodens had some crazy stuff going on. Drinking, fighting, philandering, gunplay—you name it. It didn’t strike me as all that unusual at the time or all that threatening. But looking back, I can see that we had some major issues swirling around our loving home on our solid block in respectable Belmont Heights. My father was far from faithful to my mother, and he didn’t make much effort to hide it from me. More than once, my mom threatened to divorce him. One wild day, she confronted my father directly outside his girlfriend’s house. And I was partly the cause.

  On Saturday mornings, before NBC’s Game of the Week with Joe Garagiola and Tony Kubek, my father and I had one of our little rituals. We’d be in the living room out of my mother’s earshot, and Dad would ask me: “Before the game starts, you gonna need a snack?”

  He knew exactly what I’d say. “Yeah!” I loved candy and chips and those twelve-ounce cans of Tahitian Treat fruit punch.

  He’d wander into the kitchen and say with a sigh to my mom: “Dwight says he’s gotta have some chips. We’re gonna run to the store. Need anything?”

  Usually, she didn’t, and Dad and I would head out to the car. But we didn’t go straight to the market. Dad liked to make a stop on the way. “Got to drop something off for a friend,” he’d say, pulling into the driveway of a house a few blocks from ours. “Be right back.”

  As a five-year-old, I was too young to understand exactly what was happening, and I never questioned him about it. But he’d go in the house, and a girl, twelve or thirteen years old, would come out to the car and sit with me. Dad would be inside the house for twenty minutes or half an hour.

  The girl was always nice to me. “How are you doing?” she’d ask, trying to strike up a conversation. “What did you do today?”

  We’d make uncomfortable small talk. Sometimes, she’d bring out a coloring book and some crayons. On other days, she was quiet and withdrawn. I don’t know if she knew what was happening inside that house any more than I did. She probably did. A couple of times, I noticed a woman coming to the door with my father, giving him a little hug before he left.

  I don’t remember feeling particularly bothered by Dad’s pit stops. But looking back, they must have planted something in my head. One afternoon when Dad was at work, I was riding my little bike in front of our house, singing a song I’d made up.

  “Daddy has a girlfriend. Daddy has a girlfriend.…”

  I wasn’t trying to get my dad in trouble. Not consciously. But when my mom finished her vacuuming and stepped outside, she heard my new song.

  “Dwight,” she said sharply, screwing up her face like she’d just bitten into a lemon and grabbing the handlebars of my bike, “what in Sam Hell are you singing about?”

  “Daddy’s got a girlfriend!” I said, smiling cluelessly.

  “Well, what does that mean, exactly?” she asked. She planted her hands on her hips, waiting for me to say more.

  “Daddy’s got a girlfriend,” I said. “That’s what it means. He hugs and kisses her when we go to the store.”

  Before Mom stomped away, I mentioned the lady on the porch and the nice girl with the coloring book. Mom was waiting at the kitchen table when my dad got home.

  “The boy doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” I heard my father protest. “It’s just a song, for Christ’s sake! I was just running an errand.”

  Mom didn’t press the point. Not right away. But things weren’t back to normal either. One afternoon a few weeks later, when Dad left for his “errands” without me, Mom grabbed her .38 Special and followed behind in her car. This upstanding Christian lady parked outside the girlfriend’s house, lying in wait for Dad to come outside. When Mom saw the screen door open and the familiar feet hit the porch, she leaped from the car and started firing.

  The first bullet grazed my father’s left bicep. The second bullet whizzed past his girlfriend’s head, lodging in the door frame. Dad went scampering off the porch and down the sidewalk.

  He did not go to the hospital. He waited a few minutes for my mother to clear out. Then he drove himself back home. He dressed the wound in the bathroom. I don’t know if he yelled at my mother or if she yelled at him. I never heard either one of them apologize. I do know the cops didn’t come. No one was arrested. My mom had made her point her way.

  That didn’t end my father’s straying. I don’t think anything could have. Certainly not a little graze wound. Dad just found a middleman, spending more time with his good buddy Boo. While my mom was off at work, Dad would go to Boo’s house to play cards and drink. If the weather was nice, they’d pull an extra card table into the yard for the bottles, the mixers, and the ice.

  Sometimes, when I got bored, I’d ride to Boo’s on my bike and ask Dad if he could spare any money. Almost always, he’d smile and hand me a few bucks, before shooing me away.

  “Going to the movies?” he’d ask. “Have fun.”

  “Playing ball today? Good idea. See you tonight.”

  He did whatever it took to get me out of there.

  When I told my sister Betty how generous Dad always was at Boo’s house, she laughed and told me I was thinking way too small.

  “You can get a lot more than five dollars,” she said. “Ask him for twenty.”

  “Twenty?”

  “Just go try it,” she said.

  Sure enough, when I rode up and asked for a twenty, Dad handed me a twenty. Then, I got even bolder, returning half an hour later for another ten. He forked over the ten. He didn’t even ask why.

  Eventually, I got some extra insight about my dad’s generosity. One day, when he didn’t get me out of there swiftly enough, a carload of women in party dresses pulled up.

  “Boo’s friends,” my father explained hurriedly, before heading into the house with Boo, the ladies, and a couple of other guys.

  Clearly, my parents didn’t have a perfect marriage. When I was twelve, Mom and Dad announced they were splitting up. I raced up to my room and started crying. I loved my mother a lot. But I concluded I’d have to live with my father if I was going to get any better at baseball. Thankfully, I never had to make the choice because the bust-up never happened. Mom and Dad stayed together, and life just went on.

  I
’m not blaming Mom and Dad’s troubles for my own later on. I stumbled into plenty completely on my own. But when it came to drinking and screwing around, I didn’t lack for strong role models, that’s for sure. And the whole idea of good, loving people sometimes doing reckless, self-destructive things—that was business as usual for the Goodens.

  On my mom’s side, feuding and fighting were damn near official sports. Mom had several nephews and cousins who put each other in the hospital after angry, drawn-out brawls. Then, no hard feelings on either side—they’d stop by during family-visiting hours and make sure everyone was doing okay. Dad’s three older sons were constantly finding trouble and messing up their lives. They were all heavy drinkers who wandered into harder stuff. None of them could seem to hold a job.

  I was eight or nine years old before I realized that James, Charles, and Danny were my half brothers. I never met their mom. Sometimes they would visit in the summer. They were all wild guys, staying out late and going to bars where fights broke out. James, the oldest, finally went into the army. When he came home on leave, he was as polite and clean-cut as you can imagine. It was quite a shock. For the first time I felt like I had a real big brother. He took me out to Burger King on Friday nights when he got paid and to the Tuesday night wrestling matches at the Fort Homer Hesterly Armory. I loved Dusty Rhodes, André the Giant, and Haystack Calhoun. I’d get in fights with kids at my school about who was the greatest wrestler ever and whether the whole thing was a fake. I wanted so badly to believe.

  The fun outings with James ended abruptly. One visit, he was cool and fun. But the next time, he’d done a total 180. Something in the army must have messed him up. He spent his next couple of visits drunk and acting crazy. He thought nothing of walking past Gary or me and grabbing a sandwich right out of our hands. We knew better than to ask for it back. One day, James stormed past both of us and into the backyard, picking every single orange off half a dozen orange trees. He carried them back in the house in a laundry basket and slammed the door. As he passed by us, he looked down at the oranges and said, “If you touch any of these, I will kick your ass.” He definitely wasn’t joking. Then he went upstairs to his room.

  Gary and I said nothing. We just stared at the TV in silence, hoping not to antagonize him anymore.

  I still don’t know what that was about. But James never mellowed much as far as I could tell. I heard he was in and out of prison for drugs and robbery, and we didn’t see him for long stretches of time.

  But compared to psycho Uncle G. W., half brother James was a pussycat. G. W. was married to my older sister, Mercedes. When I was five years old and she was twenty, she and G. W. lived two houses away from us with Derrick, their eighteen-month-old son.

  One afternoon, Merc was watching me and Derrick while my parents were off at work. She was sitting at the kitchen table. Derrick and I were goofing off on the floor. It was a day like many others until her badass husband came roaring through the door. He had a gun in his hand, and he was seething about something.

  I don’t know what set him off this time. With G. W., it could have been anything. The sound of kids laughing could make him furious. He could fly into a rage at the mailman for delivering a court order or unexpected bill. He got physical with my father once. Another time, my mom pulled a gun on him. He even took a knife to himself after my sister threatened to divorce him. When I was visiting Merc and Derrick, I always tiptoed around G. W.

  Looking back, someone might have asked, “How could your parents leave you at Mercedes’s house with G. W. around?” But they were family, and I don’t think anyone ever gave it a second thought.

  What I know for certain—what I saw with my own five-year-old eyes—was G. W. marching into the kitchen that day, raging at Merc, and opening fire with a handgun.

  Bang.

  Bang.

  Bang.

  Bang.

  Bang.

  It was five quick shots from a distance of two or three feet, all of them raining down on my sister. I’d heard fireworks before. I’d played cops and robbers. I’d faked dying. This was nothing like any of that. That gunfire was the loudest sound I’d ever heard.

  Mercedes didn’t scream. She didn’t say much of anything. She just let out a tiny whimper and slumped to the kitchen floor. Purplish, red blood was pouring from her head and shoulders. The blood settled in a pool beneath her on the linoleum floor.

  I didn’t have time to think. I looked at Merc. I looked at her crazy husband. I scooped up little Derrick. I sprinted for the bathroom and locked the door.

  My heart was pounding like a bongo. I crouched beside the tub, shivering and crying with Derrick in my arms.

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to expect. Would G. W. come flying through the bathroom door? Were Derrick and I next?

  G. W., bully-coward that he was, must have split immediately, leaving his son and nephew huddled in mortal fear and his helpless wife dying on the kitchen floor. Soon I heard sirens. Then cops and paramedics came rushing into the house, clearly uncertain about what they’d find.

  “Show yourself,” I heard one cop shout. “Put down your weapon and come out.” No one answered, and soon the cops were busting open the bathroom door.

  “Holy Christ!” one officer said when he saw Derrick and me on the floor. “You guys okay? Did you see anything?”

  I was too scared to answer. One of the cops, a heavyset, middle-age guy with a red, round face, crouched gently down beside us. He kept himself at a safe distance. He removed his hat as if to say, “I’m one of the good guys here.”

  He just stayed quiet for a minute.

  “I want my mommy,” I whimpered, clutching Derrick tighter. That was the best I could do. “I want my mommy. I wanna see my mommy.”

  I’m not sure if the cop realized that the woman bleeding on the kitchen floor was Derrick’s mom, not mine. “Okay, kid,” he said. “Okay. Let me see what I can do.”

  I didn’t want to leave the bathroom. It was too scary out there.

  By then, the neighbors must have been gathering on the front lawn, sorting out for the cops exactly who was who in our family. A few minutes later, my mom rushed past everyone and into the house. She saw all the blood and could only watch as her daughter was wheeled away on a gurney. “G. W.,” she said, almost spitting the letters out. She pulled Derrick and me out of there and walked us home.

  No one had to explain anything to Mom or tell her how she should respond. She just acted. She grabbed her pistol and got in her car. She drove around Tampa, looking for her evil son-in-law. She didn’t find him, which I guess is good. But I have no doubt at all in my mind: If she had, she wouldn’t have suggested an anger-management course. G. W. would have been lying in the next pool of blood.

  He was arrested a few days later and taken off to prison for a long, long time. Miraculously, Merc didn’t die from her wounds, although she would never be the same again. She still suffers from seizures and carries a bullet in her head.

  How could these things happen in the same family that was so supportive and made me feel so secure? That’s not an easy question. For a long time, I buried most of these dark family memories. I took comfort from all the love I got at home, which truly was the vast majority of my experience, and I shrugged off the rest. I never wanted to dwell on the bad parts. But they must have affected me somehow. Did they plant silent seeds that grew into adult demons? Did I absorb unhealthy patterns that played out later on? Being related to all these people, did I have some genetic tendency to take reckless risks in my own life? Or is the majority of the responsibility my own? I’ve spent a lot of years trying to untangle all that. And the answer to all those questions, I am convinced, is yes. Yes, my upbringing had a huge affect on me. Yes, my family helped to shape the person I became. And yes, the choices I made—the good and the bad ones—had a giant affect as well.

  Certainly, my family, like a lot of families, was a whole lot more complicated than I realized when I was growing up. But
here’s the strange part that gives me hope today: Whatever else was happening inside my family, I always felt loved, supported, and appreciated. I loved them, and they loved me. My family background might have set some traps for me. But it also laid a foundation for all I have been able to achieve in my life. I’m convinced that kids have a much higher tolerance than we give them credit for, as long as they feel that love.

  I sure hope so, given some of my own failings as a dad.

  3

  Young Phenom

  MY DAD TAUGHT ME how to throw a curveball when I was seven years old. I wouldn’t recommend it. Before the age of twelve or thirteen, the weird, twisting motion can do real damage to a child’s undeveloped arm. There’s also the tendency for the kid—or the parent or the coach—to see the curve working and get all excited. Suddenly, the precocious young pitcher is throwing curveballs all day long. Better to stick with fastballs and changeups for a while.

  But one day in the park, my dad showed me how to grip the ball with my middle finger on one of the long seams and my thumb just beside the seam on the other side of the ball. “Your hand should form a little C,” he told me. “Pretend you’re holding a cup of juice.”

  And right before I released the ball, he said, I should snap my wrist just so, letting the ball tumble off my index finger and fly toward the plate with a forward topspin.

  “See it dive?” he asked.

  I did. The ball started high then dropped suddenly as it approached home plate.

  “Not bad,” he said.

  There was no denying it. I had a pretty good curveball for a seven-year-old, and I threw a lot of them.

  Learning to throw a curve so young would turn out to be a key factor in my baseball and personal development, for bad and good reasons. Years later, people would ask whether I had been pushed too hard too early, and that’s a legitimate question to raise. But those early curveballs also did something very positive for me. They gave me some of my earliest hints that I might have real talent on a pitcher’s mound.