Doc: A Memoir (17 page)

But I wasn’t worried. I took pride in my ability to handle the Cubs, no matter what the circumstances. Going into this game, I was 26–4 against them, my best against any team in baseball. I’d beaten them at Shea to get to the playoffs in 1986, hadn’t I? Okay, so it wasn’t 1986 anymore. The Mets had lost one hundred games in 1993, and it was hard to say why ’94 would be much better. Dallas Green was our third manager in four years, fourth if you count the seven games in 1991 with interim Mike Cubbage. I’d lost fifteen games in ’93, the most in my career, and I’d lost thirteen the season before. Though I was only twenty-nine, the injuries to my arm and shoulder were forcing me to
reimagine my whole pitching style. I was entering the final year of my contract with a team of semi-unknowns behind me. I was going to start the season by handling Chicago.

I took the hill and went 3 and 2 on leadoff hitter Tuffy Rhodes before he hit one over my head and I watched it sail on the wind out of the ballpark. It didn’t feel like a very good omen. But we got a couple of runs back, turning their 1–0 into our 2–1. In the bottom of the third, the Cubs got the first two batters on base and up came Tuffy to the plate.

Bang!
He did it again. Out of the park in center field.

As he trotted around the bases, I felt like maybe he was admiring his work a little too long. Another home run? Who the hell was this kid? A twenty-five-year-old semiscrub who’d played in barely one hundred games across four major-league seasons, clubbing all of five home runs combined, with a career average in the mid-.200s? In the top of the fifth, the Mets didn’t pinch hit for me, and I helped my cause with a two-run single. By the end of our half of the inning, we were up 9–5.

Opening the bottom of the fifth Tuffy was back again. My plan was to drill him. Show him I wasn’t happy about his recent performance and that long diva gaze at his last home run. I didn’t want the ump to toss me from the game. So I had to make it look good. My first couple of pitches would be unhittable curveballs, just a little wild. Then I’d find a home for one in Tuffy’s rib cage. That was the idea.

Well, plans don’t always work out like you expect. Tuffy hit my second curveball into the center-field bleachers, exactly where the other two shots had gone. Some guy no one had ever heard of had just made major-league history hitting home runs off of me in his first three at bats on opening day. At the end of the inning, I was furious with myself. I marched into the dugout and, in my frustration, did something stupid. I kicked a bat rack and injured my right big toe. I pitched a couple more innings. I hobbled right to the ice bucket.

I didn’t want anyone to know the truth about how I hurt my foot. It was too embarrassing. And the media had fun with the minor mystery. Even the
New York Times
jumped in: “Is a bent spike jamming into the big toe a common baseball injury?”

I missed my next start, trying to ignore the pain. I was sure my toe was fine. By the end of April, as I pitched in Los Angeles against the Dodgers, the pain became too much. People were starting to talk about my limp. After the game, I went on the thirty-day disabled list. An MRI revealed ligament and cartilage damage.

Kicking that bat rack was really childish.

I was too injured to play, but not so hobbled that I was immobilized. My rehab schedule was to go easy on the foot and wait out the pain. Without a ball and a glove, my drinking and carousing went off the charts. And, with that, other temptations crept back in.

I wasn’t using yet. But my mind was opening to it.

When I started feeling better, the Mets decided I should get back in shape by pitching a couple of minor-league games. At the end of May, I flew down to Virginia and played a few games with the AAA Norfolk Tides at Harbor Park.

When I got there, I couldn’t help but notice that there was no drug tester around. Maybe it was the minor leagues. Maybe they were starting to trust me. Maybe they shouldn’t have.

I was scheduled for a Friday night start in Binghamton, the AA affiliate in upstate New York. Then on Saturday, I’d be back in the big game when I’d meet the major-league team in Ohio. But that wasn’t for a couple of days. Before I headed upstate, I decided to celebrate my return at a sports-themed strip club in Queens called Scores.

I had a wife, a son, and two young daughters by then, plus another son on the way. But my addiction was taking me out on the town again. This time, it wasn’t a steakhouse with Rusty. It wasn’t beers with Keith or Ron. It had nothing to do with miniatures on the team plane. This
time, I figured, I’d just go out alone. As far as I was concerned, no one could keep up with my drinking. And no one had to know what I was doing.

This was a world before Twitter, blogs, and cell phone cameras. It was possible to go to a strip club with no fear of Page Six or
TMZ.com
. Some of the dancers knew me. One of them gave me a lap dance. We were just having fun.

“How about a more private dance?” she asked me.

I nodded.

“It’d be nicer up in the manager’s office,” she said.

Okay. She took my hand and led me upstairs. Another dancer followed. It wasn’t long before both girls were totally naked, playfully rubbing up against each other and me. All three of us were laughing and doing shots. Pretty soon, the coke came out.

“Let’s do a line,” one of them said.

“No, thanks,” I answered. I had willpower. I had limits. “Sorry, ladies. Enjoy yourselves. I’m getting tested. Can’t share.”

They kept snorting. I got more drunk. The seed that was planted in my brain in Norfolk was flowering now.

“Hmmm, they didn’t test me down there,” I thought.

One of the strippers chopped the cocaine with a razor blade on the glass-top desk before snorting the powder through a plastic cocktail straw. She slid the straw slowly and seductively.

I thought some more: “They must not be testing at minor-league parks. They probably won’t test me in Binghamton. And anyway, that’s forty-eight hours from now.”

I began to make some drunken calculations. Creative accounting, fueled by many shots of Absolut vodka.

The addict in me began to bargain. I could probably metabolize the coke and piss it out quickly, I told myself. I’ll bet I could be peeing clean by Binghamton. Right about then, my attention was drawn to
the eye-popping scene unfolding in front of me. Looking through one stripper’s legs, I could see the other one tap-tap-tapping more cocaine from the baggie to the desk.

“I doubt they’ll have a tester in Cincinnati over the weekend,” I told myself.

“Oh, that’s fuckin’ good,” the baggie girl said, answering my unspoken thought and Hoovering the powder into her nose. I heard her swallow, powerfully, as she let the coke drip from her sinuses down into the back of her throat.

I knew that feeling.

I liked that feeling.

I missed that feeling.

I wanted that feeling.

Now.

More math: “The soonest my next test could be is over ninety-six hours!”

I was sold. “Maybe I’ll try just one or two,” I said.

I snorted a line. The disease reawakened instantly. I was right back where I was in 1986. It was like a carnival worker had just lowered the metal protective bar on the roller coaster car. I settled in and waved good-bye.

I snorted another line. Then I had another gulp of vodka. It all felt good. My mind started reeling. All I was feeling was satisfied. “I’ve got some drinks,” I was thinking. “I’ve got some strippers. I’ve got some coke.”

In other words, I wasn’t thinking at all.

I was no longer worried about when the next drug test might be coming. “That’s so far away,” I thought. And the plans kept coming.

“I’ll get someone else to take it for me.”

“I’ll duck the guy.”

“If it comes back dirty, I’ll claim, ‘Screwup at the lab.’”

I stayed out all night. I called a number I had never forgotten. I bought more coke. I did more coke. After seven years clean, I was back in business again.

It was already dawn, and I was totally wasted when I drove back to my house in Roslyn, Long Island. I sobered up. I drove to Binghamton. I guessed correctly. No tester appeared. I pitched. I felt great. No one had any idea where I’d been.

I just felt like I’d been lucky and had gotten away with something cool. No harm, no foul. There was just one problem: getting lucky proved to my addict’s mind that I could do it again.

I flew to Cincinnati, reaching the ballpark around five p.m. The game was scheduled for seven. At about five forty-five, one of the trainers came over to me and casually said, “Your guy is here.”

Boom!
There he was. The tester who’d stood next to me as I peed into dozens of cups already. He was one of several, but I recognized him immediately. Short, stocky, friendly, totally clueless about my recent whereabouts. “Hey Doc!” he said cheerfully.

I could hear my heartbeat in my ears.

“How you doin’?” I answered with a smile.

I could feel my insides shaking. My breathing seemed strange. I was already in my uniform, but I was ready to run out of the stadium. Call for a taxi, claim a family emergency, hop on a plane, and hide somewhere.

“Doc Gooden got kidnapped”; “Doc Gooden fell asleep behind the concession stand.” Any excuse would be better than filling a cup with coke-heavy urine.

“Be with you in a minute,” I told the tester, standing and walking toward the locker-room door. “I’ve got BP,” batting practice, I said. “But I’ll be right back.”

I didn’t know what I was going to do. I needed time to think.

I sprinted across the outfield a few times, not really knowing why. Maybe I could sweat the cocaine out. That made no sense. Maybe one
of the clubhouse kids would pee in the cup for me. Wait, that made no sense. The cup had a temperature gauge to make the sure the urine was recent. The tester worked for Major League Baseball. He wasn’t about to look the other way. I knew I was doomed.

I went back inside, took the test, and hoped for the best. Maybe something magical would happen. Maybe the specimen would get lost in transit. Maybe the commissioner’s office wouldn’t want the bad publicity. More hoping. More bargaining. The tester screwed on the lid. I put my initials on the cup. I signed the paperwork, and off he went.

I kept pitching. More time passed. Not a word from anyone. I was tested again. It had been more than a week since I used cocaine. I was starting to wonder if maybe I’d passed the Cincinnati test. I showed up in Miami without a Father’s Day present for my dad, who had come to watch me pitch live for the first time in years. We beat the Marlins—that would have to be his gift. Thankfully, there wasn’t any news until the following day.

I was napping in bed at the team hotel when my phone rang. It was Dr. Lans.

“I’m coming down to Atlanta,” he said. “We’re going to have to talk.”

If the walls of my hotel room had fallen right then, I don’t think I would have felt any more shaken. Dr. Lans’s trip to Atlanta could only mean one thing.

“We have a positive test, Dwight,” he explained softly when he arrived at the hotel.

“That’s crazy,” I said instinctually. “I never used!”

I was getting so predictable.

“Crazy or not, we have to explain it,” Dr. Lans continued. “And deal with it. We’ve got to meet with the league in New York. We can go now or when this Atlanta series is over. Your call.”

“Let’s wait,” I said. Of course I said that. If I left the team midseries, everyone would know something was up. Word would spread immediately. And a chance to delay? I always preferred to delay.

When we flew to New York, Dr. Lans and I met in the Major League Baseball office with three men. Lou Melendez was a lawyer for the Player Relations Committee. Dr. Robert Millman was baseball’s medical director. Dr. Joel Solomon had a similar position with the players association.

My first strategy? Lie again. It didn’t work any better this time.

“Dwight, you’ve got to take some responsibility for this,” Melendez said. “Let’s face it head-on and work on your issues.”

I confessed. “It was a mistake,” I explained. “A onetime slip-up. I’ve been clean for seven years. It won’t happen again.”

They were sorry, they said. But because of my prior transgressions, this time it would have to be a sixty-day suspension. If I tested clean moving forward, I could salvage what was left of the 1994 season after that.

I went home and told Monica. “I messed up,” I said. “We’ll be spending more of the summer in St. Petersburg.”

“Very funny,” she said. As my crooked smile gave way to an expression of profound sadness, she realized I wasn’t joking at all.

I tried to downplay the situation. “I missed a test,” I told her. “This is my punishment.” Inside, Monica knew. She just knew. Maybe she hadn’t expected the cocaine, but no husband goes out all night and comes home at dawn fish-eyed and smelling like stripper if his life isn’t spinning out of control.

It was time to break the news to my parents. As I sat there revving my courage and staring at the telephone, a rare moment of clarity kicked in. All I’d been giving them, I could see, was shame, pain, and embarrassment. I could barely punch the number into the phone. Yes, I’d achieved the dream my dad had for me. I’d achieved the dream he had for himself. But what was the cost? Foolishly, I tried to soften the blow.

My mom answered the phone. “I missed a test,” I told, giving the
lie that hadn’t worked on Monica another try. “They say they have to suspend me again.”

“Oh, Dwight,” my mom said sadly. Her voice was filled with disappointment. “This isn’t good. This isn’t good at all.”

My dad took the phone. When I was suspended in 1987, he was shocked and silent. He wouldn’t or couldn’t talk to me. In the time since then, we’d settled into a “hear no evil, see no evil” relationship. When he’d ask how I was doing, I’d always say, “Fine.” He’d say, “Great, take care of yourself,” and we’d move on. This time, he took a different tone.

“Listen,” he said, “you gotta get right for you. Whatever it takes. Forget about baseball. That’s not important right now. Work on beating these demons or there won’t be any baseball left.” He paused for a second and introduced a thought that must have just dawned on him. I could hear the worry in his voice. “There won’t be any
you.
”