Sunday Poem: Doc Gets His Due
Dwight Gooden Electrified Baseball for a Half Dozen Years But Fell Prey to His Demons
Dwight Gooden’s 1985 season was probably the best pitching season I’ve ever seen. He went 24-4 with a 1.53 ERA that season, and helped the Mets win 98 games. he won a Cy Young — after finishing second the year before as a 19-year-old rookie (who probably deserved to win it). He was consistently dominant in a way I’ve only seen a few times, and every time he pitched we had to watch.
He was Doctor K, the game’s biggest strikeout pitcher, and he helped make the Mets relevant again.
Gooden was beset by demons. Some have compared his trajectory — reaching the apex of the game, becoming the star of stars, only to fall as his personal choices led him to suspension and prevented his ultimate enshrinement in Cooperstown — to Greek drama.
This misreads Doc’s story and the basic rules of Greek tragedy, which ties the hero’s fall to hubris, to an exaggerated pride in which the hero sees himself equal to the gods, who then step in and punish him. This wasn’t Doc, not according to the people who talk about him in the SNY documentary Dr. K, in which his teammates describe him as almost crippled by doubts.
Doc’s number will be retired by the Mets today. Some fans will balk, but not many. Doc pitched 11 seasons for the Mets. He won 157 games, still second-most in franchise history. He had a 3.10 ERA and struck out 1,875 batters. He was, for good or ill, the face of the franchise, representing the rise and fall of what should have been a dynasty.
Gooden left after being suspended in 1994, missed the entire ‘95 season, pitched for the Yankees, Cleveland, Houston, Tampa. He was arrested numerous times, struggled with the disease of addiction. He was a kid when he burst upon the scene, just 19. He’s a grandfather now, long removed from those glorious nights at Shea. When no. 16 is placed above the outfield wall, it will be for him and for the fans, a reminder of a sublime stretch in Mets’ history.
I wrote this poem, “Striking Out,” after one of his many arrests. It was published 10 years ago by the Good Men Project.
Striking Out
Dwight Gooden’s been arrested
and I’m in a classroom
talking to students
about semi-colons.
There are three uses
for the semi-colon, more
than the number of innings
Doc pitched in his final game.
In his first game, he
struck out five. He didn’t
win again until May,
but, then, he was unhittable.
He was nineteen. I was
twenty-one. I worked
a delivery route.
He worked the strike zone,
won the Cy Young. Nothing
but cocaine could stop him.
I went back to school,
got a degree. He
won a championship,
made millions throwing
curveballs that broke
into the zone
like they fell from a desk.
Independent clauses
can be linked with semi-colons.
Drug stops with a jail sentence.
Fastballs with a slow change.
Use commas in lists,
unless clarity is needed. Use
the fastball to brush the batter
back from the plate,
then make him chase
a curveball in the dirt.
Gooden painted the corners
like a master, rapid-fire
and fierce like Pollack, precise
like Rothko. I use words
to make my point, commas
to bring it home.
There are eight uses
for the comma; there were
eight shutouts pitched by Gooden
in his Cy Young season,
eight chances given
to the phenom pitcher
whose violent, rising fastball
punctuated the rare period
when his Mets ruled the city.
In my classroom,
miss a test and you only get
one chance to make it right.