“Doc” Lacks The Transparency Expected Of A Tell-All Tale Of Wasted Phenom Dwight Gooden

“The same guy who went to the World Series and the White House also found himself in housing project apartments with lowlife moochers, risking his talent and trashing his life for the fleeting pleasure of getting high.”

“You’d have to look hard to find another young athlete in any sport who had risen so high so quickly and then fallen so hard. Too much, too fast, too young, my life was spinning wildly, and I was the one who didn’t have a clue.”

Growing up a Mets fan, Dwight “Dr. K” Gooden was a larger-than-life figure, a flame-throwing pitcher who, as I matured, grew to represent the lost potential and abuse of the ‘80s in many ways. Having distanced myself from baseball for a number of reasons over the years, I was thrilled to return to some of those days with “Doc: A Memoir,” written by Gooden and Ellis Henican.

The story takes little time to develop. The opening scene certainly grabs you from the jump, depicting a coked-out Gooden (just 21 at the time!) have to watch his teammates in the ticker-tape parade through Manhattan celebrating the 1986 World Series championship.

This book was a relatively quick and easy read, although some of the subject matter is difficult to digest (or comprehend). Unfortunately, the work was littered with issues that made it problematic to read. There were some grammatical concerns, sure; there were some characters (such as ex-girlfriend Carlene) who are presented without introduction. Also, the years fly past in the telling, making it difficult to get centered chronologically, with confusion surrounding timelines.

The descriptions of some of the key characters here are difficult to reconcile with depictions of their actions as well. His mother, for instance, he describes as religious and “upstanding,” yet in the next breath he details her attempt to murder his father in a tone that includes impossible humor. His father is described as attentive and available, but he borders on the domineering in his over-training of his son, and even brings his young son with him to rendevouz with other women. Gooden writes about an upbringing that is idyllic and pastoral in some ways, yet punctuated with indescribable violence and craziness.

“And the whole idea of good, loving people sometimes doing reckless, self-destructive things—that was business as usual for the Goodens.”

“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?”

“I was confused. How did my father, who had a third-grade education and had worked his whole life at a chemical plant, know what should be in a major-league baseball contract? It was the same as the way I wondered how he learned all those pitching drills he put me through. Dad just knew stuff. I had my concerns, but I didn’t say anything.”

Perhaps most challenging, however, is that for a supposed tell-all, this book was written in a passive voice, with Gooden serving almost as an observer to his own life and decisions; in my estimation, this is not a fair or particularly well-chosen approach for a piece of this ilk. Some intense scenes (such as an encounter with the urine tester) suffer some in the telling of them as though they are happening to someone else.

“But who was Dwight Gooden? ... It was almost like I was two people in one. That both those people could inhabit the same body was a conflict that wouldn’t end quickly or well.”

Gooden is certainly good at blame-shifting and circular logic. At one point, he essentially blames his wife’s pain about his constant relapses for the rocky state of their marriage that then leads him to be an adulterer. For the reader, the only impression we are left with is that his wife stuck with him through everything—serving pretty much as a single parent—and she is repaid with suggestions that he had an affair because of her?

He’d like you to believe that he found cocaine mostly because he was bored, which obviously feels a bit simplistic considering the 20-something-year hold it had on him.

“Cocaine was a jet, and beer was a rickety trolley. Coke gave me a feeling I’d always wanted but didn’t know how to find it. It convinced me immediately that nothing else mattered at all ... This is how I wanted to feel.”

On the plus side, the circumstances surrounding his late-career no-hitter with the Yankees—with his father clinging to life—are pretty remarkable. However, even that celebratory moment must be examined in the context of Gooden deciding not to board a flight to see his father for perhaps the last time. Within the backdrop of the book, this chapter does redeem the entire book in some ways.

He also shares some amusing anecdotes throughout, and there were also some somewhat-unexpected, behind-the-scenes insights and tales-out-of-school revelations. Gooden is somewhat polite—yet clear—in maintaining that Darryl Strawberry (who he calls a “phony”) is not, and never was, a friend, and is, in fact, a two-faced, hypocritical snitch.

Gooden implies that N.A. meetings saved his life and health.* And from a purely comedic standpoint, there was a Red Lobster reference (below) that registered a rough 12 on the Unintentional Comedy Scale (apologies to Isaiah Thomas).

“Now I’d had some rough days back at the Comfort Inn. But I promise you, it was no fleabag [hotel], unless fleabags have started offering Jacuzzis and flat-screen TVs and Red Lobsters next door.”

At the end of the day, it’s difficult to read this book without muttering the words “fucking loser” in your mind at each individual anecdote. Yes, he tells a sad tale, but he’s a sad person, too. I was admittedly unaware that many of these struggles are ongoing with Gooden, and I didn’t know of his affiliation with the “Celebrity Rehab” reality show.

There is certainly a degree of admirable bravery involved in reliving your sins in such a manner, to go with situations such as sharing a jail with your son, faking at religion and dwindling near death. And admittedly, the book does get very emotional and earnest at the end, but is all feels a bit too late by that point, and difficult to juxtapose with the tone of the rest of the book.

“I let them know just how powerful and destructive drugs can be, how they can take you away from everything you love until the drugs are all that you love. Then I talk about where I am now. I tell the story, which is my favorite, of being in the hotel room and hearing that gospel song. Even today, that story gives me goosebumps. Sometimes I tear up. I recognize that moment as the blessing it was. It was kind of magical, and it was real.

“Then I tell them about my road back.”

*Editor’s Note: Googling “Fat Dwight Gooden” brings up some rather awful pictures.