Glancing up from whatever I was doing back in my Las Vegas apartment, I noticed they were talking about Dwight Gooden on “SportsCenter.”



Gooden was my guy, but that was when I was an adolescent in the mid to late 1980s. Now it was 1996. I was 24 years old and on my third residence. I was a grown up, relatively speaking. Childhood idols didn’t mean as much anymore.



And Gooden by this time had destroyed much of his life. He’d stopped making headlines as a pitching phenomenon and was more prone to make the news for another DUI, positive cocaine test, rape allegation or baseball ban.



I resumed whatever it was I’d been doing.



Then it struck me. The date was May 14. The Chicago Bulls that night eliminated the New York Knicks from the postseason. The Utah Jazz and San Antonio Spurs were in a Western Conference playoff game. Two NHL conference semifinals were played.



Yet there was Gooden’s headshot in the upper...