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ALEX2.0 asked me if I ever had a man-crush before and the truth is that I never held any man in higher esteem than my dad, but if there were any guys that I would have wanted to be my big brothers it would have been MIKE TYSON, BERNARD KING, PATRICK EWING and DWIGHT ‘DOC’ GOODEN. Of all these dudes I would have to say that the DOC was my favorite.

It might have been because DOC was as young as he was, but he seemed so much more accessible to me. Dude had this beaming gold capped tooth and the wild drippy jheri curls like one of your cousins from the backwoods. When he pitched at Shea Stadium it was such a major event. We were all waiting for him to strike out 27 batters in a row. He would pwn’d veteran players with his fastball and then freeze them up like mannequins with a reedirkulous curveball.

At that time in my life I had seen some of my role models fall by the wayside because of drug abuse so I wasn’t shocked or actually disappointed when DWIGHT’s substance abuse issues came to light. It seemed par for the course in the 80’s. Everyone was either on drugs or selling them. DOC faded to black as he succumbed to the addiction monster. In my late teens and my early twenties I found myself trapped by my own addiction demons and I struggled to fight them throughout my post teenage, adult-beta life. I finished a rehabilitation stint in 1996 and that year DWIGHT GOODEN pitched a no-hitter for the Yankees. The first and only in his career.

I liked to think that somehow my life was connected to that of DWIGHT GOODEN in that we have a resiliency that allows us to come back from adversity, but without all of that I still respect dude as a man and I still would be proud of him if he were my big brother.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 6th, 2006 at 10:18 am and is filed under Ghetto Celebs, Jig Lit Review, Sports are Gay, When I Reminisce.... You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.