Doc: A Memoir

by Dwight Gooden

  My thought was, “I’m going to pitch the game and probably get killed. But at least I get back to Shea one last time.” I went down to the bullpen thirty minutes early to shake the emotional stuff out of my head. Even after I calmed myself, my warm-up pitches were refusing to cooperate. My curveball was breaking in the complete opposite direction. My fastball looked more like a changeup. Mel was standing next to me. He offered a few suggestions. Then, he just stopped saying anything. The look on his face said it all.

  This ain’t gonna be pretty today.

  I noticed Mel had a whole posse of relievers warming up in the bullpen. That was not a vote of confidence.

  Right before I went onto the field, Joe Torre said: “Just give me whatever you got. Whether it’s one, two, or three innings, just give me whatever.” I was starting to think George was the only person in the whole Yankees organization who believed I had anything at all in the tank.

  But when I stepped onto the familiar mound at Shea, it was like I had suddenly come home. Something about my cleats in that dirt, it just felt natural. My breaking ball clicked in. Batters came up, and they were actually having trouble hitting me. I gave up two cheap runs, but I’d held the Mets in check. My pitches were legitimately big-league. After the fifth inning, when I came off the mound, Joe asked me: “You have another inning or two left, Doc?”

  I didn’t give him the answer I’d given him during the no-hitter. I didn’t need to.

  “Nah,” I said. “That’s enough.”

  It really was. The Yanks won 4–2. The fans from both New York teams could hardly believe how strong I looked out there so late in my troubled career. I know I could hardly believe it. I’m still not sure what got into me. I’m just glad it did.

  “I really can’t explain it,” Mike Piazza said later in the Mets locker room. One of the best hitting catchers in baseball, Mike went 0–3 against me that day. “He just threw strikes. That’s the bottom line.”

  I stuck around for the rest of the season. I pitched out of the bullpen and had a couple of playoff appearances en route to the Yankees winning the World Series over the Mets. But picking up that July win against the Mets—that was one of my last, best moments playing baseball.

  Too bad I couldn’t just gently fade away.

  I had stayed off drugs since I started working with Ray Negron. I’d chosen baseball over cocaine, and I had the lab tests to prove it. But that didn’t mean I was working hard on my recovery. I’d stopped going to NA meetings. I didn’t think I needed them. I had stopped checking in with Ron Dock. I was drinking a fair amount, mostly beer and vodka. The drinking should have been a warning. Booze has always been my gateway to more.

  I went back to the Yankees during spring training of 2001 as a nonroster player. I was thinking, “I probably should have retired at the end of last year.” Then my body proved me right. A week before the season started, I tore my knee during warm-ups. The doctors said three months minimum of rehab. When George heard that, he offered me a $100,000 job as his special assistant if I was ready to retire. I loved the idea of working for George and the Yankees. And frankly, the way I’d been pitching, how much longer could I really play? Plus, I had a more sinister reason for accepting George’s offer. If I quit playing, I wouldn’t have to worry about being drug-tested anymore.

  Hmmm, I thought.

  I told George yes. The addict sleeping inside me was waking up again.

  My family organized a big dinner in Tampa to celebrate the end of my playing career and my new front-office gig with the Yankees. I really felt like I had something to celebrate. Afterward, all of us would go watch my daughter Ashley play softball. But just as we were ready to leave for the restaurant, my cell phone rang. It was Ron Dock. He said Darryl Strawberry was somewhere in the Tampa area and no one could locate him. I knew Darryl had been spiraling downward. The fear now was that he had relapsed or worse.

  “Can you help?” Ron asked. “We’re really worried about him.”

  “I have my retirement dinner tonight,” I said, wondering how long this would take. But my family could start the celebration without me. “Yeah, sure. Anything for Straw.”

  “Ray will pick you up,” Ron said.

  Ray and I drove all over St. Petersburg. We scoured dicey neighborhoods in Tampa. We swung by the projects, where I asked old drug buddies: “You seen Strawberry anywhere?” After a couple of hours, I called my mom and apologized.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Ray is with me.”

  “Just be careful,” she said. “We can do the dinner another night. What you’re doing is the right thing.”

  Ashley wasn’t as understanding. Just ten years old, she wasn’t happy I had to miss her game. This wasn’t the first time I’d disappointed her. She played outfield and shortstop, and I’d missed a lot of games. Being retired now and closer to home, I thought I’d finally have the chance to be there more often for her and for all of my kids. I knew I was ready to try. But here we were, on the same night we were celebrating my retirement, and I was already off to a questionable start. For five or six hours of family time, Ray and I drove around looking for Darryl. We never found him.

  The part that went unspoken was that, as I was trying to rescue Darryl, my own life was about to spin out of control again.

  I loved working for George. He gave me special assignments and was always available to me. “Go check out a young pitching prospect on our AA team,” he’d tell me. “What do think of this guy?” That would lead eventually to “Go sign Sheff” and, “See if Darryl wants to come back.” God knows, he showed real faith in me when hardly anyone else was willing to. When he first welcomed me to the Yankees, George told me, “This will be tough. But you won’t be alone. I’ll be right there with you.” And he also said, “But you better never fuck with me, because if you do, I’ll get ya. You’ll be sorry you ever heard my name.” Especially after my father died, George’s approval was hugely important to me. I took my Yankees work seriously.

  From Monday to Friday, anyway.

  Weekends were my drug time. I was using again, and my use was getting more frequent. My dealer knew to expect a call from me late in the week and often a refill call or two over the weekend. I started staying out late again, sometimes until Sunday night or Monday morning. I wasn’t with other women. I was off doing coke. But that old, familiar cycle was spreading a new cloud of tension across my family life. Monica and I were arguing a lot. I’d withdraw, she’d get madder. I’d been burning through her patience for a good long while. My kids were disappointed by my no-shows. I was disappointed in myself. When I retired, I’d planned to make up for all the school events and Little League I had missed over the years. But now the drugs were gobbling up more and more of me. The more Monica and I argued, the more I wondered whether the kids would be better off if we split.

  In early 2003, I told Monica I wanted a divorce. She knew this was a cop-out and saw it for the cowardly move it was. Mainly I was bailing on the pressures of my life. Work and family take a lot of time and energy. Add regular drug use into the equation, there isn’t much left. Many times before, I’d threatened to leave without actually going. I didn’t know if Monica took me seriously. But this time I actually moved out. I convinced myself again that peace and quiet were waiting for me in a fresh line of cocaine.

  After I got my own place in Tampa, Monique came to visit on one of her flight-attendant layovers. She had no idea how out of control my life really was, that her famous athlete boyfriend was actually a drug-addicted mess. Had she known, she probably would have scheduled a much quicker TPA turnaround. My apartment was being remodeled the weekend of her first visit. I had a connection for rooms at the Hyatt, so I told her we’d be staying there. I’d promised to pick her up at the airport. But I’d started using cocaine before she landed and was in no condition to meet her plane. I called her cell phone from a different, fleabag hotel.

  “We’re working on a big trade,” I ex
plained about three lines in. “The negotiations are crazy. Can you just go to the Hyatt? I’ll meet you there as soon I can.”

  Since I was using again, I was lying again. This time, I was poisoning a relationship that had barely even begun.

  I didn’t show up at the hotel until the next day. For many months, I was able to hide from Monique just how severe my drug use had become. Later that year, she moved from Maryland to live with me in Tampa. She was quickly becoming the next woman in my life.

  Before Christmas, I drove Monique to St. Petersburg to meet my sister for the first time. We weren’t there for a half hour before I slipped into the bathroom to use. When I came out, I was obviously lit up. Betty called me out to my face, then pulled Monique aside and warned her: “You know, he’s struggled with drugs a long time.”

  She probably didn’t need the warning by then. She was already catching on. My habit led me to do all kinds of strange things. I’d climb out of bed at three a.m. for a shower when I really just wanted to slip into the bathroom and get high. Or I’d intentionally pick a fight with her so she would go sleep in another room and leave me alone to use drugs. Monique was smart and stubborn. One angry night, she kicked in the bathroom door and caught me snorting. At this point in my addiction, I wasn’t into going out and partying. All my drug use was alone. I couldn’t stand the thought of sharing my stash with anyone. Every now and then, Monique would get angry enough to flee back home to Maryland. Things were never smooth and easy with the two of us. We broke up and got back together several times. I was on the verge of turning forty but was still acting like a sneaky, sulking fifteen-year-old. Except, when I was fifteen, I was never this bad.

  When Monique became pregnant with Dylan in late 2004 and was really showing, she and I rode to St. Pete to visit with my mom. At that point, Monica and the kids were still living on my mom’s block. Monica and I had separated nearly two years earlier, but the divorce had still not been finalized. When Monique and I walked in, Monica was there—and obviously not thrilled to see her soon-to-be ex-husband and his very pregnant girlfriend. Everyone was chilly and polite. But for the next two days, I had a series of angry phone conversations with all three women. Once again, Monique stormed out and went home to Maryland. That’s where our son Dylan was born in November 2004.

  As my life grew more chaotic, I kept finding my refuge in drugs. I was turning up less and less often at the Yankees’ complex in Tampa. I was climbing on the roller coaster again. Hal Steinbrenner, George’s son, had an office next to mine. He was friendly, but noticed how distracted I seemed. One day, without calling first, Ron Dock, who was now the team’s drug-intervention coordinator, showed up at my office door.

  “Doc, level with me,” he said, pulling up a chair even before I invited him in. “What’s going on?”

  “I had a relapse,” I said. “I’m gonna put it back together. I will.” I meant it when I said it. I did.

  But that next Friday, I drove out to get sandwiches for some of the office crew and remembered I had some coke in the car. I’d gotten very good at dipping the corner of a credit card into a baggie of cocaine, then doing my thing in a parking lot, even at a red light. I never made it back to the office that afternoon. I caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror. I was horrified. I couldn’t let anyone see me like that. I hightailed it straight home. I’m sure my coworkers are still wondering what happened to their turkey and roast beef subs.

  The next morning, Saturday, I got a phone call I didn’t pick up. It was from someone in the Yankees’ front office. The message on the voice mail: “George is concerned.”

  I ignored it and kept using throughout the weekend. By Monday, I was in even worse shape. My phone rang again. It was Ron Dock again. “You gotta get in here today,” he said.

  “I’m sick, Ron,” I told him. That was sorta true.

  “If you don’t come in today,” Ron said, “George is gonna fire you. You just bailed on him, and you won’t tell anyone why.”

  “All right,” I promised, letting out a sigh of frustration. Or was it exhaustion? I couldn’t tell. I only knew I hated this feeling of harsh reality closing in. It felt like a thousand-pound door shutting on me. “I’ll be there,” I said.

  I wasn’t. I skipped two more days of work.

  On Wednesday, Ron Dock was back on the phone. I thought he was calling to say I was fired. But I wasn’t through yet. “George is giving you until five p.m. today to report to work or else he’s going to fire you,” Ron said.

  I didn’t know what to do. This was beyond awkward. I couldn’t face George. Too much time had passed already. But the Yankees were throwing me a life preserver, and for some reason I was swimming away from it. I took the coward’s approach. I just withdrew. I didn’t get fired. I didn’t quit. I didn’t go back to the office for the next couple of weeks. I had no communication with the organization at all. I increased my weekend drug use to full-time drug use. I just pretended I had no responsibilities in my life.

  I’m not sure why George didn’t fire me. He could have. He had every reason to. But he had a philosophy not everyone shares. He once told me, “Drug and alcohol dependency is a sickness. It isn’t like sticking up a gas station. It isn’t like committing a crime, even though many Americans view it that way.” On that topic at least, George was way ahead of his time.

  I’m also not sure why Monique and Dylan moved back down to Tampa. She realized right away how bad off I was. She called Ron Dock, who had far more patience with my constant relapses than I deserved. He and Monique decided a forced intervention was my only hope. They came up with a plan. Monique ordered a pizza and sent me down to the security gate to pick it up from the delivery guy.

  When I got there, there was no pizza—just Ray and Ron waiting for me. As soon as I made eye contact, I slammed the gate shut, ran to my car, and began driving away.

  My cell phone rang immediately. “What the hell are you doing?” Ray demanded.

  “I just gotta make a run, guys,” I said as calmly as I could manage. “Lemme do this. Then I’ll come back and listen to you.”

  Ron got on the phone. “If you don’t pull over,” he said, “I gotta call the cops. I don’t want you to hurt yourself or hurt anybody.”

  I laughed. Wasn’t it a little late for that? But as soon as I heard the word “cops,” I did pull over. I didn’t need any more of them in my life.

  Ray and Ron pulled up behind me. Ron got out and walked to my window. “Listen,” he said. “Steinbrenner wants you to keep your job. But he also wants you to go to rehab. Will you agree to that?”

  In the crazed state I was in—just when I needed it most—the whole idea of rehab seemed totally unnecessary. That’s how messed up I was.

  “Let me think about it,” I said. “I’m gonna sleep on it.”

  I drove home and went back into the apartment. Fifteen minutes passed. I looked out the window. As I should have expected, Ron and Ray weren’t going anywhere. I was craving more drugs. I wanted those pushy friends of mine out of my way. I called Ron’s cell and said, “I see you. You guys can leave now. It’s cool. I’m on the couch.”

  “Go to sleep, Doc,” Ron said with a laugh. “We’re not leaving.”

  The next morning my mom, my sister Betty, Ron, and Phil McNiff, George’s right-hand man in Tampa, all came to my apartment and gave it one last try.

  “George is ready to let you go if you don’t,” Phil said solemnly.

  “I don’t need rehab,” I said defensively. “I’ll just go back to work. I’ll get into the swing of things. I’ll be—”

  “Dwight!” Ron cut me off. “No rehab, no work.”

  I still wasn’t ready.

  The next day, Betty and Harold came over and tried to convince me to go. Betty called my daughter Ariel. She got on the phone. She was hysterical. She wanted me to go. Somewhere inside, I knew she was right. I knew all of them were. It took my daughter to cut through my stubbornness and remind me how much I was going to lose. “I
love you guys,” I finally told her. “Everything’s okay. I’m going to rehab.”

  I could hear Betty and Harold cheering in the kitchen. I could hear Ariel crying on the phone.

  Ron Dock agreed to drive me immediately to a treatment center in West Palm Beach. When we stopped for gas, Ron took the keys out of the ignition and put them in his pocket.

  “What did you do that for?” I asked him.

  “Why do you think?” he said, laughing.

  I checked into the program and immediately quit using drugs. I felt physically ill for the first few days. At my level of addiction, the body reacts strongly to not getting what it is used to. But I pushed through detox and withdrawal, and I stabilized. I wouldn’t say I was there for all the right reasons. It was outside pressure that got me there, the fear of losing my job and the heart-wrenching pleas from some of those I loved. I reacted to that in a way that helped to save me, though I wouldn’t say I was committed yet to changing my life. But my time inside did clean me up and allow me to work again.

  After twenty days in the program, I told my counselor I was ready to go home. He was a tall, jovial, older guy. He’d seen addicts come and go. I don’t think he was too impressed with my progress so far. “I’d actually like to keep you another week to ten days,” he said.

  “I’m fine,” I assured him.

  “Bullshit,” he snapped. “You’re like a turkey in an oven. You’re getting brown and juicy, but you’re not quite ready yet. You gotta let it cook, even if you’re convinced it’s already done.”

  “I gotta go home,” I insisted. “You can’t hold me here any longer.”

  “Fine,” he said. “It’s your decision. When you relapse, don’t tell anyone I was your counselor.”

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