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JEFF TESTERMANThe baseball great, who is divorcing, took in more than $1.7-million last year, but bills at home went unpaid this year.
TAMPA - Dwight Gooden won 194 games and three world championship rings during his 17-year major league career. At times, he was the best pitcher there was.
He also succumbed to drug abuse and bad behavior that robbed his career of Hall of Fame luster.
Two years ago, after he walked off the diamond for the last time as a player, Gooden declared it had been "a joyous ride." He said he relished the thought of settling into family life and having more time with his wife and children.
Gooden, who turns 39 today, has since changed his mind.
After more than $35-million in baseball contracts and 16 years of marriage, he says he no longer has the means to provide support for his family nor the desire to stay married.
Why Gooden is in financial distress isn't clear.
Last year, annuity payments, proceeds from the sale of the Goodens' Pinellas Point home, deferred payments from the New York Mets and Gooden's New York Yankees salary added up to more than $1.7-million. Despite all that money, basic bills went unpaid at the Gooden home this year.
Monica Gooden, 36, the wife who once snatched a gun from her husband's hand to prevent his suicide, is trying to save her marriage. She has tried counseling and mediation. They didn't work.
In April, she went to court with an emergency petition for support for her and the Goodens' children: two daughters, 12 and 13, and two sons, 7 and 8. The reason? Mortgage payments and utility bills on the Goodens' New Tampa home were going unpaid.
After hearing evidence of all the payments to Dwight Gooden, Hillsborough Family Law Judge Monica Sierra ordered him to pay $13,600 a month to his wife for support.
Gooden initially balked. But in July, after Sierra found him in contempt of court, Gooden quickly wrote a check for more than $38,000 to avoid a five-month, 29-day jail sentence.
Soon afterward, Gooden separated from his wife. In August, he filed for divorce. He has now asked the judge to reduce the monthly support, saying the $13,600-a-month payments "greatly exceed" his income.
"A sports star leaves the limelight and goes to something more mundane, and it can be very painful," said James P. Knox, Mrs. Gooden's attorney. "The transition from star to supporting actor is very difficult to make. Dwight hasn't handled it so well."
Gooden did not return calls to his New York Yankees office. Calls to his former agent, Jim Neader, and to Joseph Ficarrotta, an attorney who has represented Gooden, were not returned Friday. His attorney, David M. Stamps, declined to comment on the Goodens' divorce or his client's financial troubles.
Meanwhile, Knox is still trying to get an accounting of Gooden's assets.
A financial affidavit filed by Gooden last week says he had assets totaling $879,830. But most of the cash he received last year is not listed. The document also indicates Gooden has no income except his $100,000-a-year salary as an assistant to Yankees boss George Steinbrenner and is unable to meet the court-ordered support payments.
"Every superior wage earner sings a sad song and says "I can't pay this or I can't pay that,"' said Knox. "But I don't think he's being forthcoming.
"He's a little bit of a mystery man in that respect."
Dwight Gooden and Monica Harris married on Nov. 21, 1987 in front of 600 guests at St. Matthew Baptist Church in Tampa. He was 23. She was 20.
Gooden had already been in the big leagues for three years, with phenomenal success.
In 1984, he was named Rookie of the Year for the New York Mets, winning 17 games. In 1985, he went 24-4 and, at 20, became the youngest player to win the Cy Young Award. In 1986, Gooden's 17 wins helped the Mets win the World Series.
But Gooden's on-field success was matched by off-the-field troubles.
After a December 1986 traffic stop in Tampa erupted into a melee involving 22 white police officers, Gooden was charged with resisting arrest with violence and battery on a law enforcement officer. He was sentenced to probation and later settled a $3-million suit filed against him by Tampa police.
A few months later, Gooden's cocaine problem surfaced. In April 1987, he tested positive, was placed on the Mets disabled list and entered rehab. He missed 11 starts and still went 15-7. But the Mets cut his salary the next year by $100,000, to $1.4-million.
Marriage seemed to bring some stability. Gooden completed 240 hours of community service for an early end to the probation stemming from the altercation with police. He donated $1,000 a win to children's hospitals and made frequent appearances for charity.
In 1991 he signed his richest contract, a three-year, $15.45-million deal that made him the second highest paid player in baseball.
In 1992, Gooden and two teammates were accused of sexually assaulting a 31-year-old woman at Gooden's rented home in Port St. Lucie, the Mets' spring training site. Prosecutors cleared the three players, saying they thought any sex that occurred was consensual.
The Goodens' marriage survived, and soon afterward, they began building their dream homeon Pinellas Point, a 13,574-square-foot, $2-million mansion at 6700 30th St. S.
In 1994, however, Gooden tumbled back into cocaine and the low spot of his career. He was suspended for 60 days after testing positive, then tested positive again while on suspension, leading to his ban from baseball for the entire 1995 season.
A day after the commissioner's office suspended him for a year, Gooden put a 9mm pistol to his head and considered pulling the trigger. His wife walked in, screamed, then grabbed the gun away.
"Monica has stood by him," said Knox, her attorney. "She is so dedicated to him. She's been through all the rehab, the depression. You can't sit with her withoutfeeling the depth of her emotion about him."
Gooden rebounded and signed with the Yankees. In 1996, he pitched the only no-hitter of his career. He later played for the Cleveland Indians before finishing his career with short stints with the Houston Astros, Tampa Bay Devil Rays and, again, the Yankees.
In Gooden's home debut with the Devil Rays in April 2000, Mrs. Gooden packed 16 family members and friends into the family's two SUVs to make the trek from Pinellas Point to Tropicana Field. Gooden showed sparks of his past greatness by pitching three scoreless innings.
Present at that performance was Dwight Gooden Jr., a son by a woman Gooden never married. The 14-year-old dressed as the Rays batboy at that game. He is now 17 and has his own legal problems related to cocaine.
After retiring as a player, Gooden took a job with the Yankees, coaching minor leaguers, counseling them about drugs and serving on the New York Yankees Foundation. Last year, at Steinbrenner's urging, the Goodens put their St. Petersburg home up for sale and moved to a more affordable $370,200 home in Hawthorne Estates in New Tampa.
Financial problems cropped up almost as soon as the Goodens got to their new 3,974-square-foot home.
In December, a flooring company filed a lien saying the Goodens had not paid $3,909 in bills for custom hardwood floors.
In January, a bank filed a foreclosure suit, saying the Goodens had missed mortgage payments since November. The back payments were made and the suit dismissed, but the Goodens fell behind again briefly in the summer.
Other suits alleged Gooden had failed to pay more than $18,000 owed on his American Express card and had missed several $1,829 payments on his new, $80,000 BMW. Gooden only recently caught up on those payments.
In her petition for "separate maintenance" in April, Mrs. Gooden complained that her phone had been disconnected for nonpayment and that the water and electric service were close to being turned off.
She said her husband still lived at home but kept coming in "at weird hours." She said he gave her $9,000 to pay some credit cards and other smaller amounts "if I'm going to the store or if the kids need to be fed."
For some reason, the Goodens were scrimping. Yet court records showed Gooden had been paid a small fortune last year.
He got a $623,000 deferred payment from the Mets.
Their Pinellas Point home sold for a profit of $682,000. Although the home was titled in both the Goodens' names, Dwight Gooden arranged to have the entire proceeds check wired to his individual account, according to court records.
Despite those two checks totaling more than $1.3-million, the recent financial affidavit filed by Gooden shows he has just $354,850 in the bank.
Moreover, Gooden won't be eligible for his considerable player's pension until he's 45, in six years, according to Knox.
Gooden has made several of the court-ordered support payments and paid some attorneys fees for both his wife's and his own counsel, said Knox.
Knox said he can only guess what might have happened to the rest of the cash.
Now, in an agreement by both sides in the divorce, a forensic auditor has been hired to find out exactly where all the rest of the money has gone.
"Neither side wants to go to war over this," said Knox. "Dwight sees the children and that's still very amicable.
"But he gets wanderlust and it's hard to keep him corralled. It's confusing and hurtful to Monica that he won't settle down."
- Times researcher John Martin contributed to this report. Jeff Testerman can be reached at 813 226-3422 or by e-mail at testerman@sptimes.com