Dwight "Doc" Gooden achieved what few people who ever set foot on a baseball mound could ever imagine - Rookie of the Year honors, the Cy Young Award, and multiple World Series rings. But there is a darker side to his story - some tarnishing on what could have been an incredible baseball legacy, a story that reveals inner turmoil so bad that he was too strung out on drugs and too paranoid to attend his own team's World Series celebration.
He spent the day of the 1986 World Series celebration watching his Mets team parade around Manhattan while he sat and watched from the projects - a place he would normally go to get high. Except he didn't know the people he was with and barely remembers how he got there. He just sat and watched, too anxiety-ridden to move, too numb to care, or if he did, he couldn't feel any emotion.
He tested positive for cocaine in 1987 and served a league-mandated drug suspension that year. He would continue playing baseball and would win more championships, but he was never fully in the moment because of his drug use. His personal life took a downward spiral and it occasionally showed on the mound in his stints with the Yankees, Indians, Astros, Rays, and Yankees again, before his retirement in 2000.
It culminated into several arrests, as his personal struggles only escalated when his playing days were done - a DUI in 2002, driving without a suspended license in 2003 (from the DUI), misdemeanor battery charges after an altercation escalated with his girlfriend in 2005, a 2006 arrest for cocaine intoxication (which ultimately led to a prison sentence), and a 2010 car crash while under the influence of an undisclosed controlled substance. Gooden's five-year old son was in the back seat of the vehicle. He also took part in the realty TV show "Celebrity Rehab."
So how did one of the most feared pitchers in the 1980s, with a blazing 98 mile-per-hour fastball and a sweeping curveball, who spent just one year in the minors before making an unprecedented leap to the big leagues at just 19 years old, the youngest player to ever appear in an all-star game, succumb to drug addiction?
You could say it was his astronomical success at such a young age. You could also say it was the era he lived in - the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan deemed street drugs were becoming an "epidemic" in claiming the lives of America's teenagers. He skyrocketed into the majors at a young age in an era when young people all across America were experimenting with cocaine if they were wealthy and privileged enough to get their hands on it.
At just 21 years old, he won the World Series and became the youngest player to start a major league baseball all-star game - something most people, even major leaguers themselves, can only dream about. In other words, he had achieved the ultimate dream at a young age, so where to go from there? What was his motivation after that?
If anything, Gooden's story teaches us that young people who achieve an enormous amount of success at an early age need to be kept grounded, must always be on the lookout to set new goals, and need trustworthy people in their corner to guide them away from potentially bad situations. It also illustrates how drug experimentation at a young age can seriously impact a person later on in life.
Do you or does a loved one need Tampa Prescription Drug Abuse treatment? True Path Recovery offers Tampa Residential Drug Treatment and outpatient treatment programs.
No comments:
Post a Comment