Metro

Secret drug shame of Mets star Doc Gooden

‘HIGH’ AND INSIDE: Dwight “Doc” Gooden pitching at Shea Stadium in 1985. (
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Few athletes have risen so far, so fast and fallen so hard as Dwight “Doc” Gooden. The New York Mets wunderkind debuted in 1984 as a 19-year-old — his sizzling fastball and ungodly curve packing stadiums across the country. By 1986, he and the boozing, brawling Mets dominated baseball, snatching a miracle come-from-behind victory over the Boston Red Sox in the World Series. But what his millions of fans didn’t know then was that Doc’s downfall was already in motion. Cocaine would soon force him into a revolving door of suspensions, rehab centers, jail cells and addiction, sapping a career that once seemed destined for the Hall of Fame. In his new memoir, “Doc,” Gooden, now 48 and more than two years clean, recounts how even the moment he became a World Series champion was marred by drugs:

After Jesse Orosco threw his final Game 7 strikeout and the Red Sox were put away at last, I ran out of the bullpen and out to the pitcher’s mound, dry-diving onto a twisted pile of my teammates. Hugging, slapping each other’s backs, rolling around together in the infield dirt. Fans were bursting past police officers in riot gear, including some cops on horseback, and jumping onto our pile. As quickly as possible, team security hustled the players off the field and into the safety of the locker room.

The party revved up fast. Champagne corks were flying as the TV crews grabbed their postgame sound bites. The players were shouting each other’s names. People started pouring champagne over other people’s heads. All of us agreed how great we were.

But in the early craziness of the locker room, two thoughts were crowding all the others out of my head: I gotta call my dealer. And I
gotta call my dad.

My father was watching at home with my mom in Tampa. I called him from the clubhouse phone, getting it out of the way as soon as I’d had my second gulp of champagne. I always called my dad after a game. He deserved this victory as much as I did. “Yeah, it feels great, Dad — thanks,” I told him before hanging up the phone. “I love you.”

By then, the beer and the hard booze were coming out — the vodka and the Rémy Martin. That stuff was always kept out of view of the reporters, tucked away in the back of the players’ lockers or in the equipment room. But it magically appeared that night. I had a couple of rounds, Absolut and grapefruit.

Then I grabbed my chance.

I didn’t think anyone would notice in the excitement of the moment, and no one did. I slipped into the trainer’s office, where I knew I could make my other call without being disturbed. I had the number memorized. I tried to appear casual, like maybe I was ordering a pizza.

“Hey, I’ll be coming by later tonight,” I said to my dealer.

“Congratulations, man!” he said.

“Yeah, thanks,” I said. “Just make sure you’re available, OK? It’s gonna be a big party.”

“I got whatever you need,” he told me.

I had first tried cocaine the year before, and it was love at first sniff.

The shy and laid-back Dwight was a different person on coke. Confident, relaxed, actually social. Alcohol had been my release from stress and pressure. But compared to cocaine, drinking was nothing. Cocaine was a jet, and beer was a rickety trolley. Coke gave me a feeling I’d always wanted but didn’t know how to find. It convinced me immediately that nothing else mattered at all. No pressure. No worries. No need to stop. This is how I wanted to feel.

We had to get up early the next morning. I knew that. We were due at the stadium in Queens between 8 and 9. Then we’d all pile onto buses and ride into Manhattan for the start of the ticker-tape parade down Broadway. But no one looked ready to call it a night. I certainly wasn’t. Word went around that the party was moving to Finn MacCool’s, a bar on Main Street in Port Washington.

I’d had three or four glasses of champagne and at least as many vodka-and-grapefruits. But I didn’t give drunk driving a second thought. Back then, I never did. I walked out to the players’ parking lot and climbed into my car, a gray 1986 Mercedes 300SE. I headed in the general direction of the bar.

But I never got there.

Instead, I jumped off the Long Island Expressway at the Meadowbrook Parkway and headed south, straight for the projects.

My whole plan was to meet my dealer, buy some coke, and do a little bit — then maybe circle back to Finn MacCool’s and have a few last rounds with the boys.

I stopped and picked up my friend Bobby, who lived in the same projects. He had introduced me to the dealer a few months earlier. When I first started buying, I would give the money to Bobby, and he’d make the transaction for me. But as I’d grown bolder, I was usually buying for myself.

We stopped at the dealer’s apartment. I gave him the money for the drugs. Then Bobby and I headed back to his place to get high. The dealer followed us there.

Bobby’s apartment was on the second floor. It was tiny, and people were already there. Bobby’s sister was one of them, and there were others I didn’t recognize, five or six women and seven or eight men. The music was loud — Run-DMC, Whodini, Public Enemy, old-school hip-hop. The TV was on, playing game highlights with the sound off.

“You’re a world champion,” said a woman in a shiny gold top.

Right away, the drugs came out.

I laid two lines on a mirror Bobby handed me. I slid a rolled-up dollar bill into my nose and sniffed hard. Ah, that felt good.

I did it again on the other side.

A nice, warm feeling was already sweeping through me. This, I thought, is what I had been waiting for.

The first time I remember checking the clock, it said 12:30. Then, what seemed like 20 minutes later, it said a little after 2 o’clock.

I could hear fans partying in other apartments. People were yelling outside and lighting off fireworks. If they’d only known where one of the Mets was! It was crazy, even being there. Somewhere in my mind, I must have realized that. There was no security. At any moment, the cops could have burst in, and I would have been busted. Or someone could have robbed me. My $50,000 Mercedes was sitting outside.

But I didn’t care. This was where the coke was, so this was where I wanted to be.

A girl came over and climbed onto my lap. She was pushing her breasts against me and wiggling around. We were doing everything but having sex. I’m sure if I wanted to, I could have taken her into the bedroom. But sex wasn’t my top priority at that moment. I was far more interested in the drugs.

“OK, I’ll stay another 30 minutes,” I thought, still managing to bargain the worry away.

I looked out the window at one point and felt my first wave of fear. The purple-black sky was turning ever so slightly gray. Dawn was coming soon.

“I gotta get out of here pretty soon,” I decided.

But I was still bargaining. Drug addicts are always bargaining with themselves.

Deciding to stay another 15 minutes seemed totally logical to me. And then another. I was dripping with sweat. My eyes were totally bloodshot. My clothes stank. But I kept recalculating. I could still rush home, take a shower, get to the stadium, and make the parade. I was resigned to the fact that I wouldn’t get any sleep. But I’d gone without sleep before. How often would my team win the World Series?

The sun through the window slammed me hard.

“Uh-oh,” I finally realized. “That’s not good.”

It was after 6:30 by then.

“I’m in no condition to drive,” I thought. “Maybe if I do a line, it’ll pick me up and I can get out of here.”

I did another line.

One guy looked at me and smiled. “You’re a real dude,” he said. A real dude? I was a real mess. That’s all.

I still had some coke left. But without saying goodbye to anyone, I put the drugs in my pocket and quietly skulked out of there.

I looked like crap. I smelled like crap. I can’t vouch for my driving.

As I drove toward home with the sun streaming in the passenger window, I was still sweating out of control.

And then I totally lost it.

I started crying, sobbing loudly, literally blubbering in the car.

This was pathetic.

I couldn’t go to the parade this way. I knew that. But how could I not go? Everyone would know what I’d been doing all night. Or at least they would suspect.

I walked into my empty apartment. I had messages on my answering machine. The first three were from the Mets’ p.r. man, Jay Horwitz.

“Hey, Doc, just calling to make sure you’re up for the parade.”

“Doc, you up?”

“Doc, let me know if you need a ride. No problem. We can send a car.”

Just then, I heard a knock on the door. A loud bang, really. I didn’t look outside, but I was pretty sure it was Darryl Strawberry. Darryl lived in the next complex over. A lot of times, we’d ride to the park together.

But I didn’t answer. I was too dejected and too scared. After a few more bangs, the knocking stopped.

In my insanity, I thought if I did one more line, maybe I would get the boost I needed. So I did another line.

The phone kept ringing. I heard my mother’s voice on the machine. “Honey, are you on your way to the parade?” The Mets must have called her in Florida.

Major League Baseball had called me in during the season. There were already rumors about me and drugs. This would prove everything.

Who would believe me now?

I climbed into bed . . . I stared at the TV through narrow, squinting eyes.

As my teammates toasted our triumph, I was nursing a head-splitting coke-and-booze hangover, too spent, too paranoid and too mad at myself to drag my sorry butt to my own victory parade.

I had never felt so lonely before.

I hope I never feel that way again.

You’d have to look hard to find another young athlete in any sport who had risen so high, so quickly and then fallen so hard. Too much, too fast, too young, my life was spinning wildly, and I was the one who didn’t have a clue.

A life of curveballs

Other revelations from Gooden’s memoir:

* Lenny Dykstra tried to bust him out of “Celebrity Rehab” in 2011, showing up at 10 one night with two burly henchmen. “Doc, I gotta get you out of here, man. I think they’ve kidnapped you. They have you hypnotized,” Dykstra said. “Everything’s cool, Lenny,” Gooden replied, trying to calm his hyperactive former Mets teammate. “I actually think this is helping me.”

* After a December 1986 dust-up with Tampa cops led to his arrest and national headlines, Gooden’s cousins hatched a plan for vengeance. “The idea was that we would get our revenge by driving around Tampa at a high rate of speed. Then, when a cop pulled us over — any cop — bang! We were going to blast him.” Gooden actually hopped in his cousins’ pickup truck but reconsidered after driving a block. “I can’t go through with this,” he said.

* Gooden dislikes Darryl Strawberry and accuses him of acting out of jealousy and resentment, leaking his drug problems to the press and revealing to his girlfriend that he was cheating on the road (with sisters!). “Losing the friendship of someone I once trusted and cared about has hurt me . . . At this point we have no relationship at all,” Gooden writes.

Excerpted with permission from “Doc: A Memoir,” published by Amazon Publishing/New Harvest, out June 4.