Doc: A Memoir

by Dwight Gooden

  My father’s health had deteriorated so much that he spent a chunk of 1991 in New York City at the Hospital for Special Surgery, where more attention could be paid to his kidney function. It wasn’t easy seeing him in such poor shape. But we got to spend more time together than we had in years. I was maturing. He got to see his granddaughter. And we could talk baseball in person in the middle of a season, which is something we hadn’t done in years.

  At the same time, the Mets weren’t giving me much to smile about. It wasn’t fun being at the ballpark and not in the pennant race. Hearing guys talk about their off-season plans in August was depressing. And I could tell something was really wrong with my arm. By September, the doctors determined I had a partial tear of my rotator cuff and labrum. I’d have to undergo surgery if I wanted to play again next year. The defeatist talk around the clubhouse was that if we didn’t make the playoffs, at least we would probably be in second place. I started wondering what it might be like to play for some other team.

  Looking back, I can see now that spring training of 1992 was the beginning of the end of the Mets for me. I had a rush of bad news early that year. My mom’s mom passed away, which was tough on my whole family. Then Darryl Strawberry’s first autobiography, Darryl, came out in March. In it, he basically accused me—falsely—of getting high during the 1986 playoff series. “If he was using cocaine during the series, I wouldn’t have been surprised in the least because the pressure was so intense it made everyone do crazy things,” Darryl wrote about me. The media were all over that loaded sentence.

  Thanks, man. I thought we were friends.

  Now a new season was about to begin. And instead of answering questions about baseball and our hopes for the season, I was being grilled about stuff that happened six years earlier, propelled by the false allegations of my supposed good friend.

  Yes, I’d gotten high after the Series. No, not during the postseason play.

  That may not have seemed important to Darryl. It was very important to me.

  In the course of 342 pages, Darryl credited himself for most of the good things that happened on the team in the eight years he was a Met and blamed his teammates, the front office, racism, you name it—anything but Darryl—for the shortcomings. And to make the book even harder to swallow, he’d asked me to write the introduction, which I did before I ever read the book, saying a whole bunch of nice things about him.

  “A person I came to rely on as a friend… Darryl stood up for me… stormed out on the field to help me”—blah, blah, blah. “Everyone who reads this book can now meet the Darryl Strawberry I know—the real Darryl.”

  Um, not quite.

  I spoke to Darryl after the book came out. I told him I was really pissed. “You don’t say these kind of things about your friends,” I said. “Stuff that’s not even true.” He got all sheepish with me and apologized. That was just Darryl. He was constantly doing that. He’d say something terrible about one of his teammates, then feel bad about it. Or he’d get confronted about what he said. Quickly, he’d apologize. Then, soon enough he was out trashing his teammates again.

  When reporters asked him why he wrote that about me, he admitted that he hadn’t seen me using during the playoffs or the World Series. “I was talking about my year in ’86 being involved in heavy drinking and partying,” he said. “The issue came up about other players.” He said his coauthor, Art Rust Jr., asked him about coke and me: “Did you think he was using?”

  “I said I wouldn’t be surprised because the next spring he checked himself into Smithers,” Darryl said, hedging yet again. “Now what’s wrong with that?”

  Darryl’s literary hand grenade wasn’t the biggest challenge of that ugly spring. A woman I had sex with during spring training in 1991 decided a year later to tell local police that she’d been raped—setting off another media frenzy and shaking my whole world. Jeff Torborg, our new manager, must have been wondering why he’d ever accepted this crazy job.

  Here’s what happened: on March 30, I’d been out for drinks with outfielders Vince Coleman and Daryl Boston at a nightclub in Jupiter, Florida, called Jox. It wasn’t far from our spring training facility in Port St. Lucie. The whole area was fairly sleepy back then. Every spring, the Mets were about the only attraction in town. At night, we’d go out drinking and looking for women, and women would go out drinking and looking for Mets. The hookups were never hard to come by. This particular night, I met a thirty-one-year-old woman, and we started talking upstairs. It was getting late. Vince and Daryl decided to go back to the house I was renting and crash. The woman and I stayed at the club, dancing and getting to know each other. Then she drove us back to my place. When we got there, Vince and Daryl were on the couch in the living room, playing R.B.I. Baseball on the Nintendo. We walked past the two of them and into the bedroom, where she and I had sex. When we came out, she hung around for more drinks.

  “You ever been with three guys in a night?” Vince asked, jokingly.

  “Two,” she said. “Never three.”

  Vince then asked if she wanted to go into the bedroom with him, and she said yes. Before the night was over, all of us had had sex with her.

  I was married. This was wrong. But it wasn’t rape.

  The following day, players were comparing notes on their nights out. Daryl Boston told Ron Darling what had happened back at my house. When Daryl described the woman, Ron said, “Oh, man, didn’t you know? She’s going out with David.”

  Nothing happened for a long time. Then, suddenly, a whole season later, she went to the cops. And Frank Cashen, yet again, was calling me into his office for a serious chat. I truly had no idea this one was coming.

  “Do you have an attorney?” he asked.

  “No, why?”

  “You’re being accused of rape.”

  This wasn’t the first time Frank had to make a speech like this to a player. David Cone had been the focus of a sex-assault investigation in Philadelphia toward the end of the previous season. From what I heard, he’d shunned an “old reliable” and chosen a different groupie, leaving the first woman upset enough to accuse him of assaulting her. Wasn’t that what Hubie Brooks had warned about my rookie year? Frank told David he could be arrested at any moment. In the end, he wasn’t. Fairly quickly, the authorities decided not to charge him at all, but not before the woman’s allegation was all over the media.

  I told Frank I’d get a lawyer. In Port St. Lucie, I was concerned about how the local folks would react as word spread that three black ballplayers had been accused of raping a white woman. I was also concerned about spending the next decade or two in a Florida prison. All of the New York papers sent more reporters down to cover the story. They began to fight with one another over scoops on the case. For six weeks, what was left of my reputation was debated and trashed.

  Vince, Daryl, and I all passed polygraphs, and the woman’s case began to fall apart. It turned out she had some history making similar allegations. On April 15, State Attorney Bruce Colton announced the cases were being dropped. Citing “an accumulation of problems” with the evidence, Colton said that prosecutors had come to doubt “whether there was a likelihood of a conviction.”

  But I definitely didn’t get off free. Nor did those who loved me. Monica, pregnant with our second daughter, was crushed by the whole episode, as was my mother, who was still dealing with the grief from her own mom’s death. They always believed I didn’t rape the woman. But Monica wasn’t buying my story that nothing had happened between me and the woman. I never admitted anything to Monica. I just counted myself lucky the case never went to trial. For sure, I would have had to testify.

  Nineteen ninety-two turned into 1993. Jeff Torborg was replaced by Dallas Green, the John Wayne of major-league baseball. Dallas looked at me and saw the last of the bad-boy Mets, and I think he wanted me gone. By 1994, I certainly made that easy for him.

  12

  Sliding Back

  OPENING DAY AT WRIGLEY isn’t supposed to feel good
. Winter is always slow to pack in Chicago. On this day, April 4, 1994, the temperature said fifty-three degrees. To a pitcher raised in Tampa, it felt more like forty-three, maybe thirty-three with the wind chill.

  But I wasn’t worried. I took pride in my ability to handle the Cubs, no matter what the circumstances. Going into this game, I was 26–4 against them, my best against any team in baseball. I’d beaten them at Shea to get to the playoffs in 1986, hadn’t I? Okay, so it wasn’t 1986 anymore. The Mets had lost one hundred games in 1993, and it was hard to say why ’94 would be much better. Dallas Green was our third manager in four years, fourth if you count the seven games in 1991 with interim Mike Cubbage. I’d lost fifteen games in ’93, the most in my career, and I’d lost thirteen the season before. Though I was only twenty-nine, the injuries to my arm and shoulder were forcing me to reimagine my whole pitching style. I was entering the final year of my contract with a team of semi-unknowns behind me. I was going to start the season by handling Chicago.

  I took the hill and went 3 and 2 on leadoff hitter Tuffy Rhodes before he hit one over my head and I watched it sail on the wind out of the ballpark. It didn’t feel like a very good omen. But we got a couple of runs back, turning their 1–0 into our 2–1. In the bottom of the third, the Cubs got the first two batters on base and up came Tuffy to the plate.

  Bang! He did it again. Out of the park in center field.

  As he trotted around the bases, I felt like maybe he was admiring his work a little too long. Another home run? Who the hell was this kid? A twenty-five-year-old semiscrub who’d played in barely one hundred games across four major-league seasons, clubbing all of five home runs combined, with a career average in the mid-.200s? In the top of the fifth, the Mets didn’t pinch hit for me, and I helped my cause with a two-run single. By the end of our half of the inning, we were up 9–5.

  Opening the bottom of the fifth Tuffy was back again. My plan was to drill him. Show him I wasn’t happy about his recent performance and that long diva gaze at his last home run. I didn’t want the ump to toss me from the game. So I had to make it look good. My first couple of pitches would be unhittable curveballs, just a little wild. Then I’d find a home for one in Tuffy’s rib cage. That was the idea.

  Well, plans don’t always work out like you expect. Tuffy hit my second curveball into the center-field bleachers, exactly where the other two shots had gone. Some guy no one had ever heard of had just made major-league history hitting home runs off of me in his first three at bats on opening day. At the end of the inning, I was furious with myself. I marched into the dugout and, in my frustration, did something stupid. I kicked a bat rack and injured my right big toe. I pitched a couple more innings. I hobbled right to the ice bucket.

  I didn’t want anyone to know the truth about how I hurt my foot. It was too embarrassing. And the media had fun with the minor mystery. Even the New York Times jumped in: “Is a bent spike jamming into the big toe a common baseball injury?”

  I missed my next start, trying to ignore the pain. I was sure my toe was fine. By the end of April, as I pitched in Los Angeles against the Dodgers, the pain became too much. People were starting to talk about my limp. After the game, I went on the thirty-day disabled list. An MRI revealed ligament and cartilage damage.

  Kicking that bat rack was really childish.

  I was too injured to play, but not so hobbled that I was immobilized. My rehab schedule was to go easy on the foot and wait out the pain. Without a ball and a glove, my drinking and carousing went off the charts. And, with that, other temptations crept back in.

  I wasn’t using yet. But my mind was opening to it.

  When I started feeling better, the Mets decided I should get back in shape by pitching a couple of minor-league games. At the end of May, I flew down to Virginia and played a few games with the AAA Norfolk Tides at Harbor Park.

  When I got there, I couldn’t help but notice that there was no drug tester around. Maybe it was the minor leagues. Maybe they were starting to trust me. Maybe they shouldn’t have.

  I was scheduled for a Friday night start in Binghamton, the AA affiliate in upstate New York. Then on Saturday, I’d be back in the big game when I’d meet the major-league team in Ohio. But that wasn’t for a couple of days. Before I headed upstate, I decided to celebrate my return at a sports-themed strip club in Queens called Scores.

  I had a wife, a son, and two young daughters by then, plus another son on the way. But my addiction was taking me out on the town again. This time, it wasn’t a steakhouse with Rusty. It wasn’t beers with Keith or Ron. It had nothing to do with miniatures on the team plane. This time, I figured, I’d just go out alone. As far as I was concerned, no one could keep up with my drinking. And no one had to know what I was doing.

  This was a world before Twitter, blogs, and cell phone cameras. It was possible to go to a strip club with no fear of Page Six or TMZ.com. Some of the dancers knew me. One of them gave me a lap dance. We were just having fun.

  “How about a more private dance?” she asked me.

  I nodded.

  “It’d be nicer up in the manager’s office,” she said.

  Okay. She took my hand and led me upstairs. Another dancer followed. It wasn’t long before both girls were totally naked, playfully rubbing up against each other and me. All three of us were laughing and doing shots. Pretty soon, the coke came out.

  “Let’s do a line,” one of them said.

  “No, thanks,” I answered. I had willpower. I had limits. “Sorry, ladies. Enjoy yourselves. I’m getting tested. Can’t share.”

  They kept snorting. I got more drunk. The seed that was planted in my brain in Norfolk was flowering now.

  “Hmmm, they didn’t test me down there,” I thought.

  One of the strippers chopped the cocaine with a razor blade on the glass-top desk before snorting the powder through a plastic cocktail straw. She slid the straw slowly and seductively.

  I thought some more: “They must not be testing at minor-league parks. They probably won’t test me in Binghamton. And anyway, that’s forty-eight hours from now.”

  I began to make some drunken calculations. Creative accounting, fueled by many shots of Absolut vodka.

  The addict in me began to bargain. I could probably metabolize the coke and piss it out quickly, I told myself. I’ll bet I could be peeing clean by Binghamton. Right about then, my attention was drawn to the eye-popping scene unfolding in front of me. Looking through one stripper’s legs, I could see the other one tap-tap-tapping more cocaine from the baggie to the desk.

  “I doubt they’ll have a tester in Cincinnati over the weekend,” I told myself.

  “Oh, that’s fuckin’ good,” the baggie girl said, answering my unspoken thought and Hoovering the powder into her nose. I heard her swallow, powerfully, as she let the coke drip from her sinuses down into the back of her throat.

  I knew that feeling.

  I liked that feeling.

  I missed that feeling.

  I wanted that feeling.

  Now.

  More math: “The soonest my next test could be is over ninety-six hours!”

  I was sold. “Maybe I’ll try just one or two,” I said.

  I snorted a line. The disease reawakened instantly. I was right back where I was in 1986. It was like a carnival worker had just lowered the metal protective bar on the roller coaster car. I settled in and waved good-bye.

  I snorted another line. Then I had another gulp of vodka. It all felt good. My mind started reeling. All I was feeling was satisfied. “I’ve got some drinks,” I was thinking. “I’ve got some strippers. I’ve got some coke.”

  In other words, I wasn’t thinking at all.

  I was no longer worried about when the next drug test might be coming. “That’s so far away,” I thought. And the plans kept coming.

  “I’ll get someone else to take it for me.”

  “I’ll duck the guy.”

  “If it comes back dirty, I’ll claim, ‘Sc
rewup at the lab.’”

  I stayed out all night. I called a number I had never forgotten. I bought more coke. I did more coke. After seven years clean, I was back in business again.

  It was already dawn, and I was totally wasted when I drove back to my house in Roslyn, Long Island. I sobered up. I drove to Binghamton. I guessed correctly. No tester appeared. I pitched. I felt great. No one had any idea where I’d been.

  I just felt like I’d been lucky and had gotten away with something cool. No harm, no foul. There was just one problem: getting lucky proved to my addict’s mind that I could do it again.

  I flew to Cincinnati, reaching the ballpark around five p.m. The game was scheduled for seven. At about five forty-five, one of the trainers came over to me and casually said, “Your guy is here.”

  Boom! There he was. The tester who’d stood next to me as I peed into dozens of cups already. He was one of several, but I recognized him immediately. Short, stocky, friendly, totally clueless about my recent whereabouts. “Hey Doc!” he said cheerfully.

  I could hear my heartbeat in my ears.

  “How you doin’?” I answered with a smile.

  I could feel my insides shaking. My breathing seemed strange. I was already in my uniform, but I was ready to run out of the stadium. Call for a taxi, claim a family emergency, hop on a plane, and hide somewhere.

  “Doc Gooden got kidnapped”; “Doc Gooden fell asleep behind the concession stand.” Any excuse would be better than filling a cup with coke-heavy urine.

  “Be with you in a minute,” I told the tester, standing and walking toward the locker-room door. “I’ve got BP,” batting practice, I said. “But I’ll be right back.”

  I didn’t know what I was going to do. I needed time to think.

  I sprinted across the outfield a few times, not really knowing why. Maybe I could sweat the cocaine out. That made no sense. Maybe one of the clubhouse kids would pee in the cup for me. Wait, that made no sense. The cup had a temperature gauge to make the sure the urine was recent. The tester worked for Major League Baseball. He wasn’t about to look the other way. I knew I was doomed.