Doc: A Memoir by Dwight Gooden & Ellis Henican

Author:Dwight Gooden & Ellis Henican [Gooden, Dwight & Henican, Ellis]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780544027022
Amazon: 0544027027
Publisher: New Harvest
Published: 2013-06-04T00:00:00+00:00

13

Suicide Squeeze

I TOOK THE BULLETS out of the gun. I pointed the weapon against my forehead. I held it there until Monica and the girls got home from Grandma and Grandpa’s house. The gun was a semiautomatic 9-millimeter Glock, more than enough to do the job if I’d had the balls to leave it loaded. But this was suicide theater, not a suicide attempt.

“Dwight!” my wife screamed when she opened the bedroom door. “What’s wrong with you?” She was eight and a half months pregnant.

“Mon—,” I pleaded. “Just leave. It’ll be much easier this way. For everyone.”

“No!” she howled. Her face was a twist of fear and confusion. “Please put the gun down! Please!” She was crying now. “Why are you doing this?”

“I can’t tell you,” I answered. “You don’t want to know.”

“Whatever it is,” she said, forcing a layer of calm into her voice, “we can work it out.”

“I don’t know.”

“Promise me you won’t pull the trigger,” she said. “I’m going to go get your mother. This is crazy!”

I’d been unable to manipulate Major League Baseball and the New York Mets and their stern-faced doctors. But at least I was getting some traction at home. If anything, this sick show was crueler and more selfish than real suicide. It sent terror into the hearts of those who loved me without putting myself at any actual risk. It was a horrible and shameful game. But in the grip of my addiction, I swear, it seemed perfectly reasonable to me.

My mom marched into the room and came to the side of the bed where I was sitting. Mom never fooled around. She snatched the gun from me. “Gimme that,” she said. I put up no struggle. Then, she and Monica and I huddled together and cried.

This was early November of 1994. A week earlier, I had filed for free agency, one of nineteen players that year to tell their teams “I’m outta here.” When I next pitched in the majors, I’d make them sorry they weren’t nicer to me. In fact, I had no plan for actually pitching any time soon, since it would mean I’d have to get off drugs. But now, as I held that gun to my head, even the far-fetched notion of playing ball again was being pushed back yet more.

I’d gotten a registered letter in the mail that morning. Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig said he was very sorry, but I was being suspended for the entire 1995 season, 168 days on top of the 15 days I already had to make up for 1994. Even my coked-up brain could understand: this meant I would have no job, no salary, and nothing to do all day. I would be failing my father’s most basic test of manhood: Do what you want to. But make sure your family is taken care of.

Here’s how sick I was: The letter didn’t make me want to kill myself. It made we want to put on a show of self-destruction so dramatic that my family would sympathize with me instead of being angry I’d messed up my life again.

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