Doc: A Memoir

by Dwight Gooden

  I was free to go. But now I wasn’t only facing serious criminal charges. The state was taking a serious look at something I cared about at least as much as my freedom—my fitness as a father to my kids. Actually, I cared about that even more.

  19

  Room Service

  I CAME OUT OF THE HOUSE the next morning in my usual baggy gray sweats. About a dozen reporters were waiting for me in the driveway. I had never ducked reporters, not since Rusty Staub lectured me in my rookie year. But the accident had happened just twenty-four hours earlier. I’d barely had time to speak to a lawyer. There wasn’t much I could say.

  “Now is not the time,” I said. “Sorry.”

  Since I wouldn’t comment, the reporters called Ron Goldstein, who had been booking me for public appearances and had become my manager and close friend. Ron tried to put the best possible spin on what led up to the crash. “Doc would never deliberately do anything to put his children at risk,” Ron said. “He is a very good father and a very good friend.”

  The Mets got calls too. My arrest was yet another Gooden embarrassment for them. Even my old friend Jay Horwitz, who was always looking out for me, would say only, “The Mets are aware of the situation.” He did make clear that my planned induction into the Mets Hall of Fame was still on the team calendar in August.

  My old teammates mostly just winced. “This is very sad because I care about Doc and I worry about him,” said Keith Hernandez, who’d moved into the Mets broadcast booth.

  My old pal Bob Klapisch wrote a piece for the Bergen Record in New Jersey quoting someone who claimed to be one of my closest friends: “As much as I hate to say it, whatever Dwight’s got coming to him, he deserves it this time.” I didn’t know for sure who said that. But knowing the star player Bob had talked to in the past about me, I thought I had a pretty good idea.

  Waking up and looking at Dylan asleep in his bed, seeing the look in Monique’s eyes, then reading those quotes in the paper—I felt like I’d let everyone down all over again. Over the next days and weeks, I tried to construct in my mind how the accident had happened. Was drowsiness a common side effect of Ambien? Had the coke I had taken many hours earlier somehow made me ripe for a blackout? Had I seemed out of it to Monique as Dylan and I walked to the driveway?

  I wracked my brain.

  The charges were forwarded by the Franklin Lakes Police to the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office. The most serious was child endangerment. Under New Jersey law, my lawyer told me, I could go to prison for ten to twenty years. My freedom and my role as a father were both in serious jeopardy. All of this was weighing on me, and things were getting even more tense around the house.

  “What the hell were you were thinking?” Monique demanded.

  “I’m sorry,” I kept saying. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened. I thought I was okay to drive. You think I wanted to put Dylan’s life at risk?”

  Monique and I had fought before, but now we were arguing all the time. I started sleeping down in the basement. I’d leave the house and stay out for hours. I’d come home and sit in the dark and not talk to anyone. “We just had another baby!” she yelled. “And now this?”

  I had to try to make some changes, as much as I was capable of. After the accident, I knew I had to stay away from cocaine. And I did for a while. But I was still self-medicating with alcohol, with the same predictable consequences. I was using the alcohol to dull the guilt and the shame. That made things even worse. Then I would feel more guilt and shame, which I tried to drown in more alcohol.

  My marriage was pretty much over.

  Every time Monique and I would get into it, she would call the investigators from the state’s Division of Youth and Family Services and tell them, “He’s high around the kids again,” which wasn’t true. “You have to do something.”

  She cried on the phone.

  She demanded they arrest me.

  She accused me of threatening her.

  Some days, she called ten or twenty times.

  The truth is I never threatened her. I wasn’t using drugs in the house. I wasn’t acting out violently. Mostly, I was just morose. I stayed inside, up in my bedroom or down in the basement, cut off from my own family and from the outside world, depressed, withdrawn, and miserable.

  In late April, state investigators ordered me removed from my home. “You can’t be here,” the social worker said. “You have to move out.”

  I didn’t fight it.

  On May 1, I moved to a Comfort Inn on Route 17 in Paramus. Monique took Dylan and baby Milan and moved back to her parents’ house in Columbia, Maryland. We ended our lease on the house in Franklin Lakes. I was totally depressed and feeling sorry for myself. I couldn’t stand all this drama and bitterness and the constant allegations. Now the thought of losing contact with my two youngest children, the only two who’d known me as a full-time live-in dad—that was almost too much to bear.

  All I wanted to do was to hide from myself and the world. Behind the locked door of room 133 of that suburban Comfort Inn, at least I could find some relief in the drugs.

  I stayed inside the room almost twenty-four hours a day and revved up my coke habit again. I still had some money from doing public appearances, and there was a dealer I knew who would drive to the hotel and make small deliveries. I slept at strange hours. I paced around the room. I watched TV a lot, hours and hours and hours of ESPN. I kept forgetting to charge my cell phone. The room had a Jacuzzi, but I was too paranoid to use it. I thought I might slide into the water and drown. I did more coke.

  I couldn’t stand the idea of anyone seeing me like this. I would sneak out at night and get something to eat. I’d go to Wendy’s. I’d go to Dunkin’ Donuts. There was a Red Lobster next to the hotel. A couple of times, I went in there. But that wasn’t quick enough for me. No telling who might see me in there.

  I’d go to the ATM when I ran out of money, but I wouldn’t go inside the bank.

  Sometimes, when the maids would come to the door, I’d say, “Leave the towels outside.” Then later, I’d carry the clean ones into the room and leave the dirties in the hall. Several times, I called the desk clerks to change the key card for my room. In my paranoia, I had the idea someone might be sneaking in when I walked out for my Wendy’s Baconator burger, fries, and Frosty.

  I had a few public appearances that summer. Not too many, but a few. I turned down some jobs that people called or texted me about. I just didn’t think I could do them. I tried to clean up for the ones I did, just enough to do my appearance and make a little money and get out of there as fast as I could. I did what I could to hide the shape I was in. I don’t know if the casual fans could tell how messed up I was. I hope no one saved those pictures.

  A few people pulled me aside and said, “Hey, Doc, hang in there.…” “I got twenty years.…” “I got eighteen years.…” “You can do this.” They were telling me they knew I was struggling. They wanted me to know they were pulling for me.

  My wife was gone. I wasn’t seeing my kids. I wasn’t even calling my mother in Florida. I didn’t know what to say the couple of times she got me on the phone and she asked, “How are you, baby?” I had almost no communication with anyone. It was just me and my drugs, feeling sorry for ourselves. Instead of once or twice a week, soon I was using two or three days in a row.

  I thought constantly about the accident. How it could have happened. How it was ruining my life even more than my life was already ruined. How mad I was at Monique for making me sound even worse than I was and taking my kids away from me. How much I blamed myself. And any time I needed more to worry about, there was the real possibility I’d be heading off to prison again—and not just for a couple of months this time. And when I’d sober up from being high, the guilt and shame would wash over me again. Which, of course, pushed me to do more drugs.

  “I can’t live like this,” I told myself.

  The only person I spoke to regularly was Ron. He’d get takeout shrimp from the Re
d Lobster and sit in the room while I ate it. He kept saying, “Come stay with me. I’ve got room. This is too depressing. We’ll come up with a plan.”

  I wouldn’t budge. The thought of staying in the room seemed horrible. The thought of leaving seemed even worse. I knew this was no good for my disposition or my sanity, hiding in a room all day with the TV on and the curtains closed. But I couldn’t bear the glare of going outside. Truly, I hadn’t felt this low since I was lying on the bed in my Long Island apartment, missing the World Series parade.

  One day in June, Ron came to the hotel with our friend Carl and another guy. “You gotta get out of here,” he said. “I’m worried about what’s happening to you.”

  They didn’t threaten me exactly, but it was close. It was like the three of them had come to move me out of there, and they weren’t taking no for an answer. What gave them the right? I was really starting to think I wanted to die.

  “Okay,” I said finally, just to put Ron off. “I’ll come and stay with you tomorrow.”

  “Good,” he said. “That’s good.” For the first time in weeks, he seemed relieved.

  I excused myself and went into the bathroom, glad that was over and hoping they would leave. But when I came out, the three of them had taken all my clothes out of the closet and off the chairs where I’d left them and loaded everything in Ron’s car.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded.

  “You said you were coming over,” Ron said.

  “Tomorrow,” I corrected him. “Tomorrow. Give me my stuff back.”

  Ron refused. I demanded. Ron refused some more. We argued back and forth for almost an hour.

  “You have no right to take my clothes,” I told him.

  Eventually, Ron sent the other two out to the car. They returned to the room with my things.

  “Tomorrow,” Ron said as they finally left me alone.

  I didn’t leave the next day. Or the day after that. But the confrontation with Ron must have planted something in my head and opened my heart a little. On Sunday morning, I was lying in the king-size hotel bed. The curtains were still closed. I had the radio on. I was just lying in bed looking up at the ceiling, thinking about how messed up things were and how they couldn’t possibly get any better. At some point, I started talking to God.

  “Look,” I said, “if you can pull me out of this mess, or at least get me a couple days to get my head right, I’ll turn my life around and get back on track. I have to do something to get some focus, or I really will lose everything.”

  Just then, a song came on the radio. It was one of those gospel songs you hear on Sunday mornings, a song you probably wouldn’t hear any other day of the week. The singer had a giant voice that sounded like it could probably blow the roof off a crowded church. I’d never heard the song before or the singer. But it will stay in my head as long as I am alive. The singer’s name was Marvin Sapp.

  “I never would have made it without you,” he sang.

  Never would have made it,

  Never could have made it without you.

  I would have lost it all.

  But now I see how you were there for me.

  It wasn’t just the words. It was also the powerful way they were sung. Together, they pounded against me and cut through my fog. Hearing that song on the radio in that hotel room at just that moment, maybe that was the higher power people in recovery are always talking about. I’m not a real religious guy. I certainly wasn’t at that time. But something undeniable came over me.

  And I can say

  Never would have made it,

  Never could have made it,

  Without you

  The song went on for five or six minutes. It wasn’t a short song. And it hammered home that message over and over again. It overwhelmed me.

  I got up. I walked to Dunkin’ Donuts. I came back to the Comfort Inn. I took a good, long shower and let the hot water roll over me.

  I called Ron.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But if it’s okay, I’m gonna stay with you for a couple of days.”

  Ron didn’t hesitate a second. “I’m on my way,” he said.

  In twenty minutes, he was at my door.

  “Wow,” he said when he came in. “You look great.”

  That’s the day things began to change.

  PART IV

  Saving My Life

  20

  Fame Game

  I MOVED INTO RON’S HOUSE in Old Tappan, New Jersey, and started doing a little better right away. I felt a little weird, living with Ron and his wife, Angela, and their teenage daughters, Brianna and Sara—like what business did I have mooching off these nice people? But the whole family was totally welcoming to me. They didn’t ask a lot of questions. They never said, “How long are you staying?” or “When are you planning to leave?” They just let me live with them and build up my confidence and figure out what I was going to do next.

  I lived with the Goldsteins for several weeks. Then I rented an apartment in Edgewater and continued the slow process of trying to pull myself back up. I made myself eat more than Dunkin’ Donuts. I began working out at the gym. I started checking in regularly again with my mom and my sister Betty. Clearly, they’d been worried about me. I tried to reconnect with my older kids. My son Dwight Junior moved up from Tampa and started living with me. He had been working hard building his music career, and he wanted to make some New York connections.

  It wasn’t all perfect. It wasn’t as if I’d had a miraculous rebirth. I never stopped drinking. Every once in a while, I also used cocaine. I kept my worst instincts at bay by attending a day program in Manhattan called the Addiction Institute of New York, which was started by some people who used to work at Smithers. I definitely still had a lot of issues.

  But I was far better off than I’d been lying in bed with the curtains closed at the Route 17 Comfort Inn. Most important, I wasn’t feeling like giving up anymore. Ron and I started talking about what my next move should be.

  I had two big events on my calendar. One I was extremely excited about. The other one I was dreading. I was only hoping the two of them wouldn’t somehow collide.

  I knew that on August 1, I had my induction into the Mets Hall of Fame. I could still hardly believe my good fortune with that. It felt like a vindication to me. And I also had a court date coming up. I didn’t know when exactly. The case kept getting delayed. My lawyer was talking to the prosecutors. Various negotiations were going on. I was worried that the criminal case would scuttle the Hall of Fame. God, I hoped not. Who knew when I might get an honor like that again.

  Since my arrest, there had been a flurry of stories in the papers recounting almost every bad thing I had ever done. I wondered if Jeff Wilpon was already regretting his call. The bad-Doc publicity seemed to be everywhere. I’d gotten used to the papers publishing long chronologies, laying out every mistake I’d made since 1986. I didn’t like it, but I was used to it. But what my wife did, so close to the induction ceremony, caught me totally off-guard. Still spitting mad at me and blaming me for outrages true and false, Monique spoke to the New York Post and totally unloaded on me.

  “WIFE: GOODEN LEFT KIDS HIGH AND DRY,” the July 24 headline said.

  She accused me of abandoning her and the children. She called me a deadbeat dad. She said she had no idea where I was or how to reach me.

  That wasn’t true. Clearly, I’d been a bad husband in various ways. But I’d never, ever, ever run away from my kids. Accuse me of things I’m guilty of. There are more than enough of those. And my recent whereabouts had hardly been a secret since I’d left the Comfort Inn. I did an autograph signing at a hotel in New Jersey. I played in a charity softball game. I appeared at a baseball fan fest. It wouldn’t have taken Sherlock Holmes to track me down. I didn’t want a public feud with Monique. That was a bad idea for many reasons. I knew how dirty she could fight. I did what s
eemed right. I made double-sure my kids had what they needed. I tried to stay positive and look the other way.

  Monique wasn’t the only one I thought might try to derail my Hall of Fame induction. I got a call from my nephew Gary asking me what was going on. It turned out Darryl had dropped another of his little bombs. “Straw called,” Gary said. “He’s worried about you. He says you’re doing drugs and you’re dying.”

  “What? I’m fine, I’m doing good. I’m gonna be there.”

  This was becoming a pattern with Darryl, telling stories that had a kernel of truth. But he’d make the problems sound far, far worse than anything that was actually going on. And then he’d call people like Sheff or Monique or even Dr. Lans and say what a concerned friend he was. Of course, he’d never mention that he was doing many of the same bad things I was, worse sometimes.

  Darryl could be very convincing, and Gary sounded genuinely concerned. “Are you sure?” Gary asked. “He’s telling people you’re doing terribly. You’re living in a fleabag hotel.”

  Now I’d had some rough days back at the Comfort Inn. But I promise you, it was no fleabag, unless fleabags have started offering Jacuzzis and flat-screen TVs and Red Lobsters next door. On Darryl’s part, this felt like wishful thinking to me. I had the distinct idea—I couldn’t prove it but I don’t think I was wrong—that Darryl wasn’t too thrilled to be sharing his Hall of Fame spotlight with me. It was “Doc and Darryl, Darryl and Doc” all over again.

  And this wasn’t the first time Darryl had started downing me in the buildup to a big Mets alumni event. In 2008, a few months before the Shea Goodbye ceremony, he was down at spring training in Port St. Lucie when he gave an interview to our mutual friend Bob Klapisch. The headline in the next day’s Bergen Record summed up the piece fairly well. “GOODEN OUT OF CONTROL,” it said.

  Darryl admitted we hadn’t spoken for a year, but he made it sound like I was totally out of control. He said I was “in the middle of a long, downward spiral,” that my life “had turned into a blur of old addictions.” The way Klapisch wrote it up, he made Darryl sound like a perfect little angel and me totally on the skids. “As Gooden drifts out of control, Strawberry has found structure, if not peace,” Klapisch wrote.