May 30, 1999

White Lines

Why the best pitcher in baseball became a drug abuser.

By DAVID DAVIS

HEAT

My Life on and Off the Diamond.

By Dwight Gooden with Bob Klapisch.

Illustrated. 242 pp. New York:

William Morrow & Company. $24.



f you were a Mets fan in the mid-1980's -- and it seemed as if everyone in New York was -- then you probably thanked the baseball gods for creating Dwight Gooden. At the age of 19 in 1984, Gooden topped the National League in strikeouts and won the Rookie of the Year award. A year later, he became the youngest pitcher to win the Cy Young award. One year after that, he led the Mets to their first championship since 1969, as New York defeated the Boston Red Sox.

Behind Gooden and budding superstars like Darryl Strawberry, Lenny Dykstra and David Cone, the Mets seemed likely to dominate well into the 1990's, and indeed they returned to the playoffs in 1988. Heavily favored against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series, they took a two-games-to-one advantage, with Gooden starting Game 4. Leading 4-2 in the ninth inning, just three outs from victory, he allowed a game-tying home run to the light-hitting catcher Mike Scioscia; the Dodgers won the game in extra innings and eventually won the series. Just like that the Mets ''dynasty'' was over, and while no one recognized it at that moment, Gooden's career would forevermore be labeled as ''potential unfulfilled.''

Now a 34-year-old journeyman pitcher for the Cleveland Indians, Gooden writes in his autobiography, ''Heat,'' that he lost control of his vaunted fastball -- and his life -- because he succumbed to alcohol and drugs, twin demons he used to alleviate the twin pressures of fame and New York. Equal parts confession and apology, ''Heat,'' written with Bob Klapisch, a baseball writer at The Bergen Record in New Jersey, is a sobering self-examination of a Hall of Fame career gone awry.

Gooden takes full blame for his drug and alcohol problems, which led to arm problems, depression (he contemplated suicide on at least one occasion) and several suspensions. His downfall began, he writes, because he experienced too much success too soon; he started to believe he was invincible. Gooden also notes that his choirboy image -- at least compared with the public perception of Strawberry, the other young black superstar on the Mets -- complicated matters when he found himself in trouble. Everyone in the Mets clubhouse knew Strawberry was bad news; no one believed it when Gooden stumbled.

''I felt this enormous pressure to conform to the Mets' vision of me,'' he writes. ''I had to be Mr. Everything: athlete, ambassador, marketing specialist and all-around nice guy. The drinking was my refuge.''

Gooden writes that his former teammates did not (or could not) help him get sober. The Mets of the 80's were nonstop partyers, able to toy with their opponents by night and then drink well into the morning. They owned New York and knew it, Gooden says, and their swagger was infectious and ugly.

Two incidents stand out. Gooden describes how in 1986 he once dropped in on a teammate, Kevin Mitchell. ''Drunk and angry'' with his girlfriend, Mitchell proceeded to hold the woman, Gooden and another person hostage with a

12-inch knife. In the midst of the madness, Gooden says, Mitchell picked up his girlfriend's cat and, with one vicious stroke, beheaded it.

In 1987, Gooden and two (unnamed) Mets ingested a large amount of cocaine during spring training. The next day, the Mets asked Gooden to take a drug test, which of course he failed. Gooden believes that the two teammates set him up because, the previous night, he had refused to procure more coke.

Gooden credits George Steinbrenner, the principal owner of the Yankees, and his brand of tough love with helping him to revive his career. Steinbrenner signed Gooden for the 1996 season even though he had not pitched a full season in three years and had just served a drug suspension. Gooden repaid the faith by staying clean and helping the Yanks to the 1996 World Series. (Steinbrenner also signed Gooden's old buddy Strawberry and reinvigorated his career.)

Gooden punctuated his comeback by throwing a no-hitter in 1996. The game occurred at a portentous time: he had been struggling with his control and his father lay near death. But instead of self-destructing, Gooden faced down his demons. In ''Heat,'' he weaves the story of the no-hitter through the narrative of his life. By the end of the game -- and the book -- we understand that Gooden understands how much talent he has wasted.

His experiences are a far cry from the high jinks described in Sparky Lyle's ''Bronx Zoo'' and Graig Nettles's ''Balls,'' two books written by former Yankees years ago. Those books were imbued with a kind of jocular bonhomie: the sense that ballplayers will be ballplayers and that drinking a six-pack (or two) after the game is not an unhealthy way to unwind. Gooden does not preach about the dangers of alcohol and drugs because he does not have to. The devastation they wreaked on a career that once seemed certain to land him in Cooperstown is evidence enough.

