I'm not the biggest moralist in the world when it comes to ballplayers behaving badly. I don't expect players to be role models for my kids -- that should be me, right? -- and despite the expectations we as a society place on athletes, they are, after all, human, and relatively young and immature humans when we focus on them the most. When they screw up my first impulse tends to be is empathy rather than scorn, at least if they're not greater dangers to the public than they are to themselves.
But that just because I empathize doesn't mean I condone, and I certainly don't think we should venerate the fallen stars among us. Which is why this idea from Newsday's Jim Baumbach is crazy:
The Mets should use the opening of Citi Field as an opportunity to honor two of the biggest names the franchise has ever produced. Yes, you know where I'm going with this. It's time they forget wondering what could have been with Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, and honor them for what they were. And that's Mets. Homegrown Mets. Time to retire 16 and 18 in a Citi Field ceremony.
I don't believe Gooden and Strawberry should be shunned -- in fact I love that Strawberry works for the Mets and that Gooden has recently dropped his longstanding grudge against the ballclub that made him famous -- but honoring them in the same way that Tom Seaver, Gil Hodges, Casey Stengel, and Jackie Robinson have been honored -- is an awful idea. Doc and Straw were great players at one time, but they, more than anyone else, are responsible for those mid-to-late 80s Mets' teams failing to grow into the dynasty they should have become. In effect this was no different than a player having a good start to his career but petering out into mediocrity as he failed to realize his potential. You wouldn't retire such a player's number, so even without getting into moral judgments, why would you retire Gooden and Strawberry's?
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Part of the problem is, these guys will always be judged against their potential. But just because they didn't reach that potential doesn't mean they didn't have excellent careers/numbers.
Forget about names for a minute. If I told you that a pitcher, in an 11-year span with a club:
Hall of Fame, no. But worthy of retiring a number for a franchise? Easily can make the argument that #16 should be there.
What about Darryl? Let's compare him to Mike Piazza, who most people (including me) say that retiring #31 is a no-brainer.
Seasons: Darryl 8, Piazza 8 (7 2/3 actually)
HR: Darryl 252, Piazza 220
OPS: Darryl .878, Piazza .915
OPS+: Darryl 145, Piazza 136
RBI: Darryl 733, Piazza 655
Yrs in postseason: Darryl 2, Piazza 2
Postseason HR: Darryl 4, Piazza 5
(Darryl also stole 191 bases - not fair to compare to Piazza's 7.)
Of course, you need to take into account that Piazza was a catcher (most of the time) and he was at the end of his career while Darryl started with the Mets.
But even without getting into moral judgements, you can't call Strawberry's numbers "mediocre". His last 4 years with the Mets, he hit 39, 39, 29, and 37 HR, and they finished 1st or 2nd every year while he was with the club with the exception of his rookie year (1983). The first 3 years without Darryl (91-93), they finished 5th, 5th, and 7th, respectively. It's not fair to blame Strawberry for the Mets' failure to develop into a dynasty.
Again, retiring #18 isn't a no-brainer, but if we judge his production objectively rather than against what we considered his potential to be, you answer is probably different.
I'll grant you that we shouldn't assess their objective career value against potential, but isn't it the case that number retiring is an exercise that has something more to it than merely assessing value? I think potential matters for such a thing, at least where the failure to fulfill it is due in large part to factors the players in question could control.
All that aside, while I gave the disclaimer of "no moral judgments" for purposes of my argument, we should probably recognize that, practically speaking, the drug use will enter into any conversation the Mets ever actually have about how to honor Doc and Straw.
Matt Casey makes a GREAT argument. I still can't reconcile the moral issues though. Beyond Seaver, the Mets organization doesn't have much to hang its hat on...do we want our team to be known for Daryl and Doc? Tough question. I met Doc in a club in the early 90's; he was a great guy and a childhood hero for me but I am not sure he deserves the honor.
Having your number retired by a team, in my opinion, is not only about your stats on the field of play, whatever that field may be.
It means the team and it's fans are proud to say that you played for their team, and they are proud to call you one of theirs for all time. It means you carried yourself with dignity. It means you represented that team name on your chest with pride and honor. Hence the fact that many teams use the term "ring of HONOR" to describe those players.
There are numerous examples in different sports of players that produced superb numbers, but will never have their number retired or be honored by the team they contributed the numbers for. Allen Iverson in Philadelphia and Shawn Kemp in Seattle seem to be an appropriate comparison here, as well as Terrell Owens in San Francisco.
While the numbers of Doc and Daryl would certainly warrant their consideration, their overall contribution to the history of the team and the stigma they placed on the numbers they wore are the reason neither of these two should make it past the "consideration" stage.
Doc and Darryl were the absolute heart and soul of the single greatest team the New York Mets will likely ever know. If you can't understand their value to the team's history and fandom, I think you're just lost.
Without those two homegrown superstars, the Mets don't have a 1986 parade. Nor would they have had the resurgent and highly-memorable 1984 and 1985 pennant races that lit up New York and turned on an entire generation of fans.
I've always thought that whatever it was that was so combustible in those two and caused them to burn out so quick was also somehow connected to the slash and burn dynamic play that characterized Gooden and Straw, and the Mets.
Look, I'm a Yankee fan. And I *loved* what Doc and Darryl did in the Bronx during the last great Yankee dynasty (Strawberry has three World Series rings from the Yanks to go with his one Mets-won title, btw).
Get over what went wrong. What went right was undeniably amazing. They haven't won since and due is, well, due.
Let me also add, that anybody who would value Mike Piazza's contributions to the franchise over either Doc's and/or Darryl's should hang 'em up now. Piazza didn't win Jack here in NYC. Ultimately, a forgettable presence. Whereas Doc and Darryl live on forever in our history and folklore.
"Without those two homegrown superstars, the Mets don't have a 1986 parade." Wellllll, technically they did -- Gooden overslept and bagged the parade entirely, if memory serves.
I grew up with that team, and I hear what you're saying about their emotional importance to the franchise; I fell in love with the game of baseball the day Gooden hit his first major-league homer, but if you're going to start retiring numbers on that basis, you kind of won't have any left (what about Hernandez? Orosco? Davey Johnson? heck, retire Bill Buckner's number, he pitched in too).
They each spent half their careers elsewhere; I don't know if fond memories are the basis we want to use, although I share those memories. I have the occasional fond memory of Wally Backman, too (mostly for daring to get up in Straw's face when he's a foot shorter). Doesn't mean we should hang No. 9 in left field.
Morals don't count? What about Shoeless Joe Jackson (who should be in the HOF) and Pete Rose (who should NOT)?
When you retire a number, you honor the man. Yes, they were great players, but they were flawed men who brought it onto the field. When our children ask "Who was number 'X'?", we should be proud to say that they were great players who were the epitome of sportsmanship and all around good guys!
Hey, I love Daryl and Doc both. But I'd retire Hernandez before them.
"Let me also add, that anybody who would value Mike Piazza's contributions to the franchise over either Doc's and/or Darryl's should hang 'em up now. Piazza didn't win Jack here in NYC."
Joe Harris, you could not be more wrong here. You sound like a Yankee fan who feels like their birthright has been taken away when they don't win the World Series every year. Before the Mets acquired Piazza, they were all but irrelevent. Yes, they had a surprising 88 win in '97, good only for third in the NL East that year, but they were coming off six straight losing (and often abysmal) seasons.
Piazza's arrival injected life into the entire franchise, and led them to the NLCS in '99 and the World Series in 2000. Oh, and let's not forget that he's clearly the greatest offensive player at his position in MLB history, and a certain first ballot HOFer when his turn rolls around.
Retiring numbers should be about greatness - look at Boston, where only five numbers (aside from Jackie Robinson's 42) have been retired, and with the exception of honoring an almost 60 year body of work by their franchise icon Johnny Pesky, all those numbers belong to guys in Cooperstown. It's the single highest honor you can give a player. I personally fall in the "less is more" category when it comes to that.
Let's take a look at the Yankees again. I think it's ridiculous for them to have retired numbers for Ron Guidry, Elston Howard, even Billy Martin and Roger Maris - and don't get me started on Reggie's #44 for his whopping 5 years of work in the Bronx. Even Don Mattingly, who won't sniff election to Cooperstown, is in my opinion not in the category of all time greats who deserve to have their number retired.
Strawberry is arguably the greatest hitter the organization ever produced, and his name is all over the team's record book. He also bailed on them after 8 HOF level seasons and after one year in LA was never the same player. Gooden gave them 11 years, only one of which was truly great, thanks probably to some combination of overwork bordering on abuse by the team itself when he was a 19 and 20 year old kid, and substance abuse problems. Do either of these guys really deserve the highest honor a team can give to a player? Sorry, I don't see it.
Of course they should retire their numbers. Why is it that people get so up in arms about the morality and character of baseball players? Who cares what they did off the field, for those years when they were at the top of their game, they were New York.
That 86 team was both the most hated and most loved team in the 80's. Doc, Darryl, Keith and the Kid were the reasons why. What seperates the Mets from the Yankees in this town is the sense of history in the Bronx. The Yankees embrace their history regardless of the type of person or how long they were there (see: Jackson, Reggie or Gehrig, Lou). The Mets need to start embracing theirs as well, and like it or not, Doc and Darryl are synonimous with the Mets.
This comes down to whether you think a team should retire lots of numbers (like the Yankees) or you think it should remain very, very rare and special. Going by the Yankee's model then the Mets should retire these two and a few more. However, if you think it should be limited and rare, then they have already retired some questionable ones (Hodges, Stengel and Robinson - I acknowledge the Robinson mistake wasn't of their own choosing).