Dwight “Doc” Gooden was to baseball what Tiger Woods is to golf: a player so talented and charismatic that people like me – who weren’t fans of his sport – tuned in just to watch him play.
Unfortunately, they shared a more fateful symmetry. Because Doc’s downfall at the height of his career presaged Tiger’s two decades later. Doc’s addiction to drugs caused his; whereas Tiger’s “addiction” to sex caused his.
But enough about Tiger! (To read more on his struggle for professional redemption, I refer you to “Tiger Masters The Masters … Again,” April 15, 2019.)
If you’re of a certain age, you undoubtedly remember the shock and disappointment the first headlines about Doc’s drug use caused. Nothing captured the national mood quite like this April 1987 cover of a special edition of the New York Daily News:
As it happened, Doc set the precedent for how superstars deal with downfalls: he ran into rehab. Except that, like so many who have followed him there over the years, he evidently did so to play for public sympathy more than to get clean. This explains why Doc was never the same – as continued drug use robbed him not only of his talent but of his youth too.
With respect to his talent, his stats speak volumes. For he was only 22 when he fell from grace in 1987. Yet, as things turned out, the best of his career was already behind him.
With respect to his youth, the 2016 ESPN 30 for 30 film, Doc & Darryl, speaks volumes. It was supposed to be a retrospective on his and teammate Darryl Strawberry’s equally blighted careers. But Doc’s face upstaged everything. For it bore all the ravages of his “well-documented addiction, serial arrests, and career flameout” – as the New York Post observed.
Frankly, it was obvious he was not only still abusing drugs but high on them during the production of this film. That’s why this came as no surprise:
For the second time in six weeks, former major league pitcher Dwight Gooden has been arrested for driving while impaired. …
On June 7, Gooden was arrested in Holmdel, N.J., and charged with third-degree possession of a controlled substance when he was stopped for driving erratically and officers found two bags of what appeared to be cocaine in his car.
(USA Today, July 23, 2019)
Unlike Tiger, Doc never had much of any professional redemption. Hope springs eternal that he will have some personal redemption … before it’s too late. He is 54.
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