By Jacob Kamaras
LA JOLLA, California — For the average New York transplant (or any baseball fan) living in San Diego, the first thing that comes to mind upon the mention of outfielder Darryl Strawberry or pitcher Dwight “Doc” Gooden is each player’s time with both the New York Mets and New York Yankees franchises — perhaps most notably as part of the Mets’ championship-winning team in 1986.
Strawberry and Gooden are also well-known for their experiences with substance abuse. On May 26 during “Tales from Beyond the Dugout,” the Jewish Family Service Signature Luncheon at Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines, they recounted not only their struggles but their paths toward recovery and healing.
“Money doesn’t change the brokenness of who you are,” Strawberry said. “I wasn’t well on the inside. When we don’t ever deal with that piece of who we are…that person will eventually play out in your life.”
At the event, Jewish Family Service of San Diego (JFS) honored Mimi Lee with the 2022 Linda Janon Behavioral Health Champion Award for her commitment and dedication to behavioral health awareness and support in the community. Lee noted that the JFS Behavioral Health Committee, which has more than 15 members, “have worked tirelessly to reduce the stigma of serious mental illness and behavioral health issues.”
Commenting on the recent mass shootings in Buffalo, N.Y., and Uvalde, Texas, Lee said, “Regardless of motives and the horrendous loss of life, the survivors who witnessed these unthinkable violent acts will need mental health services, and some will be turning to social service agencies such as their local JFS for help. And I know that if it were to happen here, people could turn to our JFS and know that their mental health needs would be addressed.”
She added that as a former San Diego Padres season ticket holder with her late husband Jim, she was “starstruck” by the attendance of Strawberry and Gooden. “I was excited then to watch both of you play baseball, and I am anxious now to hear your conversation on your weighty topic of substance use,” Lee said.
Strawberry recalled growing up with a physically abusive father who had alcoholism.
“My father said I would never be anything, and I believed it for so many years…And I used to question myself,” he said. “I detoured and took a different lifestyle because I was broken…I would look well on the outside, from the physical standpoint, from what people could see…I played my whole career just never well, empty and broken on the inside.”
Since he did not have a male figure in his life to teach him about the consequences of his actions, by the time he was 24, Strawberry was introduced to Greenies (a type of amphetamine) and became addicted to them. “I didn’t think that I would become that person and addicted to all those things, but I got addicted from a very young age,” he said.
Gooden had a more positive relationship with his father, yet he also experienced significant trauma — witnessing his sister get shot eight times, and his mother shoot his father after catching him cheating.
At 18, he met Strawberry for the first time in a New York bar — where Gooden was passed out. His substance use would escalate from alcohol to drugs. Gooden’s cousin introduced him to cocaine, and he said he “fell in love with it instantly, not knowing it would be a problem.” He missed the Mets’ parade for the team’s 1986 World Serious championship.
Strawberry described that “the brokenness that’s on the inside is so real and so deep,” and that the average observer does not know about anyone’s experience of rejection, hurt, and trauma.
“It seems like you’re on an island all by yourself,” he said. “When you’ve been through dysfunction in your household, you have a tendency to go out into society and you’ll be dysfunctional too…we were injured and scarred before we ever put the uniform on.”
Gooden said that growing up, he was taught that “men don’t cry, you don’t hug another man, you don’t show emotions.” Later in life, his trauma response was crying when he went to his drug dealer’s house. Three years ago, after suffering a relapse at age 54, Gooden finally “admitted the problem was deeper than the addiction part.”
“I was on my deathbed many times…for me still to be here, I feel obligated to carry the message, and be there for myself and for those who didn’t make it,” he said.
Strawberry credits his wife Tracy, who pulled him out of dope houses in South Florida, as “the biggest part of my recovery” today. She reached a point where she loved him but was firm enough to not tolerate his behavior.
“It’s not the drugs and the alcohol, that’s the symptom of what we do, but it’s the behavior of the person,” he said.
He added, “For me to be able to be in recovery for a long time, I’ve been able to help a lot people…it’s not about you, it’s about who you can help.”
The person behind the latest phase of Gooden’s recovery has actually been Strawberry, following a relapse in 2019 that included a drug arrest. After Strawberry visited Gooden at his home in New Jersey, Gooden said he was motivated “to really look deep.”
Strawberry said his goal was to “try to help [Gooden] save his life, not lose his life. Because drugs will kill you. Alcohol will kill you. Or you will kill somebody…At the end of the day, it will cost you dearly.”
Ultimately, Strawberry said that baseball “wasn’t my life’s work, that was just a platform.” Rather, his goal is now to “pull as many people as I can out of that pit” of addiction.
Gooden echoed that sentiment, saying, “What good is having a life if you can’t touch another life?”
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Jacob Kamaras is editor and publisher of the San Diego Jewish World