Straw: Finding My Way

By Darryl Strawberry and John Strausbaugh

“Darryl has written a profound book on the meaning of celebrity, sports and manhood . . . a riveting and memorable account.” —David Cone

Former New York Met and Yankee slugger Darryl Strawberry has subtitled his autobiography Straw, “Finding My Way”—and his path was never easy. A National League Rookie of the Year, eight-time MLB All Star, and four-time World Series Champion, Strawberry’s baseball achievements were often overshadowed by his struggles off the field. In Straw, he tells it all: his boyhood in Crenshaw, Los Angeles; his rise to baseball superstardom; the high life and low life; his brushes with the law; his triumphant battle over cancer; his religious awakening, and his marriage to the love of his life.

“Straw is the story of a guy who had two strikes against him in the middle innings of life and hit one out of the park.” —Reggie Jackson



“Straw [has] the virtue of sincerity and of seeming profoundly felt. Its narrator emerges as a real and complex man: humble in the face of his failures, palpably hungry for redemption, and yet still capable of myopia and self-righteousness. You feel for him in a way you never did—at least I never did—when you were merely cheering and/or booing him at Shea.” —The New York Times

“If you’re looking for an interesting book about a chaotically interesting life, Straw makes for good reading.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 17, 2009
• ISBN: 9780061869570

Darryl Strawberry

Darryl Strawberry is described as a baseball legend by many who have been dazzled by the dynamics of his game. His many accomplishments in the major leagues include four World Series titles, eight All-Star Game appearances, and a nomination to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2004. He has earned the legendary nicknames and phrases of one of the most feared homerun hitters in the game of baseball: Straw’s Sweet Swing, Strawberry’s Field Forever, and The Legendary Straw Man! Though Darryl was extremely successful in his career, his personal life was plagued with addictions, abuse, divorces, cancer, jail time, and other issues. Darryl finally found true redemption and restoration in Jesus Christ. Today, Darryl’s purpose and passion is serving the Lord Jesus Christ by traveling the country, speaking a message of hope and restoration through the power of the gospel. He is the author of numerous books, including the New York Times bestseller, Straw: Finding My Way (with John Strausbaugh), Don’t Give Up on Me: Shining Light on Addiction with Darryl Strawberry (with Shawn Powell), and The Imperfect Marriage: Help for Those Who Think It’s Over with his wife, Tracy Strawberry. In 2011 Darryl and Tracy founded Strawberry Ministries, and they use their global reach to restore the multitudes through spiritual and practical life applications.

Book preview

Straw

Finding My Way

Darryl Strawberry

with John Strausbaugh

For Tracy,

my amazing wife whom I love so very much.

You led me to finding my way through your faith, strength,

encouragement, and tough love when I needed it.

I cherish you for being the woman you are to me

and for who we are as one.

For my children,

Darryl Jr. (DJ), Diamond, Jordan, Jade, and Jewel.

You touch the depths of my soul and

I love you more than words could ever say.

For my mother, Ruby,

who always knew I would get it right someday.

I love you and I miss you so much!

Rest in peace, my angel!

For my relationship with you, God,

through Jesus Christ. Without you this book and

the life I have today would not be possible.

For your unconditional love, healing power,

never-ending mercy, and true gift of grace that I could

never be worthy of receiving, my love and deepest,

deepest gratitude.

Contents

Introduction

1

I’LL KILL ALL y’all," the drunk with the shotgun raged.

2

AFTER THAT NIGHT, my mom was left to raise us…

3

AFTER BOUNCING AROUND to all those different junior high schools…

4

ONE DAY LATE that summer of 1980, my mom drove…

5

AT THE END of the season I went home to…

6

WHEN I GOT to St. Petersburg for spring training in…

7

AT SPRING TRAINING in 1986, when Davey Johnson first met…

8

SURROUNDED BY REPORTERS in the Mets clubhouse right after we…

9

LISA CLAYTON WAS just a girl in St. Louis who…

10

I REMEMBER THE DAY I cleared out my Mets locker…

11

PICTURE A MAN falling down a long, long flight of…

Photographic Insert

12

CYNICS LIKE TO say there are no second chances in…

13

CANCER. MY HEART plunged. Just hearing the word said in…

14

I WENT HOME AND got back on my program instantly.

15

WHEN THE TRIAL for possession of cocaine came up, I…

16

IN JULY, GOD decided to test whether I was really…

17

JUDGE FOSTER WAS still decent to me. She knew I…

18

THE PLAN WAS to come back now and restart my…

19

WILL AND I went to a Narcotics Anonymous recovery convention.

20

THAT WAS WHEN I knew I was done. Tracy was…

21

I WENT BACK TO Tracy a changed man. She saw…

22

I’M HAPPY TO say that for the last few years…

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

Introduction

This is not a book about baseball. It’s a book about life. I love baseball. It was and still is a big part of my life. It’s a big part of this book, too. But baseball was not my life. In a lot of ways it was more like my escape from life. I was great at baseball right from the start. It’s taken me a whole lot longer to get good at life.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying you shouldn’t read this book if you’re a baseball fan. I’m saying you don’t have to be a baseball fan to read it. Because this is really a book about my struggles, how I endured them, and how I overcame them. It’s about living the high life, and about falling as low as a man can get. It’s about excelling as a baseball player, and failing miserably as a man. It’s about being blessed with great talent and gifts, but hating and punishing yourself anyway. It’s about running away from my responsibilities as a husband and father, and the terrible consequences of that for me and my loved ones.

And, in the end, it’s about triumphing over all my personal demons and self-loathing, and, through the grace of God and with the help of others, finding peace. I endured and overcame, and I finally got my life in order. I’m in a position now to be a positive force in the world and help others, and it feels great.

I’ve written this book because I want to give hope and encourage people who are struggling to find peace themselves. Every life begins with great promise, and every life is filled with some kinds of trials and tribulations. How do you endure and overcome those troubles? How do you keep your faith and not give up when the troubles come along? This life is a journey, and for all of us there are going to be some pit stops, detours, and dead ends. I hope the problems you face, whatever they are, aren’t as painful as mine were. And, whatever they are, I hope this book encourages you to keep going forward in your journey.

I’ve written a lot about my father in this book, because he was a huge and very negative influence on my life. My father was a raging alcoholic who whupped me all the time and told me I was never going to amount to anything in this world. That was just about all he did for me, and then he was gone. He never told me he loved me. He never showed me he loved me. He was never there to offer fatherly support or guidance. How does a boy learn how to become a man from a father like that?

I’m not blaming him for all the mistakes and stupid decisions I made, or for the pain and sorrow I caused myself and others. I take full responsibility for everything I have ever done. I know My father beat me is a clichéd excuse for bad behavior. I’m not using it as an excuse. There are no excuses. There are only explanations.

People have asked about me a million times, What the heck was wrong with that guy? He was blessed with a phenomenal talent. He was paid millions of dollars to do what he did best and loved most. He had legions of adoring fans. Everything was available to him. Houses, cars, fans, and fame. He was everything Americans want to be. How could he throw that all away on alcohol and drugs?

The explanation is simple: I did not love myself. I didn’t even like myself. When you don’t like yourself, you try to find ways to escape, to run away from yourself. That’s what baseball was for me. I was great at it, it was fun, but it didn’t make me like myself. No matter how well I did on the ball field, my father’s voice inside my head told me, You’re no good. You’ll never amount to anything. And I believed it. It was a poison in my life. I had to go through hell to get all that poison and sickness out of me and start to believe in myself. I had to hit bottom, the deepest pit, to understand that I wasn’t the failure that voice in my head kept telling me I was. I was a good person and I had good intentions. I wanted to feel good about myself. I just couldn’t figure out how, and so I filled in with some lousy substitutes like alcohol and cocaine. They only made me like myself less.

I’m telling that story now because I want other people not to have to wait as long as I did to find the peace I’ve found. Why it took me so long probably has something to do with professional sports, where you’re always supposed to be strong, always a champion. You’re not supposed to hurt. Things are not supposed to affect you. You play and produce no matter what.

And if you do that well, you’re treated like a star. You never have to grow as a man. Someone’s always there to manage your life for you. If you have aches and pains, you call the trainers. When it’s time to negotiate a contract or do other business, you call your agent. If you get in some kind of trouble…you call your agent again, and he calls a lawyer. You live your life like a child, playing a game, while a team of professionals takes care of all your needs.

And all your desires as well. When you’re a star athlete, a celebrity, you’re surrounded by people ready to fulfill your every want. They turn your fantasies into reality. What do you want? Money, women, drugs, cars, constant parties, constant praise? They’re all yours. You can indulge yourself without limits, without restrictions, and without responsibilities.

It felt like complete freedom to me. I thought I’d gotten out from under my father. No one was going to control me anymore. No one was going to dominate me. I was a man. I was going to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I was in complete control of my life.

Only I wasn’t. The truth is I was completely out of control. The truth is that nothing in life is really handed to you for free. Sooner or later, you have to pay for everything you get and everything you do. Eventually, you have to face the consequences of all your actions and decisions.

Professional baseball let me put off that reckoning for a long time. I channeled all my energy out there on the field, and I was a champion there. But deep down inside, I was a very hurt young man. And all the home runs, all the World Series rings, couldn’t take that pain away. All the cheering crowds in all the stadiums where I played couldn’t drown out that voice in my head.

I think a lot of it comes back to where you grew up and how you grew up. Let’s be honest, an awful lot of males in America, especially young black males, grow up now without a father figure around. You may have a mother who raises you with principles and values. But if a boy’s father has left the house because of a divorce, or he’s just a baby daddy to begin with, that kid is missing something vital—a man around the house to act as his guide and role model.

I didn’t have that figure in my life, and it cost me dearly. I spent a lot of years trying to figure out on my own how to be a man. I made a lot of mistakes. I searched and searched to find who I was, and boy did I search in a lot of the wrong places.

I see a lot of young black men in this country looking for the same thing, and also looking in all the wrong places. Especially in poorer communities, the men who could be positive role models for black youth—the ones who become successful doctors, lawyers, businessmen, athletes—move up and out. The young males in these communities, often raised without a father figure at home, look around, and the only success stories they see are pimps and drug dealers. Trying to figure out what it means to be a man, all they see are macho stereotypes like gangbangers and rap stars. It’s no wonder they grow up believing that money, sex, drugs, and violence make you a man.

One of the reasons I’m writing this book is to show young men an example of a guy who grew up in a very similar environment, who had all the same questions and confusion they do, and who struggled for a very long time to figure out who he is and why he’s on this earth. I had all the money, sex, and drugs a young man could want, and none of it helped me become a real man. I know firsthand that none of that has anything at all to do with being a man, and I want to pass that knowledge on.

I don’t believe you have to go through what I did, all that pain and confusion and humiliation, to find yourself. I don’t believe you have to hit rock bottom before you can deal with your problems. I did, and I know many others have. But with a guide, someone who’s been to hell and come back to life, maybe you can avoid some of the pits I stumbled into. Maybe think of this book as a road map to hell and back again. There is a way out. I’m living proof.

And that brings up the other story I want to tell. I was diagnosed with cancer. Twice. I was operated on three times. The last time was in 2000. I’m writing this in 2008. I’m still here. And I greet each and every day that I’m still here as a gift straight from God.

See, I believe God had a purpose for me on this earth, and I wasn’t anywhere near fulfilling that purpose. That’s why he kept me around, as sick as I was in my body, my mind, and my soul. God is very patient with us. He keeps faith with us even when we lose faith in ourselves.

I believe God has a role for each and every one of us. You never know what God is going to use you for. In my case, it definitely wasn’t baseball. I went through the highs of being successful, and the lows of self-destruction. I always knew God was calling me to something, something greater than hitting home runs. But I kept missing that call for a long, long time. I kept chasing all the temptations of life instead. When I should have been surrendering to God, I was surrendering to the world. God had to take all that away from me before I realized how meaningless it all was.

I know now why God kept me around. He wanted me here to help others who are struggling, lost, in pain. He wanted me to be an example to others, to bring them hope. His purpose for me was never just to do well in the ballpark. It was to do good in the world.

If you accept that you’re here for a reason, whether you believe in God or not, maybe it will help you survive and triumph over whatever problems and troubles you’re struggling with.

Each of us has his own journey and his own story. But your story might help the next person who’s struggling. And that’s why I tell mine.

1

I’LL KILL ALL y’all," the drunk with the shotgun raged.

All y’all was my mother, my two younger sisters, my two older brothers, and me. I was thirteen.

The drunk with the shotgun was my father.

This was not the first time I had seen my father in a drunken rage. Far from it. At thirteen, I could not remember a time when I did not live in fear of this man, my own father.

I used to see these families on TV. Dad comes home from work, and all the kids run to greet him, hug his legs, happy that Daddy is home. Come here, you guys, give me a hug, he would say. Give us a kiss. I love you.

Those people might as well have lived on a different planet from my house. When my father came home at night, it was exactly the opposite: We all hid. Because you never knew what kind of monster was coming home. Sometimes he was raging and violent. Sometimes he was just cold and sullen. But I don’t remember him ever with a smile on his face, throwing open his arms and saying, Come here, son, give me a hug. When my father raised his hands toward me, it wasn’t a hug he had in mind.

We boys knew he sometimes was abusive to our mother, who was half his size. He’d been beating me and Ronnie for years. We had been hiding from him for a long time by this night.

What was special about this night was that we did not hide from him. We finally stood up to him. This was not the first time he disrupted our house, it was the last.

I’ll kill all of you, my father raged again.

Ronnie, who was fourteen, stood next to me. He had a butcher knife from the kitchen in his hand.

Oh no, he said, matching my father’s growl. If anybody’s killed here tonight, it’ll be you.

I have thought long and hard about that night in the more than thirty years since. About how the Strawberry family came to such a point, and about the effect it had on all of us afterward. I think its roots reach far back to before I was born, to my father’s own childhood. I know it threw a long shadow that still touches our lives.

MOST OF WHAT I know about my father’s early years we heard from cousins, not from him. He was born in Mississippi, an only child. They called him Sonny Boy. They say his mom was a beautiful lady, but his dad was an evil man, a raging alcoholic, physically abusive to the mom. She died before her time. It might have been from the stress of living with this man, though there was some talk in the family that she died from the beatings he gave her. After that my dad was mostly raised by his grandmother. He and his father had no relationship to speak of.

I think that childhood explains a lot about why my father acted the way he did toward us. The rotten apple doesn’t roll far from the tree. They say that alcoholism is a disease, a genetic disorder passed down within families from one generation to the next. I know some people dispute that idea, but I’m a believer. If you add other kinds of addictive behavior and abusive parenting to the alcoholism, I guess you could use the Strawberrys as a textbook example.

My father got out of Mississippi as soon as he could and came to Los Angeles as a young man. He met and married my mom there, and they had five kids right in a row, one each year for five years: Michael, Ronnie, me, Regina, and Michelle.

We started out in an apartment in Watts. I don’t have any memories of Watts, but there are stories. My mom told me one about how she went to work one day and left my dad in charge of Ronnie and me. We were toddlers, still in diapers. She comes home and finds us on the kitchen floor, covered in flour. We had somehow gotten into one of the cupboards and covered ourselves in it, while Dad slept.

Another time, a neighbor called my mom at work and said, Your two babies are walking up Rosecrans Avenue. Me and Ronnie, in our diapers, toddling hand in hand up this busy street. Dad had fallen asleep again, and we got out. We could easily have been killed. Rosecrans Avenue is six lanes wide with major intersections and cars flying in all directions.

Those stories say something about my dad’s complete lack of paternal instincts. He just did not have anything like a normal father’s care and concern for his children.

We moved to a small house in the Crenshaw neighborhood when I was seven or eight. It’s in South Central L.A., but it wasn’t like the ghetto or anything. It was all little stucco houses, filled with working-class families, struggling but getting by. Every house had a garage, and there were little front and back yards, most of them with some kind of fruit tree in them. Orange trees, lemon, grapefruit. We used to pick the fruit and eat it right there in the yard.

The neighborhood was mostly African-American. We had one white neighbor, a wonderful lady. The dads and moms all worked, the kids all went to school. We didn’t see a lot of drugs or violence. It wasn’t Beaver Cleaver’s neighborhood, but it wasn’t Boyz n the Hood, either.

My father was a clerk at the post office. That’s a bit funny to me now, because if you could talk about anyone going postal, it was my dad. He worked the evening shift. He left the house around two-thirty in the afternoon and put in his eight hours. Then, lots of nights, he’d go drinking and carousing, gambling, chasing women. It’d be really late when he got home. We kids were in bed, and we’d stay there.

Some nights he’d be drunk and exhausted and just collapse in his bed. Those were the good nights. Other nights he came home drunk and belligerent, and that’s when he’d get into it with our mother. We kids would lie in bed and listen to him screaming at her, yelling crazy nonsense half the time, angry at her, angry at us five kids just for existing, angry about even having a family and having to be responsible for us. We’d lie there and listen to my mom trying to calm him down, crying, pleading with him.

The days weren’t much better. My mom would go off to her job as a secretary at Pacific Bell. My father would usually wake up hungover and grouchy. We tiptoed around, tried to stay out of his way. Don’t even dare to ask him if you can go out and play. If you do, he’ll just snap at you.

Don’t bother me, I’m sleeping. Don’t come in here! Go back in your room, you don’t need to go outside. For what?

He was nicer with Michael and the girls than with me and Ronnie. Mike I think he respected. We all did. Mike was a great kid, levelheaded, responsible. And the girls could get anything from my dad. They’d ask him for a dollar and he’d say, My money’s on the dresser. Go get it. Me, if I stuck my head in the door and asked for fifty cents, he’d growl, Boy, get out of here. You don’t need no money.

But even they got no real love from him. My father was very cold. He didn’t have time for anyone but himself. He barely spoke to us. Looking back, Mike says, For whatever reason, he just wasn’t much of a dad. He really was never visible in our lives. He was there, but he wasn’t there. He never supported anything we did regarding sports or anything. Basically we were afraid even to talk to him, because there was no connection, no bond there.

We were scared to death of him, the entire family. It does something to a little kid to actually be scared of his father, frightened every time he comes home. And my dad was a scary man. He was big—they called him Big Hank. That’s where I get my size from. Too bad that wasn’t all I got from him.

My mom worked very hard to put up with the man and keep up a stable household. She was a petite, pretty lady, but very strong in character and in spirit. She was a good Baptist, and she instilled Christian values and right conduct in all of us kids. My dad may have been big, but that little woman was the real strength in our family. She was as loving to us as he was cold. She dedicated her entire life to raising us right.

I never understood why my father was so angry with us all the time. He had a loving wife and good kids. We weren’t noisy or troublesome. Later I came to realize that he just didn’t want us—the loving wife, the five kids, the house, the responsibility, the burden. He wanted to drink, hang around with his friends, and go to the track. He liked the life out there. We found out later that he was messing around with a woman who lived around the corner. In fact, he later married her. But afterward he had to come home to five kids and a lot of responsibility he didn’t want. We were growing and we needed things and he was supposed to provide for us. I think he had a hard time accepting that we were his responsibilities. He didn’t want to be a husband and father. He didn’t want to slave away every day at the post office to keep a roof over our heads and food in our mouths. I don’t believe he ever accepted that your kids come first, before drinking and going to the track.

Not that he spent much on us anyway. He and my mom made decent money, but we lived like paupers, because my dad spent most of his earnings on himself. My mom begged him and begged him not to throw his money away on alcohol and gambling. He’d just scream at her, It’s my money! I made it and I’ll spend it any way I want!

We weren’t in rags, but whatever nice clothes we had, for going to school or whatever, our mom bought us. And forget about cool toys or bikes. We built our own bikes out of junked ones we found lying around the neighborhood. We made our own version of dirt bikes. We’d ride them all over the neighborhood, popping wheelies and jumping the curbs.

My dad’s other great love, besides carousing, was sports. He played softball on the post office team, the Wildcats. They had a softball league where they had great competition. They had nice, pretty uniforms, the whole thing. They were serious about it, and there were some wonderful players. And my dad was one of the biggest forces in the league. He had a big name, big reputation. Big Hank. Everyone knew and respected Big Hank. He was famous throughout this citywide league. On the mound he was an outstanding pitcher. Batters were intimidated by his speed. At the plate, he was a mighty long-ball hitter. He could hit that ball all the way to the next diamond.

All three of us sons inherited our love of sports from him. In fact, the girls did, too. Not because he did anything to encourage or mentor us. He wasn’t the sort of dad who was going to take us to Little League games, encourage us to compete. He was too busy paying attention to himself. We just naturally had sports in our genes. We played football in the street, basketball on the raggedy old courts at school. Regina and Michelle played right along with us. The five Strawberry kids. A Strawberry posse.

We didn’t play baseball in the street, because you might knock a ball through somebody’s window, and that was a big no-no. Then Big Hank might come down on you. And you did not want that. Because Big Hank took great delight in beating us. These were not the sort of whuppings a parent gave kids to discipline them. These were out-and-out beatings. I know the difference. Whuppings were common in our neighborhood. Everyone’s parents were decent, hardworking, Christian