You root for some players because they are great role models – people who show you what the game is all about. People who look like they are having fun out there playing, always willing to sign another autograph and remind the kids at the charity events to stay in school.
Darryl Strawberry was not one of these players.
Strawberry has been the opposite of a role model for most of his playing career – a career in which the almost certain Hall of Famer got mixed up with drugs and alcohol and wound up a pity acquisition by the New York Yankees two years ago.
Every time you thought Strawberry had gotten everything straightened out in his life, something else happened to him. He was in and out of clinics, in and out of courtrooms and in and out of lineups for most of this decade after a very promising start with the New York Mets. His battles with alcohol, drugs, the New York media and tax evasion showed him to be the epitome of the arrogant athlete, one who does not care about anything except for the money and what it can buy.
And now, once again, another thorn has been placed in Strawberry’s side. This time it is a hole he didn’t dig himself into, and ironically, it may be his biggest hole yet.
Strawberry was diagnosed last week with colon cancer, the same disease that plagued his childhood friend and teammate Eric Davis of the Baltimore Orioles. Strawberry must now once again put baseball on the bottom of his priority list as he grapples with controlling his life and the complexities of his illness.
But if Strawberry has proven one thing over the years, it is that he is virtually indestructible. For all the problems he has dealt with, he has arisen from them a stronger, wiser and more mature person and player.
Take, for example, the reaction his teammates expressed when they heard of his illness. It takes a lot to make a team of baseball players cry, and something about the new Darryl Strawberry sparked that emotion from his peers. And it has sparked the emotions of fans, who celebrated strikeouts in the Yankees’ win in Game One of the American League Championship Series by hoisting up jerseys bearing the Straw’s No. 39.
These reactions were not as forthcoming in Strawberry’s earlier battles, because although he could hit home runs, he was not the kind of person you wanted to see succeed. He was obnoxious, he was crude, he was selfish. And as he slid down a slippery slope of self-destruction, some people thought he was getting what he deserved.
But years later, Strawberry has shown people by example that you can turn your life around, that you are responsible for your own actions and can change people’s perception of you only by first changing yourself. As much as I hate to say it, he has become a role model of a different type.
He may not be the person little kids pretend to be as they round the bases in their backyard, but for people dealing with major issues like substance abuse and depression, he is proof that hard work and effort is the only way to succeed and improve yourself. And now, as he once again must fight to regain his life, he does it with the support of a network of people who have climbed an uphill battle and got to the top.
We’re rooting for you, Straw.
