Darryland Documentary on 30-for-30

[roger_that]

"Doc and Darryl" doesn't focus on baseball, but rather on addiction. Watching it now. Their drug counselor says addicts are half fear, half arrogance. "I'm afraid of my own success, and nobody and nothing can ever diminish me." Sad, the whole thing--I don't know why I put myself through this.

[roger_that]

Wish I didn't keep getting so angry at them for what they did to me when they destroyed their own lives much more than my not enjoying baseball as much as I might have.



The documentary keeps so much of their inarticulateness, which is almost an articulateness of a kind. I mean, what can you say about how you disappointed millions of people? So there's a lot of "Um, er, well, I tell ya, it's like, unh, er, ya know...."

[whippoorwill]

Their lives are their lives. It's sad but don't take it personally.

A lot of us have demons.

[ashie62]

One life per customer.

[roger_that]

Did anyone else see this? Judd Apatow filmed them talking to each other in some dive of a Queens diner--oddly, it seems like they barely knew each other, which simple racism and Mets lore would argue against. But they just aren't close pals, and seemingly never were, just teammates. And for two guys who wrecked their lives in the same exact way, they struggle to connect with each other.

[Edgy MD]

Yeah, sportswriters have always put them in the same sentence, but they were never particularly close. Straw was tight mostly with Darling. Dwight was mostly aloof.



Darryl has been deep into salvation-through-the-faith, and while it's seemingly worked for him, I imagine any attempts to reach out to Gooden in recent years have come with a proselytization that hasn't been particularly welcomed by Gooden.

[Fman99]

I think this would just be the bummer to end all bummers to watch them relive it verbally in super slo-mo. It was enough of a downer in real time.

[roger_that]

yeah, it's really not a sports film, though they hit the highlights, and show some lovely shots of Darryl's swing and Doc's delivery--at least half of it is two addicts (no one is ever an ex-addict) meeting up in middle age in some dump of a burgers-and-fries joint in Nowhere, Queens, rambling on about how they screwed up time and time again, not really getting to the hard truths, indulging freely in cliches and blandly accepting their guilty pasts ("Yeah, well, I was lying, I would say I got my life together but I knew I was going to get high when the interview was over..." sort of thing).



One moment i found interesting was Darryl denying giving Doc up after Commissioner Ueberroth warned Ray Knight that a young black superstar teammate was a cokehead, and Knight confronted Darryl. The story went that he explained to Knight "No, man, that's Doc." In the diner, Darryl assures Doc, "No, I would never! Man, how can you think I would ever put it on you?" insisting that what he told Knight was a simple denial that he was the black superstar, but Doc's name never came up.



This is a very stupid story for any number of reasons: of course if it wasn't Darryl, it was Doc. What difference if he mentioned Doc's name or not? Also it's decades ago, so Darryl's going believably to remember word-for-word dialogue from 1987? And if he remembers it correctly but decides to lie to Doc today, is that so far out of character for Darryl? This is supposed to be the first time he ever misled a friend in some self-serving way? Also what would be so wrong if he HAD ratted Doc out? As a reformed addict, you'd think Doc would be grateful to any teammate who had the guts to call him out in 1987.



Keith also has a few interviews where he notes his own declining to interfere: "I had my own problems" is his reasoning.



A lot of blind eyes behind this story.

[Edgy MD]

Ueberroth: "The Mets have a lefty firstbaseman with coke issues."



Knight: "Hey, Danny! The commissioner says that the Mets have a lefty firstbaseman with coke issues!"



Heep: "Well I can assure you that he's not talking about me."



Hernandez: "You rat bastard."

[ashie62]

It is possible that those involved only want to talk about these issues in a meeting.



Beyond that I don't see it as anyone else's business, certainly not mine.

[kcmets]

I haven't watched this yet, but I have to wonder aloud if any new ground was

broken here that hasn't already appeared in books, mags and inter-web stuff.



I still have two episodes of Once Upon a Time in Queens left to watch so it may

be awhile until I get around to taking in the toxic twins.



(actually I think Tyler/Perry copyrighted toxic twins but I rolled with it anyway)