Happy Birthday Doctor K

[G-Fafif]

Dwight Gooden turns 43 today. And remains 20 forever.

[soupcan]

Booooooo!

[metirish]

Sucks that my memory of Gooden are him either in trouble with the law or pitching for the yankees.

[Guest metsguyinmichigan]

I think about 1985 and how the kid was virtually unhittable.

....Except for when I was in attendance. I saw two of his four losses in person, one of them in St. Louis.

I was at the University of Missouri, and Gooden was throwing against Andujar. One of the guys in the dorm was a baseball fan and had a car, so we both skipped classes for a day and grabbed bleacher seats for the afternoon game.

I missed one of my main classes, and the professor was the assistant dean of the Journalism School. After the next class, he asked where I was. My New Yorkerness and Mets devotion were well-known, and this was the height of the Mets-Cards rivalry. All I could say was "Gooden vs. Andujar." He wasn't happy, but he understood.

[soupcan]

metsguyinmichigan wrote: All I could say was "Gooden vs. Andujar."

Cool.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Your game:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SLN/SLN198504240.shtml

1) Tommy F. Herr can bite me.
2) Rusty: By 85, he'd lost most of his magic

[HahnSolo]

Did not realize Spanky LaValliere was with the Cards in '85.

[Guest Edgy DC]

No huh-way. He had an OBP of .400. And made a game-saving catch in extra innings in his only outfield appearance.

He still had a couple of magic corn kernels in his pocket.

[metirish]

I wonder if Gooden ever looks at Clemens and thinks that could have been me, but maybe he has no regrets.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I have no doubt Gooden has regrets.

[metirish]

True he must have, hope he has come to terms with them though.

[soupcan]

metirish wrote: I wonder if Gooden ever looks at Clemens and thinks that could have been me, but maybe he has no regrets.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

That's exactly why Gooden pisses me off. He was younger and better than Clemens when both started out.

He coulda been sumthin'.

[Guest Edgy DC]

He was something. He was and is the second-most productive player in Mets history.

Then he was and is a drug addict.

For a few years, he was a journeyman middlling-to-back-end starting pitcher relying on his curve to get outs.

There's still plenty to be thankful for while lamenting what wasn't.

[Valadius]

It's too bad I missed watching him pitch for us. By the time I started paying attention to baseball he was no longer a Met.

[Guest metsguyinmichigan]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Your game: http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SLN/SLN198504240.shtml 1) Tommy F. Herr can bite me. 2) Rusty: By 85, he'd lost most of his magic

Cool! Thanks for posting that! I remember Gooden pitched well, but had forgotten that it was scoreless until the seventh inning.

[soupcan]

="Edgy DC"]He was something. He was and is the second-most productive player in Mets history. Then he was and is a drug addict. For a few years, he was a journeyman middlling-to-back-end starting pitcher relying on his curve to get outs. There's still plenty to be thankful for while lamenting what wasn't.

Yes, of course. I agree with you. He was something. Its what he could've been that gets me.

I was a Mets fan fresh from the late '70s early '80s and he was a 20 year-old, sure fire, no doubt, home-grown first ballot Hall-of Famer. He was the next Tom Seaver. He was.

I had a #16 jersey that I wore, he and I are were (still are in fact) the same age. I had a photograph of me in the foreground of his 10 story Nike ad on West 42nd street, blown up and hung on my wall. I was the biggest Dwight Gooden fan out there.

I invested so much into him that when he destroyed that promise he just crushed me.

The rational adult in me understands life and addiction but the young , naive Mets fan still has a hard time with it.

[seawolf17]

I remember the old Sports Illustrated ad with Doc, in mid-windup, aiming right at the camera, with the text "This is what it's like looking down the barrel of a gun." (Or something to that effect.) When he was on, there was just nothing not to love about the guy. It was hard to watch him decline.

[Guest Edgy DC]

seawolf17 wrote: It was hard to watch him decline.

It was fucking awful.

My brother-in-law is friends with a one of the Mets consulting physicians. In fact, he was the best man at my sister's wedding. He was the physician on hand at spring training when Mookie's glasses shattered into his eye.

At a party shortly after my sister's marriage, my brother-in-law's friend Bradley was pumping the doctor (not the Doctor) for inside info. This was during the lost years --- post-Met, pre-Yankee --- with Gooden living in Florida and failing drug tests as he lived under a seemingly interminable suspension.

The doctor was trying to be professional, willing to give stale baseball personality gossip, but no medical info. I laid off of him, but I had to ask one question. "Is Dwight Gooden going to die?" He got sad and said he couldn't answer, but seemed perfectly ready for that eventuality.

That Gooden didn't die may in fact be George Steinbrenner's greatest legacy. And I learned to be thankful for small mercies.

There's really so much to learn from Gooden's story nowadays, and if the wisdom of experience is all we have, so be it. For instance, is there any doubt that Gooden himself asking for a drug-testing clause in the contract he signed before 1986 was about as loud a cry for help as ever any ballplayer is going to give you?