THE METS PREPARE TO HONOR GOODEN, REGRETS AND ALL

Last weekend, Dwight Gooden was in Cooperstown, of all places, and if
you don't find that ironic, you don't know anything about Dwight Gooden.

He was there to support his friend Andre Dawson, who was being
inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and to play in a
charity softball game. There was a time in Mr. Gooden's life, when he
was young and pitching for the Mets, that a similar ceremony for him
in Cooperstown seemed inevitable, a mere formality that would cap a
brilliant career.

He was 17-9 as a 19-year-old in 1984, setting a rookie record with his
276 strikeouts. He was 24-4 in 1985, had a remarkable 1.53 earned-run
average, and won the National League Cy Young Award. That high,
question-mark-shaped leg kick, that 98-mph fastball, and a curveball
that buckled knees-he was a sight to see.

He is 45 now, and he will be at Citi Field on Saturday. The Mets this
year are inducting Mr. Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, former manager Davey
Johnson and former general manager Frank Cashen into their Hall of
Fame, and they are holding a luncheon for the inductees Saturday
before a game against the Arizona Diamondbacks. More, because Mr.
Gooden ended his playing career with the Yankees in 2000-he went
194-112 in pitching for five teams over his 16-year career-he agreed
to sign a one-day contract with the Mets this week so that he could
again retire, this time as a member of the team with which he is most
identified.

"To me," he said in a phone interview, "this brings it full
circle."

But it also calls to mind the darker side of Mr. Gooden: The cocaine and
alcohol abuse. The stints in rehab. The suspensions that cost him part of
the 1994 season and all of the 1995 season. The piles of innings he pitched
early in his career that ground him down later. The arrests. The attempts
to reassemble the shards and bits of his life and career.

"To be around this guy when he was at the ballpark, which seemed to be
his real sanctuary, you might say it was so surprising that he would
do this," said Mel Stottlemyre, who coached Mr. Gooden with the Mets
and the Yankees. "No question in my mind, it was basically a Hall of
Fame talent that ended up being wasted."

Mr. Stottlemyre, who lives in Washington, was something of a father
figure for Mr. Gooden when the two worked together. He sends Mr.
Gooden a basket of apples from the orchards of the Pacific Northwest
for Christmas each year, and he has watched from afar as these last
few months, too, have proved hard for Mr. Gooden.

In March, Mr. Gooden was involved in a car accident in Franklin Lakes,
N.J. After the accident, he was arrested and charged with, among other
things, driving while under the influence of drugs and endangering the
welfare of a child, according to a Franklin Lakes Police Department
press release. The arrest was first reported by deadspin.com. His
five-year-old son had been in the car with him, the press release
said. Mr. Gooden would not comment on either his March arrest-"That
case is still ongoing," he said-or his relationship with his wife.

And just last week, in an interview with the New York Post, his wife
accused him of abandoning her and their two children and said she did
not know his whereabouts.

Mr. Gooden declined to comment on the report.

"I wish I had the secret why he would occasionally get on the wrong
path," Mr. Stottlemyre said in a phone interview Tuesday. "The last
time that I saw him, he seemed like he was on top of things so much. I
think it's just that he's had a hard time just basically leading a
normal life. He's not really able to do that."

He talks as if he can and will. He wants to get his baseball academy
in Newark going. He has talked to the Mets, he said, about working for
them as a spring-training instructor.

Does he look back on his career with fondness for what he did achieve
or with regret for what he could have and failed to?

"I've done both," Mr. Gooden said. "I've said, 'I should have taken
better care of myself off the field. Maybe if I had done this more.
Maybe if there were pitch counts.' Stuff like that. But, you know, you
have to give yourself credit on the things you did accomplish. That
was part of my problem: beating myself up, trying to live up to others
expectations, and living up to my own expectations.

"As a kid, I didn't think about the Hall of Fame. I didn't think about
awards. All I wanted to do was play major-league baseball. I did that,
and I had a lot of great accomplishments come my way. Once I'm in the
Mets Hall of Fame, I can close the chapter on my career."

Mel Stottlemyre won't be at Citi Field on Saturday. Mr. Gooden said he
planned to call him this week to invite him to the luncheon, but at
69, Mr. Stottlemyre isn't up for making too many cross-country flights
anymore, and he has not spoken to Mr. Gooden in a year, he said.

It should be a fine day for Mr. Gooden, but there will also be the
happy-sad sense that this celebration could have been something more,
something better, and that it could have taken place somewhere else.