Darryl Strawberry Is Not Trying to Save You
It was a lazy, humid weekday afternoon at Citi Field, and the early birds have been taking a steam tub. Ed Kranepool, an authentic Met, was on the sphere close to the Mets dugout, shaking fingers, making the scene. Charlie Hayes, the outdated Yankee third baseman, was sitting on a cushioned field-level seat close to third base. In a couple of hours, his son, Ke’Bryan Hayes, could be enjoying third and batting third for the guests, the Pittsburgh Pirates. Nearby, on the sphere in foul territory, Jay Horwitz, Mets PR man since 1980, was doing the Jay Horwitz Pregame Shuffle, toes out, head bobbing, checking on this, checking on that.
It solely appeared like Old-Timers’ Day.
And then, three hours or so earlier than the evening’s first pitch, an icon of New York baseball strolled into this summer-in-the-city scene. Darryl Strawberry, his personal self. Forty years in the past he was a Mets rookie with a 30-inch waist and about six ft of shoulders. For a very long time, Strawberry wasn’t an lively Mets alumnus, however below the workforce’s newish possession — Steven A. Cohen, take a uncommon bow on this dismal season! — Strawberry has been coming round, at the least every so often. The proprietor remembers Strawberry in his prime. He roots for him as all New Yorkers root for him. Darryl Strawberry — there was at all times one thing about him. You may see it in his face.
Strawberry can’t inform you a lot concerning the Mets’ left-handed bats off the bench. His life in baseball has come and gone. But he is aware of and appreciates the doorways baseball opened for him, and he was on the ballpark on that latest evening to fulfill and greet some big-check donors to the muse he runs along with his spouse, Tracy Strawberry. Among different issues, the muse helps pay for remedy applications for addicts of each sort. Strawberry is aware of such applications intimately. So does his spouse. Tracy Strawberry is an ordained minister, has a doctorate in theology and, like her husband, is an addict in restoration.
“Seventy-eight, Jay?” Strawberry stated. It was Jay Horwitz’s birthday, not that he needed anyone to know. “Man. Happy birthday, Jay.”
Strawberry is tall as ever at 61, with a slight paunch, however with the identical bashful smile and highly effective arms and how-you-doin’ method that made him an adopted son in Queens (eight years with the Mets) and the Bronx (5 with the Yankees) and throughout the town’s three different boroughs, plus Long Island and North Jersey and the elements of Connecticut that New York claims as its personal.
Horwitz seemed up at Strawberry, a member of the Mets Hall of Fame, although his quantity has not been retired. Strawberry seemed good. He’s been clear and sober for — he doesn’t put a date to it, like some in restoration do. “Ever since I found God,” he’ll inform you. He’ll speak to anyone.
Strawberry watched the Pirates-Mets sport from an open-air non-public suite the place passing followers may snap photographs of him or ask him to signal issues, his 2.0 studying glasses perched on the highest of his shaved head all of the whereas. The suite’s proprietor, a self-made building-services entrepreneur named Michael Rodriguez, stood beside Strawberry and stated, “If you walk into a room, and Darryl Strawberry says, ‘M-Rod!,’ there’s no better feeling.” Connecting with folks is greater than a character trait for Strawberry. It’s virtually a calling. At Strawberry’s invitation, Hayes was taking within the sport from the suite, too, and when his son stroked an opposite-field single, Strawberry stated, “Just like his daddy!”
When the Yankees gained the 1996 World Series in six video games over the Atlanta Braves, clinching it at Yankee Stadium, Hayes caught the ultimate out. Strawberry, the Yankee left fielder, got here dashing in to the victory pile. Dwight Gooden, who got here up within the Mets group alongside Strawberry, pitched for the Yankees in 1996 however wasn’t on the postseason roster. Fatigue, the workforce stated. They will at all times be linked, Strawberry and Gooden. Gooden’s struggles with alcohol and medicines, cash and relationships have been simply as nicely documented as Strawberry’s. But for New Yorkers of a sure age, Doc and Straw and all their long-ago promise is a feel-good dream that won’t die. There’s a sure wistful loveliness in all of that, the thoughts drifting to what may have been.
Darryl Strawberry has no holy curler in him. He’s not making an attempt to avoid wasting you or to transform you. (Most of his mates are Jewish, he says.) There’s no spittle popping out of his mouth when he cites Matthew or Abraham. He grew up in Los Angeles. He grew to become a star in New York. He and Tracy reside close to St. Louis. In their blended household, they’ve 9 youngsters.
In latest years, Strawberry has been visiting church buildings, colleges, hospitals — and, most particularly, prisons — about 200 days a 12 months. “I’m happiest when I go through a prison gate and I see people who might never see life outside again,” he stated. He sees himself in these folks. He sees their promise. He was on his option to a late-summer Monday-night baseball sport, however the sport itself was about the very last thing on his thoughts.
Strawberry was staying with a buddy, Nelson Braff, in Demarest, N.J., and driving to Citi Field by way of the George Washington Bridge. His journey was a big, boxy BMW rental, with air con he couldn’t management. Braff is an proprietor of the Hunt & Fish Club, the Midtown restaurant fashionable with ballplayers of a sure standing and males with made-to-measure shirts. It’s a world Strawberry is aware of. But he’ll inform you he’s extra snug in a jail rec yard, and he means it.
“I preach hope,” Strawberry stated, a better New York street map on the display screen of his cellphone. He can speak baseball, in fact, his electrifying at-bats within the Mets-Houston National League Championship Series in 1986, his .435 batting common throughout a short comeback stint with the St. Paul Saints 10 years later, all of that. But non secular comebacks and second chances are high the themes that curiosity him most.
He typically makes these jail visits along with his private supervisor, John Luppo, a 56-year-old break-dancing, sports-mad Bronx native and a former Wall Street dealer along with his personal harrowing story of dependancy and a path to restoration that began with Strawberry. Luppo units up the jail visits. The clearances and the paperwork may be daunting. Luppo is ill-suited to it. Still, he will get it completed.
About 5 years in the past, Len Vanden Bos, then the Chicago Bears chaplain (now the Buffalo Bills chaplain) requested Strawberry to affix him on a go to to Louisiana State Penitentiary, the infamous however evolving maximum-security jail usually known as Angola. Angola is bigger than Manhattan and has greater than 6,000 prisoners. Vanden Bos had introduced many N.F.L. gamers there, however Strawberry was the primary former main leaguer.
Through Vanden Bos, Strawberry met an Angola inmate named Keith Morse, serving a life sentence for the 1994 taking pictures dying of his son’s aunt. Morse entered jail at age 19. He had been an outfielder at Airline High in Bossier City, La. He modeled his right-handed swing on Strawberry’s left-handed one. The father of Albert Belle, the previous American League slugger, was one in all Morse’s coaches. Dwight Gooden was one in all his baseball heroes. None of that appeared to curiosity Strawberry.
“The first time he came in, there was nothing there,” Morse stated in a cellphone interview. “I thought, ‘He doesn’t like me.’” But the second time, one thing clicked. Strawberry gave Morse signed baseball playing cards. “He said, ‘What can I do for you?’ I said, ‘You can pray for me.’ He said, ‘What more can I do for you?’”
Strawberry wrote a letter to the Louisiana parole board on Morse’s behalf. He sat with the sufferer’s household, who supported Morse’s launch, at a parole listening to. Morse was launched in 2020. He and Strawberry communicate by cellphone every so often. “Keith has his ups and downs,” Strawberry stated. “Like all of us.”
When Strawberry talks to inmates, he usually finds himself sharing an statement with them: We’re all prisoners, of a form, whether or not you’re doing life or chasing the excessive life. “I’ve seen so many people, successful people, athletes and celebrities, try to buy their way out of loneliness and emptiness with their credit cards, with drugs, with alcohol, at strip clubs,” Strawberry stated the opposite day. “I did it myself. You’re still a prisoner.” Enter God. Yes, that’s the place Strawberry’s head is lately.
Strawberry stated goodbye to M-Rod in his open-air Citi Field suite and left Flushing Meadows with the Mets batting within the fifth. Hayes was driving within the passenger seat as Strawberry pointed his chilly BMW rental west on Astoria Boulevard on a heat summer season evening in Queens. They talked about Doc. They talked concerning the automobile’s local weather management. They talked concerning the tacos on the Queens restaurant the place Hayes was headed. Strawberry wasn’t coming in.
“I’ve got to get home,” Strawberry instructed his outdated teammate. They talked briefly concerning the upcoming Old-Timers’ Day at Yankee Stadium, on Sept. 9. “I’ll see you there, bro,” Strawberry stated.
Between at times, Strawberry will likely be preaching hope wherever he finds himself. No spittle. No yelling. Just Darryl, speaking about second probabilities. Just Darryl, on Darryl, once you get proper right down to it.
