OAKLAND – They are mailed from cities across the country and arrive in the mailbox of her St. Petersburg home. They do not come in lieu of a phone call, flowers or presents to mark birthdays.
The cards Dwight Gooden sends his mother, Ella, simply are intended to let Ella know that her son is thinking about her and that he loves her.
“I write something in them to let her know how I am doing,” Gooden says. “At times, she worries about me. I have a 50-year-old sister and she worries about her, too.”
For all Gooden has been through, the highs and the lows of big league success and the disgraces of drug suspensions, Ella is never far from his mind. Waiting for a cab to take him from a restaurant to the team hotel, he sees a card stand near the register. He walks down Market Street in San Francisco and spots a card store.
“Some times I know, even though my dad has been gone for a while, that she is down, so I send her a card,” says Gooden, who lost his father, Dan, in January of 1997.
Of course, Gooden isn’t the only person in the world who thinks of his mother, or the only one who sends his mom a card. But ask yourself this: When was the last time you sent your mother a card other than holidays, birthdays or a postcard on vacation?
“It’s nothing major, just something to let her know I am thinking of her,” Gooden says of the cards which always carry a hand-written note.
There is more to the Gooden family than Dwight. He just gets all the attention. For years, whatever crisis or celebration there was, Ella had Dan. Then she didn’t. He will be gone four years in January and Dwight senses Ella’s blue periods.
“Even though she doesn’t tell me this, there are times when I can tell she never accepted him leaving us,” Gooden said. “There are times when I am sitting around and I will tell my wife that I am going to the cemetery. My wife tells my mom and she says, ‘No, don’t take him out there.'”
When Gooden pitched at home for the Devil Rays, Ella was frequently on hand at Tropicana Field, a short drive from her house on the same block where Dwight lives. Other than that, Ella uses the television to follow her son. And lately, with Gooden in the bullpen, Ella doesn’t know when Dwight is going to pop into a game.
“She went to the All-Star Game in Atlanta to see Gary [Sheffield],” Gooden says of his nephew. “But New York, she doesn’t care for it. During the 1986 World Series, I asked her to come and she did. But she didn’t come to the games.”
So, the cards serve as communication bridge. Yet, they don’t replace the phone calls.
“If I don’t call her two or three times a week, she lets you know,” Gooden said. “I can tell by talking to her on the phone that she is struggling with something. It’s those times that I send her a card.”
As for Gooden’s situation on the field, he is being used by Joe Torre as a long man out of the bullpen and learning to adjust to the intricacies of not knowing when the phone rings for him.
Going into yesterday’s action, Gooden had pitched once since Aug. 15 and that was just for 1 1/3 innings on Aug. 20.
“The biggest thing for me to get a hold on is when I should throw in the bullpen to stay sharp, but that’s hard because I might be needed in the game that day,” said Gooden, who learned the hard way that it might be best to wait until the latter part of a game to get in his work.
On Aug. 12, Gooden threw in the pen before a game against the Angels in Anaheim and then was used for 41/3 innings in which he gave up five runs and three hits.
It was just another example of his roller coaster season. Rescued by George Steinbrenner from baseball’s scrap heap after being let go and told to retire by the pitching-poor Devil Rays, Gooden tinkered with his pitching mechanics, made it back to the big leagues, beat the Mets at Shea and won his first three starts. Seven innings of two-run (one earned) pitching on Aug. 1 against the Royals was Gooden’s last start. Since then, he had appeared in five games as a reliever and posted his second career save with a four-inning stint on Aug. 15 at Texas.
