Haunted by Old Foes, De La Hoya Gets Treatment Discussions with Oscar De La Hoya about his sobriety came with a caveat, a disclaimer he provided: he slipped up occasionally. Addicts often do, though because this was the Golden Boy, master of his own narrative, he declined to delve into specifics, whether it was a sip here or a bender there. Still, because he is a born raconteur, De La Hoya could not help but slip in a clue every now and again. He often noted his ability to manipulate those closest to him, not sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing, or both. De La Hoya checked back into a treatment center this week, perhaps his biggest week since he retired as one of the most popular boxers ever. He will miss the fight of the year, set up by him and his Golden Boy Promotions. It all aligned so perfectly, the way De La Hoya's stories tend to. Here was his protégé, Saúl Álvarez, who is known as Canelo, against his nemesis, Floyd Mayweather Jr. Here was a fighter mentored by De La Hoya who could blemish Mayweather's perfect record, who could do on Saturday in Las Vegas what De La Hoya could never do: shut Mayweather up. Instead, De La Hoya will stare at another sort of fight: his own, akin, he says, to facing Mayweather and Mike Tyson and Bernard Hopkins and Manny Pacquiao all at once. The public has seen, and will continue to witness, the dichotomy that his struggles with sobriety have highlighted: the gulf between a life that seems so perfect and a man who is so tortured. "I'll always carry that," De La Hoya said last month on a golf course in the Los Angeles area that overlooked the Pacific Ocean. Even though it got to the point where it almost destroyed everything I have. In the weeks leading to the fight, De La Hoya gave The New York Times access to his inner circle, to golf outings and television appearances and business meetings in Los Angeles and New York. He wanted to present, again, the perfect image to the world: that of the husband who turned 40 in February, of the father reconnected with his children, of the rare fighter who conquered boxing promotion after he retired. But the tension between De La Hoya and his old nemesis drew him back into the story line. Even in retirement, he played the chief Mayweather antagonist, which meant he would have to tell and retell his own story, from the Olympic gold medal to the pictures of him in fishnets and boxing gloves. He went to rehab two years ago, for alcohol and cocaine abuse. He stopped denying that the scandalous pictures that surfaced on the Internet were of him. He revealed how trying to live up to his nickname, to that mythical ideal, had left him suicidal. Even when De La Hoya did right, he couldn't do right. When he knocked out an aging Julio César Chávez, the Mexican boxing icon, and returned for a parade in his old neighborhood, East Los Angeles, the assembled booed and threw eggs in his direction. So many of those critics were, like De La Hoya, of Mexican descent. He harbored that for years, the idea he was not Mexican enough. The narrow loss to Félix Trinidad, the lawsuit with Top Rank Boxing, the way Pacquiao rearranged his face - he never felt accepted. De La Hoya put together an album of ballads in his mother's memory, and he took the process seriously and earned a Grammy nomination alongside Christina Aguilera and Shakira. He could see the other fighters, their reaction to his makeup artists and hairstylists. He could hear the whispers: "There goes Ricky Martin." He grew up in a household devoid of emotion. He took his first sip of booze at age 9. He took all those insecurities, all the rage that surged inside him, and he channeled it into the perfect image, or the appearance of one, anyway. Away from the fights, he crashed. He drank. He snorted. He did what he calls "the dressing up," in the pictures he swore he did not remember taking. It took so much out of him to enter the ring, every fight a Super Bowl, the lights on, the cameras flashing, alone in there, exposed. Even after he retired, dozens of people depended on his success: those who worked for him and worked with him and their families and his family and all the hangers-on.