October 7th - Doc Gooden

Old soldiers are one of the most fun literary tropes. Someone who was promising, and then good, and then great, and is now... this. Someone who has the skills but might now lack the finer points of the conditioning. Someone with all the dirty tricks but not the elasticity to pull all of them off.

It's easy to think of old age (or even not old age but the passing of youth) as a lament. You are not what you were. But the thing is, that's the only option. Anything else is not being anything. We idolise those who die young because dying young is a way of getting out of the whole story. And some bits of that whole story are kind of fucking sad. James Dean will never hobble onto stage to endorse Donald Trump. Amy Winehouse won't say something vile about trans rights or defend Russell Brand after his latest round of credible rape allegations. You get to remember a story that reached a moment of beautiful youth and had a touch of tragedy and then stopped.

But this is a band that told us it sure is sweet to grow old, so you get the whole picture. You get Doc Gooden leading the league in strikeouts in 1984 and pitching a no-hitter in 1996, but you also get him pissing hot and being suspended, and making a final appearance on a world series bench. You get the years of cocaine. You get a life. However long that is.