Doc Gooden - Wanted

[bravosfan]

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -- Former baseball star Dwight Gooden was being sought by police Tuesday on a felony warrant after he allegedly drove away from an officer who stopped him on suspicion of drunken driving.

Gooden, 41, left the scene of the traffic stop early Monday after refusing to get out his 2004 BMW to take a field sobriety test, police spokeswoman Laura McElroy said.

The officer stopped Gooden's car because he was weaving in traffic near downtown Tampa, McElroy said. Gooden, a Tampa native and resident, has a history of drug abuse and is awaiting trial on a domestic violence charge.

"The officer pulls over the car and immediately notices that the driver is under the influence," she said. "He has bloodshot, glassy eyes, his speech was slurred and he has a strong odor of alcohol."

Gooden handed the officer his driver's license but refused two requests to get out of the car, McElroy said. He then drove off with the officer still holding his license.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/baseball/mlb/08/23/gooden.wanted.ap/index.html

[rsox]

Re: Doc Gooden - Wanted

Well if i had to choose, i would rather be Doc Gooden than Lawrence Phillips!.

[ehh]

Re: Doc Gooden - Wanted

I saw this this afternoon, so sad. It hurts to imagine what could have been.

The other week we could have been watching two 40+ year old members of the 300 win club facing each other in the Houston vs. Mets series.

[SPTO]

Re: Doc Gooden - Wanted

At least he's been clean the last few years. I remember seein ga piece on the George Michael Sports Machine several years ago where Gooden was doing some kind of baseball camp where he taught kids about the dangers of drug use etc etc.

Hopefully this is just a blip on the radar.

[TarHeelMan]

Re: Doc Gooden - Wanted

I saw this this afternoon, so sad. It hurts to imagine what could have been.

The other week we could have been watching two 40+ year old members of the 300 win club facing each other in the Houston vs. Mets series.

I remember those glorious years of 1984, the pennant chase with the Cubs, and then in 1985 down to the wire with the Cardinals... Doc was just electric, it seemed he could do no wrong... As a young kid growing up in NY, he was the first sports "idol" that I looked up to. He was everywhere in NY. Remember the big mural of him on the side of the building by the Port Authority? I can't begin to describe the disappointment when he was suspended for drugs...

That blazing fastball, and the curveball that was so good that Tim McCarver (back when he was a good announcer, doing Mets games) called it "Lord Charles" instead of "Uncle Charlie"... Ah, memories....

[videobastard]

Re: Doc Gooden - Wanted

This guy and strawberry always run into problems.

[nyisles16]

Re: Doc Gooden - Wanted

Gooden's son has also been in some trouble with the law too..

so sad to hear..

[TarHeelMan]

Re: Doc Gooden - Wanted

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>Interesting read from Mike Lupica in the NY Daily News, on Doc Gooden....

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</TD></TR><TR><TD>

</TD></TR><TR><TD><!-- Component: NYDailyNews : component/story/picture.comp --><TABLE cellSpacing=10 cellPadding=0 width=50 align=right border=0><TBODY></TBODY></TABLE><!-- Component: NYDailyNews : component/story/picture.comp -->Dwight Gooden first left the scene of a crime over a decade ago, when he left Shea Stadium for good. The crime there was cheating his talent, cheating his teammates, cheating the Mets, cheating the fans who remembered what he was like when he was 19 and could throw a fastball past anybody.

Even with that brief, shining comeback with the Yankees later on, Gooden has really been on the run ever since. It means on the run from what he could have been, from the career and the life he was supposed to have. When you look at it that way, Dwight Gooden has been a fugitive longer than he was ever a baseball star.



This time the trouble for him came at the corner of Cleveland St. and Howard Ave. in South Tampa, Gooden driving a 2004 BMW. One more time, he was drunk behind the wheel of an expensive car. When the cops asked him to step outside the vehicle, Gooden drove away instead. On the run again. Maybe because he was afraid to fail another Breathalyzer test. Or maybe afraid that they would discover he had cocaine in his possession, or in his system. Who knows?



Who knows and who cares?



There is something almost Shakespearean now, a modern sports tragedy, about Gooden's fall from grace, and Darryl Strawberry's. Strawberry, Gooden's friend and former teammate with the Mets, was going to be the home run king of baseball at Shea the way Gooden was going to be the strikeout king. That was before they both gave it away to drugs and booze, and all the times they both acted like bums.



They ruined a lot more than baseball careers along the way. Two weeks ago, Gooden's 19-year old son, Dwight Gooden Jr., was arrested for violating his own probation for a 2004 conviction on crack cocaine, and faced additional charges for having marijuana and bullets in his car.



This is known as carrying on the family name. Or what is left of it. Gooden's son was also picked up in Tampa, outside a club. The father got picked up at Cleveland and Howard. When Darryl Strawberry got busted one time, it was Kennedy and Arrawana in Tampa, for soliciting an undercover policewoman.



The policewoman, Kelly Daniel, asked Strawberry what he wanted that night. He said, "I want it all." He had it all once. So did Gooden. He was 24-4 as a teenager in 1984. By Opening Day of 1987, he was in rehab at Smithers, on the upper East Side of Manhattan, instead of pitching for the Mets.



Gooden came back nearly 10 years after that to pitch a no-hitter for the Yankees. After he retired, George Steinbrenner kept trying to carry him, putting him on the payroll, keeping him on it no matter how many times he would get in trouble with the law.



Finally this spring Gooden was arrested and charged with hitting a live-in girlfriend in the face. Then he was gone from the Yankees for good, even as his nephew, Gary Sheffield, continued to be a Yankee star.



I called Gooden up last summer for a column I never got to write. This was when Sheffield was carrying the Yankees, when he was the hitting star for the '04 Yankees, looking as much like the Most Valuable Player as any ballplayer in the American League. I wondered what Gooden thought about that, watching from Tampa, watching his sister's son be this kind of baseball star in front of Yankee Stadium crowds, hearing the cheers from a big excited New York baseball crowd that Gooden used to hear when he was young.



Now he was 40, still younger than Roger Clemens, who had pitched for the Red Sox in that Red Sox-Mets World Series of 1986. He was younger than Randy Johnson. Now he was all but out of baseball, hanging on with a mercy job from Steinbrenner, more than a thousand miles from New York, light-years away from the streak of light he had been once at Shea.



"I'm jealous," he said that day on his cell phone. "Seeing what [Sheffield] is doing makes me remember what I did once. It makes me miss New York as much as I ever have." He was asked if it made him sad at the same time.



"Yeah," he said. "It makes me sad if I think about it too much. Because it makes me remember what I had and what I lost." Dwight Gooden lost more than his fastball. They officially called him a fugitive in Tampa yesterday. He has been one of those for a long time, on the run from everything he was, everything he was supposed to be.


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[mgoblue]

Re: Doc Gooden - Wanted

i don't think I can feel bad for Doc Gooden anymore...just had way too many opportunities to turn it around, i dunno

[SPTO]

Re: Doc Gooden - Wanted

i don't think I can feel bad for Doc Gooden anymore...just had way too many opportunities to turn it around, i dunno

agreed wholeheartedly tho it's still very sad to see such a phenom like Gooden throw it all away like that. Who knows, he'd probably be in the hunt for 300 wins if he never got caught up in drugs.


BTW tarheelman you should've put up a link to the story.

Gooden Legacy Not Golden Arm

[TarHeelMan]

Re: Doc Gooden - Wanted

The story was emailed to me, I wasn't aware the link to the story was still active...

[nyisles16]

Re: Doc Gooden - Wanted

this is just another story of "getting rich quick" & not being able to control yourself..

ps - he still hasnt turned himself in or been found..

[SPTO]

Re: Doc Gooden - Wanted

Hot off the presses!

Gooden Surrenders to Police

[EWRMETS]

Re: Doc Gooden - Wanted

Why are two of my childhood idols (Doc and Daryl) such f ups.

[TheLetterZ]

Re: Doc Gooden - Wanted

I love this quote about Gooden I read on baseball-reference.com

In 1985, we learned how brilliantly sublime talent can shine. What followed showed us what can happen when real life has its say. Thanks for the memories, Doc.