Dwight Gooden creams Darryl Strawberry over claims he’s ‘a complete junkie addict’

Former NY Met Dwight Gooden has denied his former baseball compadre Darryl Strawberry’s accusation that he is “a complete junkie-addict ,” claiming his former Met team-mate is taking it personally that Gooden couldn’t make a scheduled public appearance with Strawberry last week.

Strawberry told the New York Daily News that Gooden skipped the event and he is worried Gooden has been using cocaine. Strawberry told the newspaper that Gooden’s son called him to beg him to help his father before he dies, adding that “the condition Doc is in, it’s bad.”

But Gooden said in a statement yesterday that he hasn’t done cocaine in years. He apologised for Strawberry’s “inability to show more character and strength,” saying “he obviously was never there for me.” Gooden claims he has always supported Strawberry, “during his best and worst days.”

Gooden and Strawberry won back-to-back Rookie of the Year awards for the New York Mets in 1983 and ‘84. Drug abuse cut short both of their careers. Gooden, despite the statement from his son that makes thinly veiled references to Gooden’s fragile “health,” refuted Strawberry’s increasingly public expressions of concern that Gooden had lapsed back into cocaine abuse.

“I am an addict, but when you have someone like Darryl, who you are trying to establish a relationship with … when it’s somebody you think is your friend, if he felt like that, come to me,” Gooden told The New York Post. “He did it like I said, where he is pointing the finger … obviously he is doing something where we are going to have some problems.

“I forgave him for a lot of stuff. He was hitting on my wife when I was married to her. I forgave him for all that stuff. It is what it is. That really was hitting below the belt,” Gooden concluded, referring to Strawberry’s recent public declarations. “Unfortunately I have to forgive him, but I don’t have to deal with him.”

After Gooden no-showed last week at a WFAN radio event, Strawberry said he feared for Gooden’s life given the former Cy Young Award winner’s drug problem.

“My fear is that — and I know addiction — and my fear is people that don’t change, they die,” Strawberry told the audience. “They die this way. I just hope the light comes on soon before it’s too late.”

Gooden, 51, has become rail-thin recently. He conceded he doesn’t look well, but stated he’s had a couple of surgeries and has been recovering from a foot infection. “I have some health issues, but drugs is not one of them,” the former Yankees and Indians pitcher said.

Strawberry and Gooden were teammates with the Mets from 1984 to 1990 and then again with the Yankees briefly in the late 1990s. The duo recently was featured in an ESPN “30 for 30” documentary titled “Doc & Darryl” released earlier this year, 30 years after they won the 1986 World Series together. The relationship between the one-time stars of baseball has been strained over the past three decades. “I’m glad he said what he said because I thought our relationship was better than that,” Gooden said. “It lets me know it actually is not.”