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Doc and Darryl After times of turmoil, Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry of the Mets have become stronger than everBy Ralph Wiley Issue date: July 11, 1988
Here are four ways to look at Straw and Doc: The first is through the eyes of a former player. ''Most guys have talent, but not that extraordinary talent, so people can't understand what those two have had to go through,'' says Tim McCarver, a Mets TV announcer and a major league catcher for 21 years. ''Darryl and Dwight have had to mature under so many eyes. Yet they seem to have done it. Without them, the Mets are a good team. With them, it's not stretching it to say that the Mets are a great team.'' The second way to look at Straw and Doc is through the eyes of an artist. ''The similarities between them are amazing, aren't they?'' says LeRoy Neiman, the popular painter and an unregenerate Mets fan. ''They are the two I've drawn the most of all the Mets. The first time I saw Gooden, I didn't know who he was, but I knew he was somebody. Darryl has that, too. They both have a grace you can't express in words. I think they're the most extraordinary pair in baseball, in sports. . . .'' The third view is through the eyes of baseball's best handler of pitchers. ''If I could have one player off the Mets' roster, it would have to be Gooden,'' says San Francisco Giants manager Roger Craig. ''A guy who will go get you 20 wins (a year) for 12 years. He's got the perfect delivery for the split-finger. I'd talk to him about throwing it, but, believe me, I wouldn't insist.'' The fourth is through the eyes of the best manager in baseball. ''If I could pick one guy in all of baseball to start an expansion team with, it'd have to be Strawberry,'' says Whitey Herzog of the St. Louis Cardinals. ''I'd put him at cleanup, get me six jackrabbits and a plumber to hit behind him, and I'd have myself a ---- team. Strawberry's the guy.'' Straw and Doc dress side by side in the visitors' clubhouse at Busch Stadium and then walk out into the sun and the gaze of curious fans. The previous evening, the lefthanded-hitting Strawberry, even though he was playing with a sore thumb, a strained groin muscle and a tender hamstring, had driven in four runs, two on a monstrous home run off Cardinals lefthander Larry McWilliams, to lead the Mets to a 6-2 victory. The day before that, Gooden had won the game against the Chicago Cubs. In the bottom of the seventh, after having thrown a no-hitter to that point, he blasted a two-run homer to the back row of the bleachers at Shea Stadium and then ducked his head and sped around the bases, unable to suppress a childlike smile. In the next inning, Gooden lost his no-hitter and his shutout, but not the game, as the Mets won 11-3. Who could have guessed a year ago that this is how things would be going at midseason of 1988? Back then, Gooden had recently been activated following a four-week stay at the Smithers Alcoholism and Drug Treatment Center in Manhattan, for rehabilitation from cocaine abuse, and a month in the minors. Strawberry was in the throes of a separation from his wife, Lisa, who had charged that he had beaten her. He was also at odds with his teammates, some of whom had lambasted him publicly for missing two games in a key series with the Cards because, he said, he was ill. However, on one of those days he spent several hours publicizing a rap number he had recorded the day before. Both Doc and Straw were victims of their own bad decisions. In 1988, with the aid of each other and the passing of time, they have reassumed their star status as if they had simply taken a long coffee break. Each has changed -- for the better. Gooden is now a precision pitcher in a power pitcher's body, while Strawberry, thanks to having developed more discipline at the plate, has finally begun to come fully into his own. In his seven no-hit innings against the Cubs, Gooden threw only 74 pitches. ''Better that way,'' he says. ''I had good velocity. I was 96 to 97 (mph) on most of my fastballs, even though I didn't have my good stuff. Only threw one fastball that wasn't in the 90s, but the curve wasn't as hard as I'd like.'' Doc then turns to Straw and asks, ''Did it look like I had my good stuff?'' Strawberry teases him, tilting his right hand back and forth, as if to say, ''Just so-so.'' Straw gets on well with the Mets pitchers. In the Shea Stadium clubhouse, his cubicle is flanked by those of six pitchers, three on each side, and his best friend on the team, besides Gooden, is David Cone, the young righthander. Straw amused the entire staff early in the season by taking the mound during a workout in Montreal. How did he do? ''Well, Straw had good velocity. He was bringing it,'' says Gooden. What about his control? Doc chuckles and says, ''Bad.'' Now, in St. Louis, the Cardinals are finishing batting practice. Straw and Doc walk onto the field together and chat with Cardinals shortstop Ozzie Smith at the batting cage. Ozzie: Say, Straw, what was that you did to us last night? Straw: Aw, I just got a hanger, Oz. I just got a piece of it. Ozzie: Pretty big piece. And what was that stance, that corkscrew? Smith mimics the new stance Strawberry has been using this year, in which he lifts his right foot just before he swings, as Japanese slugger Sadaharu Oh did. Straw: It helps the balance. Ozzie: You don't need help. That home run only went about 10 rows back. And you, Doc, who was that you took deep the other day? Doc: (Bill) Landrum. Ozzie: So how's the curve doing? Doc: Good. Real good. Ozzie: Thanks, Doc. Thanks a lot. Doc: Aw, Oz, you know I can't get you, anyway. Strawberry and Gooden get down to business. Straw enters the cage and with an easy golflike swing hits one long drive after another down the power alleys. Doc lopes along in the outfield, casually shagging flies. ''In New York, if you move your fork on the dinner table, people read about it,'' says Smith. ''So for them to excel is extraordinary, yet so natural. Right now, they're feeding off each other, not worrying about what other people think. It's a gift, being able to play like they can play. And now they're realizing that it's a gift. A Strawberry, a Gooden? Talentwise, they don't come along every day. It'll be my pleasure to say I played against them and beat them sometimes.'' Straw and Doc wear the same size shoes, and each has a young son who carries his father's name. They also live within walking distance of each other in town houses on Long Island. However, despite their many similarities, Strawberry and Gooden are very different men. Strawberry is outspoken. If he is hit, his first reaction is to hit back. He seems younger than 26. The key to his success is the power in his arms, hands and wrists. After five years in the major leagues, he's just beginning to realize his potential. In late May, Straw is sitting in front of his locker at Shea as a driving rainstorm delays the start of a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Like lightning to a rod, 10 or 15 reporters converge on him, and he starts talking: ''Really, I'm not to the point where I'm hot yet, and that's kind of scary. . . . I'm just starting to get it in my mind what I can do, not what anybody thinks I can do. . . . We're healthy, we're playing well, we're happy, and everybody hates us again.'' Across the room is Lee Mazzilli, New York's 33-year-old pinch hitter, known as Maz. Once he, too, was a young Mets star, but he didn't have as many good players around him. Nor did he have Strawberry's gifts. Mazzilli was one of the Mets who criticized Strawberry for sitting out those two games last year. But seasons change. On June 13, Straw and Maz combined to end a Mets five- game losing streak, with a 2-1 win over the Cardinals at Shea. Strawberry touched McWilliams in the fourth inning, hitting a ball off the bullpen wall beyond rightfield for his 13th homer of the season. Then Maz got the game- winner, a chop single over a drawn-in infield, in the 12th inning. Strawberry was the first out of the dugout to high-five Maz as he crossed the plate. ''One thing that can never be rushed is experience,'' says Mazzilli. ''Darryl has the most talent in baseball. But he was a kid. Now he can use that talent. To a certain degree, I went through that. I know the demands on him. I know there's no question that he has more talent than anyone I've ever seen. There's nobody even close. I'd like to have Darryl's talent just for one year, to see what I could do with it.'' Another Met who has been outspoken about Straw is Keith (Mex) Hernandez, the 34-year-old lefthanded-hitting first baseman and No. 3 hitter. In the April issue of Esquire magazine, in which Strawberry ripped several of his teammates, he said of Hernandez, ''Who the hell knows where his head was half the time last season.'' Mex is sitting on the bench in the dugout and makes a face when the Esquire story is mentioned. But Hernandez has respect for Straw. ''For some reason, Darryl listens to me,'' he says. ''I think it was the second half of '86 when he finally moved closer to the plate against lefties. Hey, everybody has to be shown. Ken Boyer showed me. Anyway, since then, Darryl's been a terror. An enforcer. Since (Jack) Clark left, he's the dominant hitter in the league.'' ''Darryl's comfortable up there,'' says McCarver. ''He's hitting his pitch, going to left center. He's showing he learned something from Keith. And one day, Darryl will hit a baseball farther than anyone has ever hit a baseball before.'' Strawberry doesn't have far to go. Early this season he blasted a homer in Montreal's Olympic Stadium that, had it not hit a bank of lights near the roof, would have traveled an estimated 525 feet, just 40 feet shy of Mickey Mantle's famous blow out of Washington's Griffith Stadium in 1953. And Straw has continued to hit the long ball. On Saturday he hit his 20th home run, his 11th against a lefty, to move ahead of the San Francisco Giants' Will Clark for the league lead. Through Sunday, he was hitting .301 with 53 RBIs. ''I've always been outspoken,'' says Straw. ''I've said things, and I've meant what I've said. If you criticize me, I can criticize you. I had a real tough time in New York. I had to sit down and take a look at what life was all about. I feel proud of myself now, that I didn't let anyone run me out of town. But I had to go through experiences. I had to learn if I was strong. I am. I know it now.'' Strawberry was already Gooden's model when they attended instructional league together in the winter of 1982, back when Straw was 20 and Doc was 17. ''Doc was groomed like I was,'' says Straw, ''to come up and dominate on the major league level.'' The next season, during spring training, Gooden, who would go 19-4 with 300 strikeouts in 191 innings in the minors that year, asked Strawberry, who would join the Mets in early May, if he could borrow his spikes for good luck. ''I was so nervous,'' says Gooden. ''He asked me, 'What size do you wear?' I said, 'Same as you.' I didn't really know. But turned out we both wore 11's. It was just fate.'' ''I had to throw Darryl before the public at an early age,'' says Mets media director Jay Horwitz. ''From him I learned what not to do with Dwight. We had lost 97 games the year before Darryl came up. So he had to be the story.'' After the 1986 season, the story turned grim. Strawberry now has 167 home runs, lifetime, the most in Mets history. But with that swing of his, says former teammate Kevin Mitchell of the Giants, ''you kind of expect him to hit 20 home runs every game.'' In '86, Straw had 27 homers, but because of his talent, the press kept referring to his total as ''only 27.'' That winter he became estranged from his wife and son. The separation was a failure of a most cutting nature for Strawberry, who had been raised in inner-city Los Angeles by his mother, Ruby, a single parent after his father, Henry, moved out when Darryl was 13. By the spring of '87, he felt adrift. ''I had to see if I wanted to lead a different kind of life-style,'' he says. ''I found out that I didn't want that at all.'' One evening during last year's All-Star break, as Strawberry stood outside the Hyatt Regency in Oakland, he was urged to enter a car by two beautiful women and their driver. It was a tempting offer, but Straw thought about what had happened to Doc and declined. Later, he stood by the hotel bar with a boyhood friend, Eric Davis of the Cincinnati Reds. They looked at each other and laughed the way two old friends who have made something of themselves can laugh without having to say anything specific. Recently, quoting one unnamed source relying on information from a second unnamed source, The Cincinnati Enquirer linked Davis with possible drug use, a charge Davis vehemently denied. ''If we weren't black, we wouldn't have to go through some of the things we go through,'' Strawberry says. ''So what else is new? When you're younger, you think it's unfair, wrong. You get mad. You want to hit back. But how do you hit back against a label? Then, if you realize what's important in life, you accept that this is the way it is and go on about your business. How long does it take anybody to grow up, especially when we had to come up, with that talent, so quickly?'' Despite all the distractions, including harsh exchanges with teammates and manager Davey Johnson, Strawberry performed well in 1987. He hit 39 homers and drove in 104 runs, while batting .284. He also set club records for total bases (310), runs scored (108) and extra-base hits (76). On July 20, Johnson made Strawberry the Mets' cleanup hitter, and he played a major role in keeping New York in the division race until the last week of the season. He had come of age as a player. By early fall, Straw and Lisa had reconciled. Lisa became pregnant, and on June 28, a daughter, Diamond Nicole, was born to the Strawberrys. Now most is right with Straw's world. Yet no one noticed that his resurgence began when Doc came back to the Mets. During his absence, Strawberry had worn the Doc's game pants. ''No one knows how that touched me,'' says Gooden. ''I'm relaxed, not trying so hard,'' says Strawberry. ''I know I'm going to hit. I don't know if Doc's coming back turned me around or not. Maybe it turned the whole team around. I've always thought that we're better than we think we are. And we think we're pretty good.'' Gooden is quiet and sensitive. If hit, his first reaction is to avoid being hit again. He seems older than 23. The key to his success is the power in his legs. After four years in the major leagues, it seems as if he has already done just about everything a pitcher can do, except throw a no-hitter. ''The no-hitter is just a matter of time,'' says catcher Gary Carter, a.k.a. Kid. ''When Doc's got his breaking ball, I haven't seen too many people do much with him. The thing about Dwight is he's blessed with a strong body, strong legs. He could be great for a long time.'' When Gooden speaks of pitching, there is a softness in his voice. ''I always remember seeing things as a pitcher,'' he says. ''I went to watch the Reds in spring training when I was a boy growing up in Tampa. My father took me. He was always saying, 'Don't be afraid to throw the breaking ball when behind.' So in a way I've been pitching my whole life. Every time out, I learn more and more about myself. People can give you advice, but when you go out there on that mound, you're all alone.'' To suggest that there is a softness about Gooden might seem ridiculous, yet there it is. The soft voice, the lack of pretension. ''Straw's in a world of his own,'' says Mitchell. ''You look at his size, his stroke. . . . But Doc is so nice. He'll come inside on you, but never too far. Never. Yet if the hook is working, you've got no chance. God couldn't hit him then.'' This softness in Gooden is surrounded by an iron constitution. Except for his stay at Smithers, Gooden has never missed a start because of injury, illness or hangover, and he has never used so much as a cube of ice on his arm. Through Sunday he had started 142 big league games and completed 49 of them. Gooden's motion is so fluid that it's one of the reasons he has never been good at holding base runners on. The jerky motion of the pickoff is anathema to him. When Doc was 19, he was a 190-pound flamethrower. Now he's a 210-pound metronome of consistency. ''You see him, you have to think about a Tom Seaver or a Nolan Ryan,'' says Mets pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre. ''I don't know if anyone can throw as hard as Nolan for as long as Nolan has. But if anybody can do it, I think it will be Dwight.'' On May 20, Gooden missed inside and hit Dodgers shortstop Alfredo Griffin on the right hand, breaking it. Afterward, Gooden stood impassively on the mound. ''I was thinking, How did I hit him? How did I miss that much? '' he says. ''I heard he later said I tried to (hit him intentionally). But I've never thrown at anybody in my life. I don't need to do that. That's not pitching. When I say that I pitch in and out, up and in, I don't mean the same things as other guys. They think, If a guy hits you, come back and hit him. But to me that doesn't make sense. That's not baseball.'' Gooden spends hours studying the box scores and the scouting reports. ''Usually, I want to run it away from righthanders and in on lefthanders,'' he says. ''I get more ground balls that way. The curve, the change, they set up the fastball. The fastball is my pitch. I study because I'm not going to let certain guys beat me. I don't care if I have to walk a Mike Schmidt, a Dale Murphy, an Andres Galarraga four times a game. They're not going to beat me if I can help it.'' Gooden is third on the Mets' alltime winning list, with 84, behind Tom Seaver (198) and Jerry Koosman (140). He's also the youngest player ever to have won the Cy Young Award and to have played in the All-Star Game. His earned run average this season after his 7-2 victory against the Houston Astros on Saturday was 2.90, which seems high only because Gooden had a 2.46 lifetime ERA going into this year. His 11-4 record seems unremarkable because his lifetime winning percentage is .735. Whitey Ford's was .690; Christy Mathewson's, .665; Cy Young's, .620; Bob Gibson's, .591. Last season, even though Gooden didn't start pitching until June, he tied for fifth in the Cy Young vote with Ryan, who, incidentally, is a .517 pitcher over his career. ''That travesty he went through (his drug rehabilitation) helped him,'' says Carter. ''He turned a negative into a plus. I didn't say turning. I mean he's already done it. His marriage seemed to stabilize him.'' It seems ironic that a pitcher with Gooden's control would need stabilizing. But his erratic behavior first manifested itself on the mound. As 1986 drew to a close, he was not the same pitcher he had been, even though he finished with a 17-6 record and a 2.84 ERA. He was laboring, and the fastball was not his best pitch anymore. In the National League Championship Series against the Astros, Gooden pitched 17 innings with an ERA of 1.06, but was 0-1. Then, in the World Series, he was shelled by the Boston Red Sox: 0-2 with an 8.00 ERA. Those statistics indicated that something was wrong with Doc. On Oct. 28, Gooden, apparently suffering from a hangover, missed the victory parade up Broadway for the world-champion Mets. Two months later came the famous set-to with the Tampa police following an incident involving an alleged traffic violation. The man who had always avoided being hit was caught in a sequence of hits. One of them featured Carlene Pearson, Gooden's former girlfriend, who, while on her way to the gate to meet Doc when he arrived at New York's La Guardia Airport on Jan. 30, was arrested for trying to get through the metal detector with a loaded derringer. ''I had hit rock bottom,'' says Gooden now. ''I was in no-man's-land. I just wanted to run, leave, get away. Those were tough times.'' Straw knew Doc was too accommodating to his old acquaintances in Tampa. ''He's got to get out of there,'' Straw told reporters at the time. Gooden's high school coach, Billy Reed, a Tampa native, said the same thing. But Doc just couldn't hurt people he knew -- even if they were hurting him. So he volunteered for a drug test in March 1987, tested positive for cocaine, took the rap and let circumstances distance him from those who didn't mean him well. ''The hardest thing I've ever done in my life was facing my folks and telling them about the cocaine,'' Gooden says. ''My little boy was there, too. Sitting right there, listening to me.'' Reporters shouted questions and cameras whined as Gooden checked into the Smithers clinic on April 2. ''Even later during my stay, it was like that,'' Gooden says. ''I'd go to the kitchen to get something to eat, look out the window and there would be reporters and cameramen.'' ''He wanted to get better,'' says Dr. Alan Lans, Gooden's counselor and an associate director at Smithers. ''This is never easy. Do you have any bad habits? You ever try to quit a habit? It takes concentration, hard work. But he's getting better all the time.'' After he left the clinic, Gooden gave up on his hometown. He bought a house in nearby St. Petersburg for his parents, one he can also use occasionally in the off-season. But New York is home now. ''I know I said I thought about giving up the game, but I didn't say that right,'' says Gooden. ''That's not what I meant. I love baseball, and I didn't realize how much until I was away from it. Everything in baseball is familiar to me. It's who I am.'' Monica Colleen Harris, who's three years younger than Gooden, and Doc were friends from childhood. She is the sister of Randy and Randall Harris, who played with and against Gooden in high school. ''They used to say, 'Don't be looking over there,' but they were laughing,'' says Gooden. ''Besides, she was so young.'' But even as he began to hit bottom, he noticed her through the haze. She worked the drive-in window at a local Burger King. Doc found himself heading for Burger King often. Then he told one of his relatives to get her phone number. When Gooden was released from Smithers, he called Monica right away. The two were married in Tampa on Nov. 21. It seemed like a whirlwind courtship, but it was an old relationship that had merely changed. It was a fastball set up by a curve. ''It means something to have a nice meal waiting for you,'' says Gooden. ''To have someone to listen and understand what you mean. To leave the game at the park. She doesn't press me to go out. She lets me call the shots.'' ''When he was striking out 16 batters a game, he was just throwing,'' says Johnson. ''Now he's a little bigger, happier, more mature. And he'll just go on from here.'' ''All this stuff made me a better person,'' says Gooden. ''It showed me how much I care about the game of baseball.'' Yes, soft is the wrong word for Doc. Yet there it is. When Mets general manager Frank Cashen is asked if he would ever let Straw or Doc go, he mulls the question over only briefly. ''I have no present intent to do so,'' says Cashen. ''But Mr. Darling, Mr. Cone and Mr. Myers have to be signed. It's not an easy set of circumstances.'' Strawberry's contract runs until the end of next season, when he'll be eligible to become a free agent. Gooden's contract is up this year, when he'll be eligible for arbitration. ''With the numbers we're about to throw up there, there won't be any question (that the Mets will sign us),'' says Strawberry. ''You have to believe in yourself before anybody else will. And I know I'm going to get mine.'' And Gooden? ''I think we're one of the best teams,'' he says. But is he the best pitcher? Doc drops his head and smiles as if he's embarrassed. The voice goes soft. ''When I'm down off the mound, I can't answer that,'' he says. ''When I'm on the mound, out there by myself, I feel there is no better pitcher. I don't put anybody before me. I think I'm the best at it. But you can't always win.'' Losing is part of growing up. Even the best baseball club on the planet will win a third and lose a third of its games, just like the worst club. It's the other third that makes the difference. Straw and Doc have always had great futures. But now that they also have pasts, those futures may finally be within their reach. Issue date: July 11, 1988
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