Authors: Dwight Gooden,Ellis Henican
“We’re working on a big trade,” I explained about three lines in.
“The negotiations are crazy. Can you just go to the Hyatt? I’ll meet you there as soon I can.”
Since I was using again, I was lying again. This time, I was poisoning a relationship that had barely even begun.
I didn’t show up at the hotel until the next day. For many months, I was able to hide from Monique just how severe my drug use had become. Later that year, she moved from Maryland to live with me in Tampa. She was quickly becoming the next woman in my life.
Before Christmas, I drove Monique to St. Petersburg to meet my sister for the first time. We weren’t there for a half hour before I slipped into the bathroom to use. When I came out, I was obviously lit up. Betty called me out to my face, then pulled Monique aside and warned her: “You know, he’s struggled with drugs a long time.”
She probably didn’t need the warning by then. She was already catching on. My habit led me to do all kinds of strange things. I’d climb out of bed at three a.m. for a shower when I really just wanted to slip into the bathroom and get high. Or I’d intentionally pick a fight with her so she would go sleep in another room and leave me alone to use drugs. Monique was smart and stubborn. One angry night, she kicked in the bathroom door and caught me snorting. At this point in my addiction, I wasn’t into going out and partying. All my drug use was alone. I couldn’t stand the thought of sharing my stash with anyone. Every now and then, Monique would get angry enough to flee back home to Maryland. Things were never smooth and easy with the two of us. We broke up and got back together several times. I was on the verge of turning forty but was still acting like a sneaky, sulking fifteen-year-old. Except, when I was fifteen, I was never this bad.
When Monique became pregnant with Dylan in late 2004 and was really showing, she and I rode to St. Pete to visit with my mom. At that point, Monica and the kids were still living on my mom’s block. Monica and I had separated nearly two years earlier, but the divorce had
still not been finalized. When Monique and I walked in, Monica was there—and obviously not thrilled to see her soon-to-be ex-husband and his very pregnant girlfriend. Everyone was chilly and polite. But for the next two days, I had a series of angry phone conversations with all three women. Once again, Monique stormed out and went home to Maryland. That’s where our son Dylan was born in November 2004.
As my life grew more chaotic, I kept finding my refuge in drugs. I was turning up less and less often at the Yankees’ complex in Tampa. I was climbing on the roller coaster again. Hal Steinbrenner, George’s son, had an office next to mine. He was friendly, but noticed how distracted I seemed. One day, without calling first, Ron Dock, who was now the team’s drug-intervention coordinator, showed up at my office door.
“Doc, level with me,” he said, pulling up a chair even before I invited him in. “What’s going on?”
“I had a relapse,” I said. “I’m gonna put it back together. I will.” I meant it when I said it. I did.
But that next Friday, I drove out to get sandwiches for some of the office crew and remembered I had some coke in the car. I’d gotten very good at dipping the corner of a credit card into a baggie of cocaine, then doing my thing in a parking lot, even at a red light. I never made it back to the office that afternoon. I caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror. I was horrified. I couldn’t let anyone see me like that. I hightailed it straight home. I’m sure my coworkers are still wondering what happened to their turkey and roast beef subs.
The next morning, Saturday, I got a phone call I didn’t pick up. It was from someone in the Yankees’ front office. The message on the voice mail: “George is concerned.”
I ignored it and kept using throughout the weekend. By Monday, I was in even worse shape. My phone rang again. It was Ron Dock again. “You gotta get in here today,” he said.
“I’m sick, Ron,” I told him. That was sorta true.
“If you don’t come in today,” Ron said, “George is gonna fire you. You just bailed on him, and you won’t tell anyone why.”
“All right,” I promised, letting out a sigh of frustration. Or was it exhaustion? I couldn’t tell. I only knew I hated this feeling of harsh reality closing in. It felt like a thousand-pound door shutting on me. “I’ll be there,” I said.
I wasn’t. I skipped two more days of work.
On Wednesday, Ron Dock was back on the phone. I thought he was calling to say I was fired. But I wasn’t through yet. “George is giving you until five p.m. today to report to work or else he’s going to fire you,” Ron said.
I didn’t know what to do. This was beyond awkward. I couldn’t face George. Too much time had passed already. But the Yankees were throwing me a life preserver, and for some reason I was swimming away from it. I took the coward’s approach. I just withdrew. I didn’t get fired. I didn’t quit. I didn’t go back to the office for the next couple of weeks. I had no communication with the organization at all. I increased my weekend drug use to full-time drug use. I just pretended I had no responsibilities in my life.
I’m not sure why George didn’t fire me. He could have. He had every reason to. But he had a philosophy not everyone shares. He once told me, “Drug and alcohol dependency is a sickness. It isn’t like sticking up a gas station. It isn’t like committing a crime, even though many Americans view it that way.” On that topic at least, George was way ahead of his time.
I’m also not sure why Monique and Dylan moved back down to Tampa. She realized right away how bad off I was. She called Ron Dock, who had far more patience with my constant relapses than I deserved. He and Monique decided a forced intervention was my only hope. They came up with a plan. Monique ordered a pizza and sent me down to the security gate to pick it up from the delivery guy.
When I got there, there was no pizza—just Ray and Ron waiting for
me. As soon as I made eye contact, I slammed the gate shut, ran to my car, and began driving away.
My cell phone rang immediately. “What the hell are you doing?” Ray demanded.
“I just gotta make a run, guys,” I said as calmly as I could manage. “Lemme do this. Then I’ll come back and listen to you.”
Ron got on the phone. “If you don’t pull over,” he said, “I gotta call the cops. I don’t want you to hurt yourself or hurt anybody.”
I laughed. Wasn’t it a little late for that? But as soon as I heard the word “cops,” I did pull over. I didn’t need any more of them in my life.
Ray and Ron pulled up behind me. Ron got out and walked to my window. “Listen,” he said. “Steinbrenner wants you to keep your job. But he also wants you to go to rehab. Will you agree to that?”
In the crazed state I was in—just when I needed it most—the whole idea of rehab seemed totally unnecessary. That’s how messed up I was.
“Let me think about it,” I said. “I’m gonna sleep on it.”
I drove home and went back into the apartment. Fifteen minutes passed. I looked out the window. As I should have expected, Ron and Ray weren’t going anywhere. I was craving more drugs. I wanted those pushy friends of mine out of my way. I called Ron’s cell and said, “I see you. You guys can leave now. It’s cool. I’m on the couch.”
“Go to sleep, Doc,” Ron said with a laugh. “We’re not leaving.”
The next morning my mom, my sister Betty, Ron, and Phil McNiff, George’s right-hand man in Tampa, all came to my apartment and gave it one last try.
“George is ready to let you go if you don’t,” Phil said solemnly.
“I don’t need rehab,” I said defensively. “I’ll just go back to work. I’ll get into the swing of things. I’ll be—”
“Dwight!” Ron cut me off. “No rehab, no work.”
I still wasn’t ready.
The next day, Betty and Harold came over and tried to convince me
to go. Betty called my daughter Ariel. She got on the phone. She was hysterical. She wanted me to go. Somewhere inside, I knew she was right. I knew all of them were. It took my daughter to cut through my stubbornness and remind me how much I was going to lose. “I love you guys,” I finally told her. “Everything’s okay. I’m going to rehab.”
I could hear Betty and Harold cheering in the kitchen. I could hear Ariel crying on the phone.
Ron Dock agreed to drive me immediately to a treatment center in West Palm Beach. When we stopped for gas, Ron took the keys out of the ignition and put them in his pocket.
“What did you do that for?” I asked him.
“Why do you think?” he said, laughing.
I checked into the program and immediately quit using drugs. I felt physically ill for the first few days. At my level of addiction, the body reacts strongly to not getting what it is used to. But I pushed through detox and withdrawal, and I stabilized. I wouldn’t say I was there for all the right reasons. It was outside pressure that got me there, the fear of losing my job and the heart-wrenching pleas from some of those I loved. I reacted to that in a way that helped to save me, though I wouldn’t say I was committed yet to changing my life. But my time inside did clean me up and allow me to work again.
After twenty days in the program, I told my counselor I was ready to go home. He was a tall, jovial, older guy. He’d seen addicts come and go. I don’t think he was too impressed with my progress so far. “I’d actually like to keep you another week to ten days,” he said.
“I’m fine,” I assured him.
“Bullshit,” he snapped. “You’re like a turkey in an oven. You’re getting brown and juicy, but you’re not quite ready yet. You gotta let it cook, even if you’re convinced it’s already done.”
“I gotta go home,” I insisted. “You can’t hold me here any longer.”
“Fine,” he said. “It’s your decision. When you relapse, don’t tell anyone I was your counselor.”
Some Dad
I
WAS STARTING TO ACT
like a dad again.
Being away from drugs made me far more available to my children—and far more engaged in their lives. I wasn’t constantly rushing off on my own reckless adventures. When I was at home, I wasn’t just sitting in my bedroom and staring into space. Now I was actually going to my children’s soccer games, not just hearing reports later. I hit a couple of parent-teacher conferences. I think the teachers were surprised to see me there. The kids and I were spending lots of time together—comfortable, casual, hang-out time—even when we weren’t doing that much. I was finally being the parent I always knew I could be. I just wished it hadn’t taken me so long.
We had missed so much together—Dwight Junior, Ashley, Ariel, Devin, Darren, and me. We had so many gaps to fill. Either I’d been high or I’d been traveling or I’d been juggling the demands of baseball. One hundred and sixty-two games a season, half of them road games,
plus a roller-coaster habit of drug abuse—that’s like two full-time jobs right there. Finally I was present and engaged like I’d never been before. And now with little Dylan on the scene, maybe I could start off on a better foot with him.
But as I was becoming a more active father to my older kids, Monique often felt isolated at home. I was running off somewhere with Devin or Darren or the girls while Monique was home alone with the baby, Dylan. None of it was easy. Dwight Junior lived with his mom, Debra. The next four lived with their mom, Monica. There was no road map for any of this. Coordination was never easy. It was doable only if everyone was on board. But it seemed like every time I’d be out with one of the older kids, my cell phone would start to ring. Monique would be frantic. “Something’s wrong with Dylan.” I’d apologize to the kids and go racing home. Once I got there, almost always everything would seem fine.
One Friday night in March 2005, I got a call from my second-oldest daughter, Ariel. She and a friend were ready to leave the skating rink. They were spending the night at our place, one of the nice things about the closer relationship she and I were beginning to share. When we got home, Dylan was asleep, but the girls still wanted to have fun.
“Dad, can we order pizza?” Ariel asked.
“Sure, why not?” I said.
No one was being loud or silly. But when the pizza arrived, the doorbell woke four-month-old Dylan. Dylan was cranky. After a long day, Monique was cranky too. I thought I heard her say, “This is why I don’t like it when your kids come over here!”
To this day, Monique insists that she didn’t say that. She said she was just grumbling about the kids waking up the baby. But the tension between us was thick. I had no idea how to diffuse it. When I heard her say that, it was like she’d lit a match in a room filled with gasoline.
“What do you mean you don’t like my kids coming over?” I asked.
Before Monique could respond, I kept going. “You crossed the line,
Monique!” I said. “My kids are a part of me. They’re part of the package. Tomorrow, you’re out of here!”
I began packing Monique’s bags. She started slapping me. Ariel and her friend scrambled out of the room. I could feel the argument escalating. Monique was already out of control, and I was getting there too. I didn’t want to hit back. So I let her fire away at me, slapping me several times, me trying to push her hands off. Then, she picked up her cell phone, poised to dial 911.
“Hit me!” I recall her screaming.
“No,” I said. “Tell you what. In the morning, you’ll just go. Even if I have to call the cops.”
I turned to walk away. She slapped me again, and then she threw her cell phone at me, smacking me in the head.
I spun around and smacked her in the forehead with the side of my hand.
God, I wish I could take that back. A man should never do that, no matter what.
Monique looked at me a little stunned. Then she picked up her phone from the floor and punched in three numbers.
Nine. One. One.
I couldn’t believe how quickly this had blown up. I knew that when the police arrived, I’d be cooked.
I could hear Monique giving instructions to the dispatcher about how to get in the gate. “Just give me the phone,” I said, giving the cops step-by-step directions. After I hung up, I went to the room where Ariel and her friend had retreated from the mayhem. I gave Ariel all my jewelry.