April 6, 2006

FREE PRESS NEWS SERVICES

TAMPA -- Former All-Star pitcher Dwight Gooden was sentenced Wednesday to a year and a day in prison for violating his probation.

With credit for time served in jail and a drug facility, Gooden likely will spend about 7 1/2 months in state prison, said his attorney, Peter Hobson.

Gooden, 41, was serving three years' probation for speeding away from police during a drunken driving traffic stop last year when he failed a drug test and acknowledged to a probation officer that he had used cocaine.

He chose the sentence over reinstatement of probation, which would have meant the prospect of five years behind bars if he violated it again.

As part of his probation, Gooden had been ordered to avoid alcohol, drugs and bars, and to give a minimum of three random urine tests a week.

He also spent two months in an addiction treatment facility.

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I'm the last person in the world to put athletes on a pedestal or expect any more from them than I do from anyone else, or think they should set an example or something for kids.....

But for some reason, the Doc Gooden story kills me.

Maybe because had one of the best, if not the best, seasons for a pitcher that I ever saw in my 45 years of watching baseball -

1985 for the NY Mets, his second major league season, when he won the NL Cy Young Award by going 24-4 with an E.R.A. of 1.53, and 268 strikeouts in 277 innings.

At age twenty.

He had 132 wins by age 27 (in 1991) despite missing parts of three seasons with injuries and drug problems (already), and he looked like a lock to win 300 games and go to the Hall of Fame.

But after two mediocre (by his standards) seasons for the Mets in 1992 & 1993 - certainly due in part to drug use - his career started downhill when he was suspended for part of 1994 and all of 1995 for repeated violations of MLB's anti-drug policy.

He played for four more teams from 1996 thru 2000, and despite pitching a no-hitter for the Yankees in 1996 was never anything close to being the pitcher he was from 1984-1991.

He started his career going 132-53 his first 8 years, and finished it by going 62-59 his last 9.

For all we know, had he avoided his drug problems, the guy could still be pitching today with well over 300 wins.

After all, he's only 41 years old.



I guess maybe you have to be a Mets fan from the mid 1980's to fully appreciate the talent that Gooden and Daryl Strawberry had, how the sky was truly the limit for both players and the team, and how they both threw their talent away.

Very sad. For a few years in the 1980s, he was the dominant pitcher in MLB. He was better than Clemens at the time and had one of the nastiest curveballs.

I remember when he came to Cleveland in the late 90s. He was a shell of himself. I remember watching him drenched with sweat whenever he pitched, no matter how cold it was. I always thought that his profuse sweating in a 40 degree game in April or early October was a direct result of the abuse he put his body through with drugs and booze.

Maybe jail will help Gooden get his life in order once and for all. But jail didn't do much for his buddy, Darryl Strawberry, so I'm not holding my breath.

I remember watching a profile of Gooden on '60 Minutes', sometime during the 1980's when he was and up & coming NY Met. His mom was trying so hard to keep him out of trouble.

Like Daryl Strawberry (to whome he was compared in that story) I suppose he's just one of those guys just couldn't deal with success & fame.

Even when given 2nd and 3rd chances.

Apple

To paraphrase Lorenzo, the bus driver - "The biggest sin in life is wasted talent". That sums up Dwight Gooden in a nutshell.

Dwight Gooden is a Hall Of Fame criminal and it's just infuriating because as has been mentioned the guy had electric stuff and could have been one of the greatest hurlers of all time.

This kind of news infuriates me. In another story it reiterated he chose the jail term over going into rehab. How many more chances does he need? This is the price he pays for the life he's chosen.