COMMENTARY : Gooden Is Going Nowhere Fast Now

They picked up Dwight Gooden, going 117 m.p.h. in a 55-m.p.h. zone, south on I-275 in St. Petersburg, Fla., near Gandy Boulevard. The two troopers finally pulled him over near 38th Avenue.

It was 4 a.m. Saturday, March 18. Gooden had two beer bottles with him, one opened, the other unopened. He had a 9mm handgun in his glove compartment. One of the troopers recognized Gooden right away, because he had pulled him over once before. This is what passes for spring training with Dwight Gooden now. This seems to be Gooden’s life: going nowhere, fast.

The troopers stopped Gooden nearly a month ago, but it didn’t get into the St. Petersburg Times until Wednesday morning. Someone got hold of the citation and anonymously faxed it to the newspaper. Now everybody knows where Gooden was at 4 a.m on March 18.

The man handling the calls on this for the Highway Patrol was Lt. Harold Frear, supervisor for the troopers who pulled over someone who used to be the best pitcher in the world.

“I’m not a baseball fan,” Frear said. “If I’d been the one who pulled him over, I wouldn’t have known him from Adam’s house cat. I wouldn’t know Dwight Gooden if he walked into my office right now.”

No one knows Dwight Gooden anymore. His idea of rebuilding his life seems to be driving crazy in the middle of the night with beer and a gun in the car. He goes in and out of rehab and in and out of drugs.

There have been other incidents with police in his life and, one time, Gooden got himself a good beating. There was a rape accusation three years ago. Now Gooden is out of baseball for this season and maybe for good. The reason is that last season Gooden behaved like a hopeless addict.

And Gooden never believed that beer counts. It means that he has never really listened to a word anybody has said to him in rehab, on either coast. If he keeps going this way, fast and crazy, the troopers will not be asking him to step out of his car the next time at 4 a.m., they will be pulling him out of it dead.

Every few months there is a story about Gooden speaking with great excitement about his sobriety, his future, his baseball prospects.

A long time ago, when Gooden was first out of rehab in 1987, I wrote the same stories.

Gooden has never lacked for enablers, in his family and in baseball and in the media. He was 22 when he went to the Smithers Alcoholism and Treatment Center. He was 29, going on 30, when he went to the Betty Ford Center last summer. People who know Gooden and know his drug history say he got high before he went into the Betty Ford Center and, when he got out, he was high within a week.

A speeding ticket does not mean he is back on drugs, neither does beer in the car, or a gun. He had a permit for the gun, and he passed his sobriety test. But what about the test you apply to Gooden’s life?

There are headlines every day. Gooden made them once in a good way, especially when he struck out 276 batters as a teen-ager.

That is from his baseball record. His record away from baseball seems more relevant these days, from drugs to the police.

Once, there was a spring training when Dave Magadan said, “I can’t ever imagine the Mets without Dwight Gooden.”

Now it is easy.