Gooden looks once again for ‘help to save my life’
‘The only place I haven’t been yet is the cemetery. That would be my next stop.’
After being arrested a second time in six weeks, Dwight Gooden said Tuesday that he was set to enter a rehabilitation clinic.
“Basically, I’m going away tonight to try to get some help to save my life,” the 54-year-old former Major League Baseball star pitcher told the New York Post. “I’m very embarrassed. Very shameful, I feel bad for anybody I disappointed or let down.”
He was charged with driving while intoxicated late Monday evening in Newark, N.J., after police said they spotted his car going the wrong way on a oneway street.
Gooden’s June 7 arrest in Holmdel, N.J., landed him with drug-possession charges after police discovered “two small green zip-lock style plastic baggies” suspected to contain cocaine.
“I’ll be checking in tonight, whatever it takes,” said Gooden, who has struggled with addiction for decades.
“This time, I mean, at my age, I’ve been doing this for 30-something years. I never thought I’d see myself at 54 going back to treatment. First time was at 21. But, you know.”
A Cy Young Award winner in 1985, Gooden was just 19 the year before when he exploded onto the major league baseball scene for the New York Mets. He led all pitchers in strikeouts in each of his first two seasons, and he went on to go 194-112 over a 16-year career that included four all-star nods and a no-hitter as a member of the 1996 New York Yankees, who would win the World Series that year.
Gooden was a key part of the Mets’ 1986 team that won a championship, but what looked like a path straight to the National Baseball Hall of Fame became quickly derailed, at least in part, by drug use. Gooden tested positive for cocaine in ’87 and missed games while in rehab. Further failed tests caused him to be suspended for much of the ’94 season and all of ’95.
After his baseball career ended in 2000, Gooden continued to run afoul of the law. He was arrested in ’02, ’05 and ’06 on charges including DUI, resisting arrest and domestic battery.
Gooden served more than six months in prison in ’06 for violating terms of his probation by using cocaine. According to reports at the time, he chose incarceration over reinstatement of his probation because he was worried about relapsing and getting a much longer sentence.
In 2010, Gooden was hit with child-endangerment charges as well as driving under the influence of a controlled dangerous substance, among other charges, after he was involved in a two-car accident in Franklin Lakes, N.J. He was taking his five-year-old son to school at the time (per NJ.com), when his car struck one being driven by a 71-year-old man.
“I never thought I would make it to 50,” Gooden told the Post upon reaching that milestone in 2014. Described by the newspaper as having been “clean and sober for three years,” he said, “I’ve been to rehabs. I’ve been to counselling. I’ve been to jail. I’ve been in prison. The only place I haven’t been yet is the cemetery. That would be my next stop.”
If convicted of the recent drugpossession charges, Gooden could receive three to five years behind bars. After his arrest in Newark, he said in a text message to Newsday, “I really don’t know who I am right now and definitely don’t trust myself. This is the worst I’ve ever been through all my struggles.”
“It’s sad to see the continued problems of this former Mets star,” Newark Public Safety Director Anthony Ambrose said in a statement. “But it’s an example of the persistent scourge of drugs and alcohol in this country and the stranglehold they have on addicts.”
In his comments Tuesday, Gooden was reported to be speaking outside his home in Piscataway, N.J., while wearing a hospital bracelet on his right wrist and his 1986 World Series ring on his left hand.
He said he spoke “for probably two hours” the previous week with former Mets teammate Darryl Strawberry, who has had his own battles with substance abuse.
“I don’t do cocaine and have not for years,” Gooden claimed in 2016, but on Tuesday he said there had “been a buildup” to his recent episodes.
“About four months ago, for some crazy reason, I stopped taking all my medication. I wasn’t going to my meetings. I wasn’t talking to anybody.”
Of trying yet again to get help with finally ridding himself of his drug habits, Gooden said: “It’s a struggle — a hard struggle — but you have to just jump back in.”