Darryl Strawberry says that notorious urban legend about Kevin Mitchell is actually true.
Doc Gooden in his 1999 book “Heat” wrote that his former New York Mets teammate Mitchell once decapitated his girlfriend’s cat during an argument. Mitchell has denied the accusation, saying in 2009 that Gooden made up that story.
Now, Strawberry, who was an All-Star on the ’86 World Series-winning Mets that also featured Doc and Mitchell, says the story is true.
Straw was on HuffPost Live Tuesday along with his wife to talk about their new book “The Imperfect Marriage: Help For Those Who Think It’s Over,” and was asked about the Mitchell story.
“That’s a pretty good story. I think that’s pretty accurate,” Strawberry told host Marc Lamont Hill. “Kevin Mitchell did do that. Kevin Mitchell, he’s a different type of guy. Great guy. Super teammate. Great person — (but) he was from San Diego and he was affiliated with gangs quite a bit, and I guess he figured his girlfriend was acting a little crazy so he thought, ‘I’ll kill her cat.’ ”
Sounds like a swell guy. Mitchell was traded by the Mets after ’86 and he believed they considered him to be a wild guy and bad influence on Gooden and Strawberry.
“In New York, they used me as a scapegoat for them,” Mitchell said to the NY Daily News in 2009. “I was the bad seed, they said.”
Perhaps the decapitation story was the final straw for the Mets. Or maybe that’s just when things came to a head. Because after that, the cat was out of the bag on Mitchell.
We have the passage from Doc’s book pasted below (via Snopes). The language is offensive, but the story is intense and well worth your time. Doc includes so many details the story has to be true. Either that, or he was tripping on some acid.
Head to Page 2 to read the passage from Doc’s book.
