DESPERATE SEARCH LED FRIENDS TO STRAWBERRY

Throughout his four-day search for Darryl Strawberry, along back alleys and
streets where crack peddlers wait in the shadows to sell death by the hit,
Ron Dock tried not to think the worst.

But he couldn't help it. As hours turned to days and hope turned to
desperation, Dock all but accepted that his friend was dead. He kept
looking, but the fear gnawed at him. A voice inside told him it was all a
waste of time.

That's when his cell phone rang.

It was Strawberry. His voice was weak, pained. He was crying, pleading.
Please. Help me.

Dock and friend Ray Negron went flying up Interstate 4 to Daytona Beach.
Now they sat in the parking lot at a Chevron gas station and waited for
Strawberry to arrive. What would they find?

How would he look? Would he still be high? Strung out? What should they do
when they got him back to Tampa? How much toll had this binge taken on
their friend? How much more could he take? How much more could any of them
take?

It was the first time they had heard from Strawberry since he failed to
show up at a Tampa drug treatment facility four days before. They had
sometimes hit 90 mph, driving from West Shore in Tampa to the prearranged
pickup spot 120 miles away.

They waited about a half hour before a car pulled up and Strawberry slowly
got out. Dock didn't know the people who drove Strawberry, and he didn't
care. All he knew was Strawberry needed immediate help. He and Negron
hustled their friend into the back seat, afraid any delay would increase
the chances of being spotted by Daytona police, and drove away without
questions.

Strawberry was a mess. His black sweatshirt and pants hadn't been changed
in days. He hadn't bathed. He was lethargic, exhausted from no sleep and
poisoned by cocaine. He slumped in the back seat, barely able to move.

No one spoke.

The miles passed.

Strawberry finally broke the silence.

"I'm in trouble."

Not much later, Ron Dock had to stop the car. He couldn't see to drive
through his tears.

DARRYL STRAWBERRY is no different than any of the thousands of other
addicts in Tampa, his friends insist. He has a demon inside he hasn't been
able to beat. When he played baseball for the New York Mets and Yankees,
people marveled at the power in his 6-foot-6 body and the things he could
do on the field. Many believe he could have been one of the game's all-time
greats.

Now, though, Strawberry is addicted to cocaine and it has made him a shell
of what he once was. He also is battling colon cancer, severe depression,
and now on suicide watch at St. Joseph's Hospital.

"He needs very close medical supervision for his cancer," said Andrew
Boyer, the Yankees team doctor in Tampa.

Strawberry awaits a hearing this week for a probation violation resulting
from his ongoing battle against drugs. Prosecutors want to send him to jail
for up to five years. Friends say that's absurd, that Strawberry needs
rehabilitation, not incarceration.

"The cocaine starts calling you, and it's like you're a zombie. You start
crawling," said Dock, a counselor on substance abuse issues with the
Yankees and himself a recovering addict.

"You know you don't want it, but you can't stop yourself. You don't even
want the high you'll get, because you know your life will be over. But
there's nothing you can do. It won't stop calling you."

Strawberry has been in and out of rehab with this problem for several
years. He is serving two years of community control and a year of probation
after his arrest in 1999 for drug possession and soliciting a prostitute.

He was undergoing drug treatment, but probation officials released a report
in which Strawberry admitted he succumbed to temptation again. A woman he
identified only as Beverly started smoking crack cocaine in front of him
while on the way to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting March 29.

Friends speculate the temptation of cocaine so close by, coupled with
depression over the chemotherapy he takes for his cancer treatment, was too
much to resist.

The two wound up in a local motel, where Strawberry said five armed men
took his jewelry, possibly to buy more cocaine. They traveled to Orlando
the following day and continued to use cocaine. Strawberry finally called
an unidentified friend, who took him to Daytona.

Police said Strawberry was not a major threat to society and didn't search
for him.

Dock, Negron and Dwight Gooden did.

DOCK'S PHONE RANG at his home in St. Petersburg at 2:02 a.m. March 30.

Charisse Strawberry was on the other end.

"She told me he had left the treatment center," Dock said. "The first thing
that went deep into my heart and soul was that he was going to die this time."

Dock's fear was real. On Oct. 5, 1992, he was strung out on drugs, walking
down the middle of Central Avenue in St. Petersburg.

"I wanted a car to run over me," he said. "I wanted to die."

Instead, a police officer stopped and took Dock to a treatment center,
where he stayed for 28 days. Although he had been in and out of rehab, it
stuck that time.

After hanging up with Charisse Strawberry, Dock called Negron. The two
talked several hours, planning what to do. They agreed to meet later that
morning and start a search themselves.

"What choice did we have?" Negron asked. "We had to look for him."

Negron knows the mean streets, too. Yankees owner George Steinbrenner found
him spraying graffiti on a building in New York when Negron was a kid.
Steinbrenner put Negron in his car and drove to Yankee Stadium, where he
made Negron the team batboy.

Negron later had a brief professional baseball career. He now works for the
Cleveland Indians as a special adviser.

"My brother was executed in a bad drug deal - shot point-blank in the
head," Negron said. "I had an uncle die of a heroin overdose. I know what
drugs can do to a person. People try to paint Darryl as a monster at times,
but he is one of the most beautiful persons I know."

The two drove through West Tampa, then into College Hill, looking for
Strawberry. They put word to the media of what they were doing, hoping he
would hear about their search and gain hope. An addict needs to feel hope
most of all.

"We were hoping for lightning to strike," Dock said.

They searched throughout the day, into the evening.

There was no sign of Strawberry.

"They didn't know where to look," Gooden said. "I told them I knew Tampa,
they'd better take me along because I knew where to look."

He also knew what had sent Strawberry to the streets. It was a monster all
too familiar to Gooden.

"You start debating with yourself, back and forth," he said. "You know you
shouldn't do this, but then the voice says, `Oh, go ahead ... this will be
the last time.' I don't know how many last times in my life I had."

Strawberry, though, may be running out of them.

GOODEN AND STRAWBERRY were rising young stars on the 1986 World Series
champion Mets, their careers seemingly limitless. Both later won Series
rings with the Yankees.

Both have battled drug addiction.

In an ironic twist, Gooden announced his retirement from baseball while
Negron and Dock were searching fruitlessly through the tough Tampa
neighborhoods. Gooden joined them the next day, about 4 p.m. March 31,
along with a film crew for a documentary Dock hoped to produce about the
battles addicts face.

Gooden took them to streets around the Tampa Greyhound Track, to areas off
Fowler Avenue in Suitcase City near the University of South Florida. They
used Negron's rental car because Gooden didn't want to arouse the suspicion
of Tampa police by driving one of his expensive cars into known drug areas.

It was early evening when the three pulled up to some men near the
intersection of Lake and 29th in Tampa. Gooden approached, described
Strawberry, and asked if they had seen him.

They hadn't. But they knew Dwight Gooden.

"They're going, `Hey, you want some? We got something right here for you,'
" Gooden said.

The experience shook Gooden.

"Straw has a disease," he said. "Watching what has happened to him has
scared the hell out of me, 'cause I've been there. I know what he's going
through. I never did crack, but I did do coke. I know what it does to you.

"With me, it started with heavy drinking and marijuana. It's a pattern, and
you learn that you have to avoid situations that trigger [drug use]. What
happened to Straw could have been me, easily. All you can do is love the
guy and give him your support. I love Darryl like a brother and I know he
loves me. Whatever he needs, I'll be there for him."

LAST MONDAY, four days after Strawberry disappeared, Negron and Dock got a
tip he might be at the Quality Hotel-Airport Plaza on West Shore in Tampa.

They went floor by floor. Negron spoke Spanish as he described Strawberry
to the maids. "Es un hombre alto, moreno y calbo" - tall, black man, bald head.

The maids hadn't seen him, but told the two which rooms had been cleaned
and would be vacant.

Negron and Dock knocked on all the other doors.

He wasn't there.

"We were headed to Denny's for something to eat and to regroup," Dock said.

Dock's cell phone rang.

"He started getting real excited," Negron said. "He started screaming,
`Stay where you are! We'll come right now and get you!' I thought Ron was
going to hyperventilate."

Their long-shot hope that Strawberry would hear of their search had worked.
Word had indeed reached him in Daytona, and he grasped onto that rope of hope.

"He was crying on the phone, `Dock, I just can't take living like this. I
want to die,' " Dock said. "I told him not to call anyone else, not to do
anything else. We were coming for him."

Negron and Dock stopped for supplies. They figured Strawberry needed food -
he probably hadn't eaten in four days - and water to combat dehydration.

"People have to wake up," Negron said. "This is a disease. It can happen to
anybody. Just because Darryl was a baseball player means nothing."

They had to stop several times on the ride from Daytona to Tampa.

"Straw was physically, emotionally, and spiritually kicked in," Dock said.
"He was bawling like a baby. We'd stop, get out of the car, and just
embrace him. He kept saying he wanted to die, that he couldn't face his
family, he couldn't face prison. He wanted to die."

Gooden, in New York for Opening Day with the Yankees, called after getting
word Strawberry had been found.

"He sounded distant," Gooden said. "He was probably on his way down from a
high, not sure what he was going to face. I just had to let him know I was
there for him, and that I love him."

After a phone call to a psychologist from Major League Baseball, Dock and
Negron decided to take Strawberry to St. Joseph's Hospital instead of to
the police or his attorney. He remains there under 24-hour guard, pending a
court appearance scheduled for Wednesday.

Dock visits every day.

"He's getting worse," Dock said. "He is psychologically crashing. He can't
even get out of the bed. He has no emotion. He looks defeated."

Dock grew quiet for a second. He has been in recovery for nine years and
understands the authority addictions can have on a body. Whether that body
belongs to a baseball player, a banker, or anyone else.

"I've seen 90-year-old junkies," he said. "I've seen 95-year-olds destitute
because they gambled their life savings away. An addiction can be anything
- - gambling, food, sex, cocaine, liquor.

"When you start to put a man on a pedestal and say he's a role model,
you're asking for trouble. We're all just people, we all have weaknesses.
This is a disease. You treat it with love and support, but you know there
will be relapses; relapses are part of the recovery. But you still love
them. And you keep loving them. You keep loving them.