Last Straw Or Not, Signing Darryl Not End Of World

As Darryl Strawberry, in Yankee pinstripes for the first time, attacked baseballs with all his customary ease and power in the batting cage in the Yankees’ minor league complex in Tampa, Fla., Friday evening, he seemed less a potent figure than a pitiable one.

Strawberry had returned to baseball by the good graces of the self-appointed St. Bernard who sits in the Yankees owner’s chair. It was George Steinbrenner who talked about giving “this young man his last chance,” and he has signed an $850,000 contract.

The young man, Strawberry, at age 33, is actually at the brink of middle age. And he has lived what seems to many, including probably himself, a handful of lifetimes, those which encompass enormous potential and abject failure, as well as spousal abuse, alcohol and cocaine problems, and, most recently, a conviction on tax evasion charges that, by the grace of another St. Bernard, a federal judge in White Plains, allowed him to escape prison but not house arrest.

It is not difficult to paint a picture of Strawberry as a symbol of a society going to the dogs.

In fact, Strawberry’s return infuriated many, including Lee Brown, the national drug policy director. He said the Yankees had “struck out” by signing Strawberry, that it was “sending the worst possible message to the youth of America,” that it says “you break the law and you’re still rewarded with a big contract.”

There are, however, other messages that Strawberry sends. He sends a message that no matter how gifted you are, you can still be a fool, you can still be selfdestructive, you can still be an object of scorn.

It should not be lost on the youth of America that Strawberry, by either stupidity, arrogance or weakness, became a drug addict, lost virtually all of his money and was so fearful of being sent, as he said, to “anybody’s prison” that he was suicidal.

Before he went to hit the balls in the batting cage Friday, he spoke to the news media.

“I’ve always looked at myself as not being a criminal,” he said at one point, “not someone who murdered someone, and I think things were made out of my life that I was a serial killer or something.”

Here was Darryl Strawberry, who drew comparisons with Ted Williams when he first came up, now having to defend himself in this drastic manner.

And so when Lee Brown wants to tell the youth of America about Darryl Strawberry, then there must be more to the tale than that a guy snorted snow and then finds gold at the end of the rainbow.

What Brown might also relate is that not everyone is born equal, despite what Thomas Jefferson penned. And when someone has a huge talent, then he has advantages that some of the rest of us don’t. This is not condoning anything; it is simply a statement of fact.

Not all of us can hit a baseball 500 feet like Strawberry; not all of us can moonwalk like Michael Jackson. Yet however much they veered from the proper, they could entertain us, a talent we like.

When we look to entertainers, like ball players, for moral guides, we look in the wrong place. And that, too, is what the youth of America should know, though I suspect they might know that already.

Should Strawberry be given another chance to play baseball? If he were a drug addict and a surgeon, no. But he is a baseball player. It is, apparently, all that he knows, other than how to get himself into hot water.

He says he has changed. He has said this before. He says he wants to change. He has tried before. Let him try again, while the rest of us may cheer him or boo him as we see fit. The youth of America are not so dumb. They will understand.