Dwight Gooden arrested for cocaine possession in New Jersey
Troubled Mets pitcher Dwight Gooden was busted last month in New Jersey for possession of cocaine and driving under the influence, The Post has learned.
The retired pitcher, best known as “Doc,” was arrested June 7 by Holmdel police, who pulled him over just before 1 a.m. and allegedly found him with “two small green zip-lock style plastic baggies containing suspected cocaine,” according to a criminal complaint filed by the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office.
Gooden was pulled over for driving too slowly on a highway, failing to maintain the lane and for having overly tinted windows, which are illegal in the Garden State, prosecutor’s spokesman Christopher Swendeman said.
He was charged with third-degree possession of a controlled dangerous substance, as well as possession of drug paraphernalia and being under the influence at the time, the complaint obtained by The Post on Friday shows.
He also was ticketed for driving under the influence, which is a municipal offense.
Gooden didn’t immediately return a message and his family declined to comment.
The arrest is the latest in the athlete’s lengthy public battle with cocaine addiction, which overshadowed his storied sports career.
The star righty, now 54, was sent to rehab after testing positive for cocaine in 1987, months after the Mets won the World Series.
In 1995, he was suspended for the entire season for failing yet another drug test.
Gooden was arrested in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, after crashing his car while under the influence of drugs in 2010. He was driving his 5-year-old son, Dylan, to school at the time.
The 1985 Cy Young Award winner’s rap sheet also includes an eight-month stint in jail for violating probation when he showed up high on cocaine to a meeting with his probation officer in 2006.
In 2016, he told The Post that he’d been sober ever since entering rehab four years earlier.
The Piscataway, New Jersey, resident went 194-112 with a 3.51 ERA across his 16 seasons with Major League Baseball. He last appeared on the mound for the Yankees — with whom he threw his only no-hitter in 1996 — before retiring in 2001.
Additional reporting by Lorena Mongelli
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