STRAWBERRY DID COCAINE IN MOTEL

Darryl Strawberry told his probation officer he spent the four days
he was missing using cocaine with a female friend and armed men who
took his jewelry and abandoned him in a motel room.

In a report to the judge who will decide if the former baseball star
will go to prison, Florida probation officials said Tuesday that
Strawberry tested positive for cocaine use and violated the terms of
his house arrest in his four-day absence from a drug rehabilitation
center.

The report came as Strawberry remained in a psychiatric ward at St.
Joseph's Hospital in Tampa, Fla., while doctors evaluated him.

Under arrest for violating his probation, he will be sent to the
Hillsborough County Jail and held without bail once doctors declare
him mentally stable.

Strawberry told his probation officer that he was picked up at the
center by a woman from an Alcoholics Anonymous program named Beverly,
who was supposed to take him to the meeting.

". . . Instead she began smoking crack cocaine and he couldn't resist
the temptation," probation officer Shelley Tomlinson wrote in her
report. "He said she took him to a nearby motel where there were a
total of five men who had guns and took his jewelry."

Strawberry said they continued to use cocaine until Friday, when the
unidentified men decided it was time to leave. They rode around town,
bought more drugs and drove to a motel in Orlando, the report said.

In addition to his legal troubles, Strawberry also is undergoing an
aggressive, experimental treatment for colon cancer.

"He wants to get himself clean, he wants to go on and live a normal
life like everyone else," said Mark Kennedy, who once shared an
apartment with Strawberry at the Tampa drug treatment center. "If
he's told me once, he's told me 50 times: 'I wish I wasn't who I am.'
He says he wishes he was a regular guy."

The players' association filed a grievance seeking to overturn the
$97,222 fine imposed on outfielder Carl Everett by the Boston Red Sox.

The next step is for lawyers for the union and the commissioner's
office to meet over the grievance. The matter then would be turned
over to arbitrator Shaym Das.

The Red Sox fined Everett and suspended him from last Thursday's
spring training game against the Minnesota Twins after he failed to
take a team bus to an exhibition game in Tampa, then was sent home by
Manager Jimy Williams and skipped practice the next day.

Greg Maddux, who missed his scheduled start in the Atlanta Braves'
season-opening 10-4 victory over the Cincinnati Reds because of a
sore left foot, expects to start Friday against the Florida Marlins.
. . . Woody Williams, the San Diego Padres' top pitcher last season,
agreed to a two-year contract extension through 2003.