New York Mets: Dwight Gooden, The Drug Culture Abyss

For men like Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, the culture of drugs permeated their lives from day one on this planet. A few escape from it, but many do not. And it’s a reflection on all of us and it’s not going away

The only thing that anyone who has never tried cocaine needs to know about it is that you always want more. Except for very brief periods in his life, former New York Mets pitcher Dwight Gooden knows that better than anyone. It forms a cage around you and all you can do at times is gaze down into the abyss of what your life has become over time.

You pretend that it’s only momentary thinking one day you’ll wake up and you won’t want more. But if you are Gooden, you always want more. You spend time locked in your bedroom, as it has been reported, and you remember all that you once were as an All-Star on the Mets. You want more.

No, this will not be another one of those “wasted talent” articles. This one is about just being part of a wasted culture. As we’ll see in a minute or so, it’s also a story about race in America. Because more than anything, that is the real story of Dwight Gooden.

In the eighties, virtually everyone I knew tried cocaine at one time or another, including this writer, But, it’s also true that everyone I knew, again including this writer, put it away after a brief fling and went on with their lives.

In the eighties, and especially in 1986, the Mets’ clubhouse was literally littered with cocaine. Some, like Lenny Dykstra, ignorantly chose to brag about it to sell copies of his latest tell-all book. Others, like Keith Hernandez, waited until well after his playing days to admit that he used massive amounts of cocaine during the 1980’s. Gooden missed the parade honoring the World Champions. He explains how that happened here:

Backup catcher Barry Lyons, among others, came clean later as well. With the exception of Dykstra, who turned to baseball’s best-known drug (alcohol), the white guys escaped permanent ruin while the black guys such as Gooden and Darryl Strawberry did not.

The salient point being that drugs permeate black culture in America, and any attempt to find sanctuary from drugs is often thwarted by an environment in which drugs are generally an accepted part of daily life.

At the same time, most of us turn a blind eye to the problem until it pops up again and stares at us in the face as we saw on the front page of the New York Daily News that features a horrific photo of Gooden standing in the doorway of his New Jersey apartment.

As someone who helps inmates at a New York State prison earn a high school equivalency diploma, there’s personal familiarity with the above social issue.

More than 90 percent of my students are black or brown. And by the same percentage, one way or another, drugs are tied into their reasons for serving a sentence. Whether they were sellers by individual enterprise, earning their keep as a gang member, users who stole and burglarized to support their habit or someone else’s drug issues, the common denominator is always drugs.

One black student told a story about his uncle who owned and operated a legitimate and wildly successful business. For five days a week, he worked his butt off. But, as he explained to his nephew and children while cooking hamburgers in his back yard, “The weekend is mine.” He smokes crack on those days and a lot of it, quietly returning to work on Monday.

So, there is cause to wonder. Are the cheers of the many fans like myself who watched and marveled at this rookie sensation still echoing across the street from Citi Field, or have they faded away in the same way that Gooden slowly fades? Who is there for Gooden now when he needs us as much, if not more, than we needed him then?

His longtime friend and one-time enabler, Strawberry, took a bold step by going public as seen in the above video broadcasted by WFAN after Gooden did not appear as scheduled for the same show.

He inferred that Gooden was almost on his deathbed. For that, he’s been rewarded with admonishments from ex-teammates like Hernandez, who’s quoted in the New York Daily News today saying “It’s an unfortunate circumstance, and I just wish it would stay out of the public domain.”

Maybe so, but who can say for sure?

The history of baseball in New York City is riddled with real-life stories of heroes with personality issues.

As reported in Salon Magazine, Mickey Mantle spent most of his life as an alcoholic. It wasn’t until later that he reflected, “If I had known I would have lived this long, I’d taken better care of myself “, a reference to his Dad’s premature death due to a hereditary disease. Add Billy Martin to the list, whose alcohol-fueled life ended in a car crash. Steve Howe, the Yankees reliever in the early 1980’s, talked about doing lines in the bullpen before warming up.

During the 1950’s and 1960’s, alcohol was the drug that permeated baseball; Martin and Mantle reflected that. In fact, their alcohol-fueled escapades made for fun on the back pages of New York newspapers as seen in this New York Times report about the infamous Copacabana nightclub incident. Today, there is no “fun stuff ” to report on. Instead, what we have is a frail, frightened, and broken down man standing in a doorway.

It’s difficult to refer to someone like Gooden as a victim. He once had it all. Now, he has next to nothing. More importantly, next to no one. Depending on your politics, he may be a victim or the result of his own inability to control himself.

Only one thing is for sure. Gooden is in a hell of a lot of trouble. And as a matter of fact, maybe all of us are in trouble.