My Hero Was A N.Y. Met. People Say He's Dying In A N.J. Apartment.

He was a mural, looking like some godly figure, on the side of a building in Times Square, one of the most visible things about the New York skyline back in the '80s and early '90s.

That mural, showing a body so wiry and tight, could be seen from Penn Station, one of the first things you saw when you got to New York City.

His right arm was snapped back, as rigid as a crowbar, and his eyes were bright and his lips were pursed. For so many, Dwight "Doc" Gooden was the man in the Mets uniform on the wall.

Wherever "Doc" was, whether he was on a building, or on a T.V. in a bar or on the playing field itself, you had to look.

You had to see him dispense batters at will, and how hopeless they looked when they swung meekly at one of his high fastballs. They were professional hitters who played all their lives. They acted like they had never seen anything like it before, like they were all a bunch of rookies all over again.

You had to hear the clapping at Shea Stadium whenever he got to two strikes, which happened so often. You had to see the fans hanging K signs over the railings with every strikeout, and the joy that came to Shea in a place that, up to that point, had no joy for so long.

You had to see him after the game, smiling that big toothy grin as he got interviewed on T.V., always looking like the kid in his school picture, trying too hard to look good.

Some 31 years later, you still have to see him, even if there's little of that joy left. You have to see if there's still anything you can root for, just as you did when he emerged in 1984, rescuing a Mets franchise that was once one of sport's worst.

You have to see him, even if it's in front of his Jersey City apartment door, where he's been seen a lot lately. You have to look at those arms that once hurled fastballs, and wince. You have to see how skinny they got.

You have to look at those once bright eyes, and see how much they've dulled. You'll remember how young he looked, the star of the town at 19, with that smooth, fresh skin. Now it's deeply lined and wrinkled, weathered as if he'd been through too many storms.

You gotta be worried about him, because you hear what his friends say about him, how he could be back on drugs. They're worried he's going to die, maybe in that same Jersey City apartment, because they see what you're seeing, too.

And when you've watched him since you're a teenager, as I have, and many of his friends have, you still need to look. No matter what Dwight Gooden has done to hurt himself over the past three decades, you still look, and wonder, and worry.

Like a good friend, you never turn away.

"I'm half-tempted going over to Jersey City, getting Doc Gooden and getting him into rehab," I texted to a friend the other day.

"Do it," he wrote back.

I never did, obviously. And I restrained myself once the press attention got more intense, and since a sort of reporter-vigil has been forming near his Jersey City apartment.

Indeed, the New York Yankees, where Doc enjoyed a bit of a renaissance in the mid-'90s after going through a couple of drug-related suspensions, offered to pay for rehab. But if the Yankees can't get him to do it, what chance have I got?

But I was tempted. I saw other reporters go over there and talk to him. They were probably thinking the same thing, too, even as he keeps saying he doesn't need the help, just as he's said every other time he's gotten into trouble with drugs.

Indeed, the rumors, the innuendo and the claims of relapse have been flying around in recent weeks, ever since an ESPN "30 for 30" documentary on Gooden's drug abuse and recovery came out.

It shows him with Darryl Strawberry, the retired Mets slugger who still holds the team record for home runs. But they're both there because they failed; failed at drugs, failed at marriage, failed at so many things in life.

The show was part pathetic, but part hopeful. They recalled the drugs, the jail time, the repeating of it all over and over that brought their careers to a halt, and ended any hopes that each of them would get one of sport's biggest prizes: a Baseball Hall of Fame plaque.

It was the New York Times that said Strawberry, who once hit home runs that banged into scoreboards, was the one who appears to be more comfortable with his recovery. It was ironic; Strawberry always had more of a swagger, more of a me-first attitude that rubbed people the wrong way. He never would have gotten his own Times Square honor.

And it's Gooden, the one the media liked much more, the one painted on the side of the building, who now looks like the one who's struggling, precariously talking about the daily battle of resistance, but never really sure if he's winning it.

Soon after, it was Strawberry, and then Gooden's ex-girlfriend, and then Gooden's son, Dwight Jr., who took it further, saying the Doc is hiding something. They say that Gooden disappears in the bathroom for hours at a time, and they believe they know why. They say he fails to show up at events, just as he did when he was using.

They think he's using again. They're afraid he's going to die.

When you see Doc, they say, your eyes don't lie. You wonder how a 51-year-old man, seemingly free of some debilitating physical disease, could look so frail, so gaunt.

Soon it was on the cover of The New York Daily News - several of them, actually. It turned into a series of sorts, each of them calling out for help.

You still have to look, and marvel. Here they are, Gooden and Strawberry, two of the brightest stars on the last world championship Mets team, in 1986. There they are, still making headlines just like they did decades ago, even more so than the current members of the Mets team.

My admiration for Gooden was always been more from a distance. I grew up idolizing Tom Seaver, the ace pitcher of early Mets teams. But by the time I was a teenager, I felt scorned, and distrustful of athletes and their exploits. I had a hard time with heroes, because I always feared that they would never stick around.

Perhaps it was because Seaver was traded in 1977; for me, and so many others, it was like a nasty breakup, one that could have shaped my views of trust and loyalty forever.

Then, seven years later, Gooden came. Gooden was the first guy I could remember who'd draw a crowd of summer beachgoers away from their beers and whomever they were flirting with inside a Point Pleasant Beach boardwalk bar, and steer them toward a tiny black-and-white T.V.

Because, on that little T.V. in the back of Martell's, he was pitching.

Even the crowds that filled the boardwalk outside the bar, on a late summer Friday night when Gooden was hurling a 10-0 shutout against the Cubs in 1984, would almost certainly change their direction once they looked.

They'd see his thin, strong frame, and his rigid crowbar arm, ready to zip another one by. And they'd stop and look.

"What's the score?" they'd say.

Several innings later, they'd still be there. The Mets were chasing the Cubs in the standings, and they had a shot at their first title in 11 years. They wanted Doc to not just win it, but get a shutout. They wanted those fans who were cheering, so many of whom had disappeared as the team's fortunes sunk in recent years, to like this team. They wanted Doc to get through it.

Soon after, all those people who stuck around to watch were getting the same question: "What's the score?"

And then those people would stop and look, too, and stay for more.

Nobody could look away. Just like now. You keep hoping, somehow, just as he did then, that he'll find a way to get through it.

Photo: Nehrams2020 (Original version) たいすけ55 (Crop) via Wikimedia Commons