<\/a> first baseman Keith Hernandez and left fielder George Foster for catching two-strike foul pops in the seventh and eighth innings\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s he going to be like when he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 30?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d asks former political hardballer Richard Nixon, now a Mets fan.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Gooden appeared in a Bruce Springsteen video, came out with an autobiography (!), and seemed to become a symbol of the new New York and its new Mets. The Mets, a doormat two years ago, won 98 games and just missed out on the National League East title. New York, regaining its swagger after the debt crisis of the 70s that bankrupted the city, fell in love with the Mets and Doctor K. An enormous photograph of Gooden with continually updated strikeout totals appeared at Pennsylvania Station. One midtown building had a Sports Illustrated photograph of Gooden captioned \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How does it feel to look down the barrel of a loaded gun?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Gooden even appeared on the cover of Time, a rare honor for an athlete. Sandy Koufax said he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d trade his past for Gooden\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s future. Mickey Mantle said he wanted to be Dwight Gooden.<\/p>\n
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The hype was incredible, yet none of it seemed<\/em> to faze Gooden. Articles continually referred to his strong, close-knit family background; pop Dan was his Little League coach and Gooden, who was almost shy in front of the media, called dad after every start. In an era where athletes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 foibles dominated the front and back pages, people seemed sure Gooden would turn out fine. He lived quietly in Long Island, where it seemed his most exciting night out involved a couple slices of pizza at the local pizza parlor.<\/p>\nLittle did we know; Gooden\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 1986 was well below the level of his first two seasons, though he was still the best pitcher on a World Series-winning Mets team, going 18-9 in 250 innings with a 2.84 ERA and 200 strikeouts. Gooden\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s growing substance abuse issues began to manifest: he turned up to a start in Montreal just 15 minutes before game time, looking like hell. He missed the Mets\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 World Series parade due to what Mets officials called oversleeping (though in reality it was a cocaine binge). He was arrested for fighting with police in his native Tampa in December 1986. In spring training 1987, he tested positive for cocaine and spend two months in a rehabilitation facility (mandated by a contract clause he insisted be in his contract), not making a regular season start before June 1. Some called that clause a cry for help. Like his fellow Met superstar Darryl Strawberry, he was an alcoholic and according to Gooden, when he drank, he used cocaine. The Mets of that era were renowned for a hard-partying lifestyle, encouraged by Davey Johnson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reticence to discipline his players (Johnson, who was a man about town during his playing career, said he felt like a hypocrite).<\/p>\n
In addition to his substance problems, Gooden was also feeling the effects of overuse: he pitched an astounding 744 innings in his first three big league seasons and observers noted that his fastball just didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the same hop after 1986 while his curveball didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the same bite. While he continued to be a good pitcher for a couple more years \u00e2\u20ac\u201c while his ERAs were high, he often played in front of a terrible defense which inflated his ERAs, as Gooden always remained one of the best strikeout pitchers and one of the toughest to hit out of the ballpark \u00e2\u20ac\u201c injuries and further battles with addiction took the shine off his legend. Baseball\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rock bottom seemed to come on Opening Day of the 1994 season when little-heralded outfielder Tuffy Rhodes hit three home runs off Gooden for the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. Gooden had a 6.31 ERA when he tested positive for cocaine; during his suspension he tested positive again and missed the entire 1995 season.<\/p>\n
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Gooden had a brief comeback with the Yankees in 1996, pitching a no-hitter and rejoining Darryl Strawberry. Though he continued to bounce around the league until 2000, he never was anything more than a back of the rotation starter. Cut by the Yankees in spring training in 2001, he retired.<\/p>\n
Doc continued to have legal problems throughout the decade, though he recently seems to be enjoying prolonged sobriety and with Darryl Strawberry, has rejoined the Mets organization as ambassadors. In 2008, he was elected to the New York Mets Hall of Fame. All of baseball is happy to see one of the most beloved pitchers of all-time and a New York icon get his life back together. Dwight Gooden was a superstar in the nascent age of the marketing and culture machine that is modern American sports, yet he managed to transcend commercialism and become a folk hero (and one who has even inspired folk art). Long may he remain with us.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.nomas-nyc.com\/img\/p\/189-494-thickbox.jpg\")
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This article, I hope, will be the first of many articles about baseball history I plan to write for this website. For more on the career of Dwight Gooden, the Sports Illustrated archive is an invaluable source. Craig Neff\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cover article from September 2, 1985, E.M. Swift\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cover article from April 15, 1985 and Tom Verducci\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exceptional article on Doc and Darryl Strawberry from February 27, 1995 were consulted heavily for this article. <\/em><\/p>\nTo view Dwight Gooden in action, MLB.com has three Dwight Gooden games in its Baseball\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Best archive: Game 1 of the 1986 NLCS, Game 4 of the 1988 NLCS and his no-hitter with the Yankees. Unfortunately none of them are truly prime Doc: Game 1 is probably the closest you can get (he pitches well, and loses 1-0). A year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s subscription to Baseball\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Best is only $6.95 and MLB.TV subscribers can get it for free. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a fascinating resource for baseball history. <\/em><\/p>\nDwight\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s autobiographies Rookie and Heat (published in 1999 and with a full account of his problems) are available used on amazon.co.uk for good prices. For an overview of the 1986 Mets, Jeff Pearlman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s The Bad Guys Won is a very good account. Personally, I am not a fan of Pearlman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s now completely noxious cynicism and clear dislike of sports (he once said he hates sports, which begs the question of why he continues to write about them), but this is his first book and covers his favorite baseball team, which allows him to write a lot better. The painting is taken from No Mas, a New York-based clothing company who specialize in sports and popular culture. They make great t-shirts and sell some great paintings. You can find them at www.nomas-nyc.com .
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The fascinating rise and terrible fall of one of baseball’s greatest phenoms<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[553,108,98],"class_list":["post-6668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-mlb-2","tag-new-york-mets","tag-new-york-yankees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6668"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7225,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6668\/revisions\/7225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"MlbHistory\"](\"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/wp-content\/MlbHistory.jpg\" "\\"MlbHistory\\"")
The 1980s saw the creation of a new type of athlete: the corporation and media-created folk hero. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an oxymoron in a sense; how can it be possible for someone to be a folk hero while being plastered on advertisements by Sports Illustrated and Nike? Dwight Gooden was on a Sports Illustrated cover at 19 years old and companies in New York raced to give out the K cards that fans at Shea Stadium waved after every Gooden strikeout. Gooden wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the only one; Bo Jackson and Michael Jordan were two other excellent examples.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.sportsposterwarehouse.com\/catImages\/gooden86nike-1.jpg\")
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