By the way Ari, we were taling about Tampa sports, and I happen to be know Pam Bondi pretty well, who is the prosecutor of Dwight Eugene Gooden. I wrote this letter to her today, and I think she's going to read it to Dwight Gooden during the trial......


This Dwight Gooden story is just terrible. I grew up a Mets fan in New Jersey and was 11 years old when Dwight Gooden won the rookie of the year in 1984. from that point Gooden was my absolute biggest hero, and still to this day, I use his number 16 when I make passwords and codes and things like that. At the most impressionable age a boy can have, Dwight Gooden was the greatest thing you could imagine. We would cut school to watch him pitch, and it seemed between 84 and 88, he might become one of the greatest pitchers of all time. But nothing that good can ever end well, and when a young man like Gooden was 18 and at the top of the world, there aren't too many other people to get advice from to steer you from the ills of young fame and fortune(especially not those Mets teams). Dwight Gooden went on to continually break my heart as a youth and taught me that you can't put people on a pedestal just because they're a good athlete, or they are on ESPN. I also learned that a person needs to own up to their mistakes and learn from them. Dwight Gooden has never learned, and still after all this time and these many chances, it is heartbreaking to see someone who was at the top of the world fail so magnificently and so publicly time after time after time. People outside of the world of drugs don't understand what it's like for addicts, and addicts don't ever know how bad off they are. My sister was a teenage heroin addict that ended up finally getting the help she needed through rehab and is now on her way to getting a law degree. She was one of the lucky ones that learned a lesson. Dwight has not, and he will keep failing and failing until he actually learns that there is a price to pay society for being so loved and being given so many chances. I don't know what it's like to be in his shoes, and I think that we put way too many people in jail for drugs when they could be served better through other methods, but Dwight Gooden needs to learn how to be a member of society, and not a member of the got off easy again club. I don't know what that equates to in years, but if you ever get the chance, let Dwight know that there is a price for breaking the heart of an innocent 11 year old boy that idolized him.