Doc: A Memoir

by Dwight Gooden

  He caught my eye and motioned to me to keep the noise down. I nodded back to him.

  “Come on, guys,” I said, addressing my friends. “Let’s cool it.”

  “What are you talkin’ about?” one of the guys asked.

  I nodded toward the cop. “Him,” I said.

  The table erupted again in laughter. “We’re not being that loud,” my friend said. The table laughed even harder.

  The cop said nothing else. He just got up and moved—not farther away from us, but closer, with his back to us. Maybe he was eavesdropping on our conversation. He was still sitting there when we finished up, paid the bill, and drove off toward a party at another friend’s house—a convoy of young black males in luxury and sports cars.

  We headed west on Fowler Avenue toward Nebraska Avenue, not a great area in Tampa. Gary was in the first car in a brand-new red Corvette I had given him that year. Then it was Troy and me in my silver Mercedes 380SE with a license plate that said DOC, followed by Phil’s gold Datsun 280ZX and another Mercedes.

  We came up to the intersection, hoping to turn left. Another car was ahead of us, waiting for the traffic to clear. On the far side of the light, a Tampa police cruiser was facing us, watching us approach the intersection. I don’t know if it was just a coincidence or if the cop from Chili’s had tipped someone off. But Gary nudged out into the intersection. The car ahead of him made the left turn but the light changed while Gary was still in the intersection. I think seeing the cop made him nervous about running the light. So instead of punching through, he backed up and waited for the light to change again. When it turned green again, we all made it through. That’s when the cop threw on his lights and siren and pulled up behind Gary.

  But Gary had giant speakers in his back window. They made it hard to see and even harder to hear. I don’t think he knew the police car was there. Rather than keep pursuing Gary, the cop drifted back and pulled me over instead.

  I’d had a couple of beers, but wasn’t even close to drunk. I’m sure I wasn’t over the legal limit. I didn’t have any drugs in the car. “I can’t believe this,” I thought. I’d just spent a day doing some good at a charity outing, and now the cops are harassing me. Up ahead, I saw Gary pull his car over as well.

  A burly young cop leaned down and rapped on my window with his flashlight. “License and registration,” he said.

  “You already know who I am,” I sighed. “What did you pull me over for?”

  “Be quiet and hand me your license and registration.”

  This was already getting off to a bad start.

  “This is bullshit!” I fumed. As soon as the words left my mouth, I could see a half dozen cop cars swarming in. “Why are you guys always harassing me?” I said. “I’m tired of this.”

  “Listen,” the cop said sharply. “Knock it off or you’re going to jail.”

  “For what? You’re harassing me.”

  “That’s it,” the cop said, reaching for my door handle. “Get out of the car!”

  He was angry now. I got out and saw a handful of cops walking toward us. “You had no reason to stop me,” I said. “Explain what the stop is about.”

  “Again,” the cop warned. “Knock it off or you’re going to jail.”

  Gary and all my other friends were on the sidewalk now, watching from a distance. The cop saw them and asked, “They’re with you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “We’re all together. What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

  “Shut up!” he said.

  He reached for his cuffs. As he did, I made the mistake of reaching for his hand. It was just a reflex. I wasn’t trying to provoke him. But I shouldn’t have done that. I was thinking, “Hey, come on. You don’t need to lock me up.”

  To his credit, that cop wasn’t the one to explode. But when the other officers saw that, he couldn’t stop them from rushing me. They knocked me to the grass next to the boulevard. I took a beating on the ground—nightsticks, knees, and punches. One cop hit me in the head with an eighteen-inch flashlight. I tried to protect myself. I tried to fight back. But basically it was the Fourth of July going off on my face. The gold cap on my front tooth I got when I was a teenager? Gone. The tooth it covered? Gone.

  In all, the report said later, twenty-two Tampa police officers were on the scene. Nine dove into the ruckus. When I tried to stand, I was pushed backward. Gary rushed up and was quickly cuffed and arrested. I was pushing and shoving to get the cops off me. By that point, there were so many of them, they were punching each other. One cop saw me pushing and yelled, “He’s going for your piece!”

  That led to another flurry of punches as another cop pulled his pistol out and pointed it under my chin.

  “Say your prayers, motherfucker!” he shouted.

  I thought for sure I was going to die. I immediately stopped moving.

  One cop got my left arm behind my back. He twisted it so hard, I cried out in pain. “Good!” I heard one of them yell. “Break his fucking arm!” I guess he’d forgotten I was a rightie.

  “Doc Gooden,” one cop said, spitting out my name. “Local fuckin’ hero. I’ll never watch another Mets game again.”

  A middle-aged white couple out for an evening stroll happened on the scene. When they saw what was happening, they stopped and shouted at the cops.

  “Why are you guys doing that to him?” the woman raged. “What’s going on here?”

  My blood was all over my shirt, not to mention the cops and the grass. The couple pleaded with the officers to let go of me.

  “Get out of here, or you’re going to jail,” one of the cops responded. “Get lost!”

  The arm twisting soon gave way to something worse, a chokehold around my neck. The more I resisted, the less I could breathe. For a second, I felt like giving up. I thought, “Okay, well, this is how I’m going to die.” Then, I got the idea of pretending I’d passed out. Maybe then they’d leave me alone. I went completely limp.

  “He’s out!” I heard someone say. “He’s out! Get off him!”

  At that point, the cops seemed to panic. Other officers pulled the chokehold cop off me. I lay on the ground, perfectly still, hearing more sirens and cops barking orders.

  A couple of them picked me up, shackled me, and threw me in the back of a police car. As we started to move, I looked out the window. I discovered we were headed nowhere near the police station. Instead, we pulled into the empty parking lot at the Tampa Greyhound Track on Nebraska Avenue. “They’re going to kill me,” I thought. “This is the perfect spot to get rid of me.”

  I had never been more frightened in my life.

  They pulled me out of the car and sat me on the pavement. My bleeding head was resting against one of the back tires of the police car. They started discussing strategy. Radios and walkie-talkies were chirping with activity. More sirens were coming our way. A paramedic truck arrived. Two black cops showed up. They weren’t going to kill me after all, I decided. They were just trying to make what happened look less black and white. The black cops rode with me to the hospital, where I got twenty stitches in my head, before they took me to jail. I was charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and battery on a police officer—I never served a day on any of them. A few hours later, I was released on my own recognizance.

  When my parents came to pick me up, my mom took one look at me and started bawling. It had taken a little more than a month for me to go from World Champion to “black-male Gooden, violent perp,” beaten by the police in my own hometown.

  When we got home, news trucks were parked all over my neighborhood. It looked like draft day all over again. Only this time, the angle wasn’t “local boy makes good.” Family members started arriving right away, including some of my bad-ass cousins from my mother’s side who like to settle their grievances with gunplay. Quickly, they hatched a plan.

  “Let’s get these motherfuckers,” one of them said.

  The idea was that we would get our revenge by driving aroun
d Tampa at a high rate of speed. Then, when a cop pulled us over—any cop—bang! We were going to blast him.

  I am not normally an angry person. But I was so filled with rage, this actually made sense to me. We mentioned none of it to my mom and dad, of course. But five of us slipped out to my oldest cousin’s pickup—three in the front, two in the back. I was in the cab. Two or three of my cousins had guns. All of us were cursing the police. We were going to right this wrong in one bloody flourish.

  We made it a single block before I came to my senses. “I can’t go through with this,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” my oldest cousin asked, patting his pistol. “This is real!”

  “Nah,” I said. “This is crazy. This isn’t going to help. It’s just gonna get me locked up for a long time.”

  I got out of the truck and walked back to my parents’ house.

  The local papers were all writing about what happened to me. The NAACP was calling the incident “racial.” The Tampa police said their officers used reasonable force in trying to subdue me and defended the department’s relationship with the local black community. But by Christmas, the US Department of Justice was investigating why the cops had pulled us over and whether they had used excessive force. Tampa mayor Sandra Freedman said the case showed an urgent need for more black police.

  My lawyer, Joseph Ficarrotta, filed civil suits against the Tampa Police Department and General Hospital, which we won. He had a field day with the cop race switch and the testimony of the nice, white couple who’d been passing by. We gave the money to charity.

  In January, I suggested to Gary that he and I take a trip to New York. We could get away from all the negativity in Tampa, I told him. We’d leave the cops and the news behind and spend some time together like we used to. I knew it would take me away from the partying too. Maybe, I thought, I could get my life under slightly better control. A memorabilia dealer I knew, Mead Chasky, agreed to pick us up at LaGuardia Airport. We’d hang at my apartment, hit the city, and forget about all the craziness since the World Series.

  Good idea, in theory.

  After the plane landed, Gary and I walked up the Jetway, and the first people to greet us were half a dozen officers from Port Authority Police, all dressed in nice dark suits.

  “Are you Dwight Gooden?” one of them asked.

  Gary was right beside me. I felt so terrible for him. The look on his face was priceless. Somewhere between disgust and disbelief. I imagine my face said, “Here we go again.”

  “You have to come this way,” the officer said.

  “What’s this about?” I asked, trying to stay calmer this time.

  “Do you know a woman named Carlene Pearson?”

  “Yes?”

  “She tried to bring a loaded handgun into the terminal.”

  “Hmmmm,” I thought of saying, “maybe I don’t know her.” I didn’t say that.

  We went into a security office, and there sat my ex-girlfriend Carlene along with Mead and Lisa Strawberry, Darryl’s wife. Talk about a dangerous pair!

  I did what I could to help Carlene. “She carries the weapon for protection,” I said. “I’m sure she meant no harm.”

  “I forgot it was in my purse,” Carlene interrupted.

  I knew about the gun. In early 1985, one of my cousins gave her a small .38 Derringer for safety. But please! I didn’t think she’d be bringing it into airports—especially not in New York with its no-messing-around gun-control laws. Apparently, she’d been out with Lisa. They bumped into Mead. He mentioned he was picking me up at the airport. Carlene and Lisa thought it might be a great chance to catch up.

  Just great.

  Gary was beyond pissed when I drove to the courthouse to bail Carlene out, even more so when she showed up at the apartment and insisted on coming out to dinner with us in Great Neck at Peter Luger Steakhouse. He didn’t say one word the entire meal. He just shook his head and mumbled, “I can’t believe—.”

  Back in Tampa, I partied right into spring training.

  What started out being fun was quickly becoming a habit I couldn’t realistically control. The important things in my life—my dad, Monica, Gary, little Dwight Junior, even baseball—were all being elbowed aside for cocaine. I didn’t see it at the time. I thought I was just hanging out and having a normal young man’s good time. But my real priority was to get high. And the results weren’t pretty. Often, I felt crappy in the morning. I was hanging out with people I wouldn’t normally hang out with. And I was hurting those closest to me. I didn’t know when to stop. I was the guy from last night who was still wearing a party hat while the maid was vacuuming the living room rug. Everyone else had gone off to work, and I couldn’t make it off the couch.

  The 1986 World Series New York Mets were already beginning to change. Ray Knight had left in free agency. With his departure, a major stabilizing force was gone from the club. I told myself this wasn’t affecting my pitching. But one morning in spring training when I didn’t feel like practicing, I lied to Davey Johnson and told him a friend had been in a car wreck. Other days, I showed up with red eyes and a bad attitude. I snapped at ball boys and fellow players, which was out of character for me. And I wasn’t pitching right. My first time on the mound in spring training, I gave up nine runs in the first inning.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have made that comment back in November about being drug-tested. One day early in spring training, my agent, Jim, mentioned to me on the phone, “The Mets want you to agree to some drug tests. It’s part of reworking your contract.”

  “I’ve got it under control,” I told him. “No problem.”

  “They could be coming very soon,” Jim warned me.

  “That’s fine,” I said. I had the bravado and delusion of a real coke addict. I thought I’d beaten the system all winter, when in truth the things I’d been doing had everyone suspicious about me and drugs. No one who’s behaving himself is the subject of that many rumors or has that many mishaps.

  When I walked into practice one morning in late March, the Mets’ trainer, Steve Garland, came over to me.

  “Hey, Doc,” he said, sounding unusually serious. “I need to get some urine from you.” He handed me a plastic cup.

  A quick wave of fear rushed over me. I tried to think of how I could duck this. I couldn’t think of anything. Cocaine, I had heard, stays in the system a good seventy-two hours. I had used less than twelve hours before. I peed in the cup and hoped for the best.

  For the next few days, I heard nothing at all. I figured I had dodged that bullet. Then I arrived at camp one morning about a week later, and the man who drafted me, Joe McIlvaine, told me Frank Cashen wanted to see me in his office.

  That couldn’t be good.

  Jim, my agent, was already sitting with Frank when I walked in. So was Steve, the trainer who had taken my pee.

  “Dwight, sit down,” Frank said solemnly. His expression was flat. He was as pale as I’d ever seen him. He seemed hurt more than mad. “We have some bad news here.”

  “Okay,” I answered. My mind began to scramble for answers. Excuses. An alibi. Anything. I knew I would have to say something.

  “You tested positive for cocaine,” Frank said.

  “They must have gotten my test mixed up,” I blurted. “I can retake it. It’s wrong!”

  “No,” Frank said quietly. “It’s not wrong. We’ve been worried for quite some time.”

  “There’s got to be a mistake!” I protested. “I’ve never done drugs. Never will.”

  But my lying didn’t seem to be working with Frank.

  “There’s no mistake,” he said.

  Then he just sat there. His silence filled the room. Jim wasn’t saying anything to help me get a retest. Steve Garland was examining his shoes. Joe McIlvaine just looked let down.

  “You have a choice,” Frank explained slowly and patiently. “We want you to get help. You can go to rehab and earn your salary. Or you can skip rehab, and face a yearlong suspension without pa
y.”

  I just wanted to leave the room. The walls felt like they were closing in. So I stalled. “Can I think about this and come back to you tomorrow?” I asked.

  “Dwight,” Frank said sternly. “We need to act on this ASAP. You’ve got five minutes to give me an answer. Here’s a phone if you need to call someone.” He slid his desk phone toward me. I didn’t have anyone to call. I couldn’t imagine discussing this with my parents. I didn’t have the guts. It struck me immediately that no matter what I chose, I’d be starting the season far, far away from the Mets.

  I started bawling.

  But I cried more because I was caught, not because I’d come to any realization that I needed help. “I’ll do the treatment,” I said.

  “That’s good,” Frank said.

  “I think it’s for the best,” Jim said, nodding.

  Dr. Allan Lans, a psychiatrist who had been hired by the Mets to work with troubled players, came into the room. He told me about the Smithers Addiction Treatment and Research Center on Manhattan’s West Side. “I think it’s the best place for you to go,” he said. I’d be far away from Tampa, he explained, and in New York, the Mets could keep an eye on me. He said he’d fly up there with me that night.

  The drive from the training facility in St. Petersburg to my parents’ house in Tampa seemed to pass in about thirty seconds. It wasn’t nearly enough time for me to think of the perfect way to break this news to them. Just seeing me walk through the door at eleven a.m. would be alarming, I knew. Wasn’t I supposed to be at practice? From the looks on their faces, I didn’t have to open my mouth for my mom and dad to know something was wrong. I just blurted it out.

  “I’m afraid I have some bad news,” I said, borrowing Frank’s opening line with me. “I tested positive for cocaine.” My mother’s eyes widened and she gasped. Then she began to cry. “Oh, Baby,” she said. My father stared straight ahead. He didn’t say a word. He turned and walked to the sofa.

  “I’ve agreed to get treatment,” I told them. Still my dad said nothing. My mother hugged me. “I’ll get the help I need, and I’ll be as good as new.” My mother nodded her head against my chest.