BALL FOUR FOR DARRYL STRAWBERRY

The Slugger Has Drug Problems. Is Baseball Giving Him A Pass?

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Nikiara Hollmon cut the article out of the newspaper
with a ballpoint pen, the point making a ragged, inky frame around the
words. Then Nikiara, 12 years old, wadded up the piece of paper in her palm
and brought it here, to the Southside Boys and Girls Club, where she has
spent her afternoons for nearly six years.

"What's wrong with Darryl?" she asked Carl Lavender, the club's executive
director, on that afternoon late last month. Darryl was Darryl Strawberry -
baseball star, drug addict, and, to Nikiara Hollmon, the guy who plays
basketball with her out in the yard. The article said he had failed a drug
test. That failed test would lead to a one-year suspension from baseball,
Strawberry's second drug-related suspension in as many years and the third
of his career. Strawberry met Nikiara during last season's suspension, when
he fulfilled 150 hours of assigned community service by working with the
children here in Jordan Park, one of St. Petersburg's worst neighborhoods.

Nikiara says she forgives Strawberry for the latest of what he always calls
his "mistakes." She is not alone. Ever since the news of Strawberry's
failed test hit in late February, the debate has raged: Should he get
another chance? Should baseball be his haven? Should the league - as argued
by Strawberry's doctors - continue to provide him with what they told both
Commissioner Bud Selig and Yankees owner George Steinbrenner the necessary
"structure" Strawberry needs in his life?

Or, as some have argued, is baseball itself Strawberry's greatest enabler?
Is the endless support provided by the game - the job, the money, the
adoration, the feeling that you are bigger and stronger and better than
anything the world can throw at you - is that what makes it so easy for
Strawberry, who turns 38 tomorrow, to keep failing?

Is it because he believes, deep inside, that there will always be another
chance, another contract, another opportunity, no matter how many times he
puts coke up his nose? Is it because he has never hit what drug and alcohol
counselors refer to as "rock bottom," and never will, as long as baseball
and its supporters continue to prop him up?

Those who preach the former are clearly winning out.

"It's a legitimate argument, it really is," says Yankees star pitcher David
Cone, who has known Strawberry since the outfielder's days of drinking
hard--and playing hard--for the New York Mets more than a decade ago. "I
can understand the feeling that baseball can be an enabler. ... But I have
to lean toward Darryl. ... He can still turn it around, and baseball can be
a part of that."

Oh, there are those who are tired of Strawberry and his failures. Fans who
call talk radio here in spring training land and in New York and rant about
"the bum." Tommy Lasorda, who stopped feeling sorry for him six years ago,
when Strawberry left the Dodgers--the team Lasorda managed--for his second
stint in rehab. Dexter Manley, a former Redskin and junkie athlete himself,
who is sympathetic to Strawberry's plight, but finds it foolish to believe
a month in a clinic and a return to the baseball diamond will do anything
but continue to feed Strawberry's problems.

And Tim McCarver, former Cardinals and Phillies catcher and now one of the
most thoughtful and respected television analysts in the game, who says the
words used to describe athletes like Strawberry should not be "sad" and
"unfortunate" - the ones we hear most often in our culture - but rather
"pathetic," and "maddening," and even "despicable."

These, though, are the rarities. Most look at Strawberry, think of
Strawberry, and see that incredible, room-altering smile, that sweet nature
- - under it all, Strawberry is a truly likable man, by virtually all
accounts - and, yes, that breathtaking ability to hit a baseball.

And so they want him in Newark, N.J., where Rick Cerone, a 17-year major
leaguer who now serves as president of the independent Newark Bears, is
willing to offer Strawberry a contract when he gets out of rehab. Ditto for
the New Jersey Jackals, and the Atlantic City Surf and a host of other
professional teams not governed by major league baseball's ban.

They want him in the Yankee clubhouse, where Steinbrenner insists he has
not given up on Strawberry and his teammates routinely talk of their hopes
for his return.

Charisse Strawberry wants her husband back in their Tampa home, where she
is "bunkered down" with her two children, according to one family friend,
and is nearly six months pregnant with a third - a baby they considered
their little miracle, given Darryl's battle with colon cancer less than 18
months ago. Frustrated, perhaps even angry, Charisse continues to believe
in the man she has sheltered through drug and alcohol addiction, a
conviction for tax evasion, and an arrest for cocaine possession and
soliciting prostitution just one year ago.

And they even want him back here in Jordan Park, where crushed glass and
torn paper and empty ketchup packets litter the ground alongside the
basketball court outside, and posters of famous black Americans hang on the
blue-and-gray walls. There is Jackie Robinson, and Martin Luther King Jr.,
and Wilma Rudolph. There is a sign promoting a "drug-free environment."
And, a few feet away, there are pictures of Strawberry, surrounded by kids,
an arm on a shoulder, a hand on a head, a smile on all of their faces.

"Maybe the broader world wants to say, 'Put him in jail, give up on him,' "
says Lavender, the club's director. "But who are the heroes for poor
people, for children -like ours - who feel the whole world is passing them
by?"

He doesn't provide the answer. He doesn't have to. Nikiara Hollmon already
has.

Rising And Falling - Repeatedly

Everywhere I've been, my battles have come with me. They are a part of me.

- --Darryl Strawberry, "Recovering Life"

This is Darryl Strawberry's history: He was raised in South Central Los
Angeles by his mother after his abusive father - also a drunk, and, in
Strawberry's eyes, the main root of his problems - abandoned him before he
reached high school. He was the first pick in the major league baseball
draft, taken by the Mets straight out of high school. He was a star in New
York before age 20.

He also has a rap sheet so long and complicated it defies description. In
his eight years with the Mets, he was fined at least six times, got into a
fistfight with a teammate, was arrested for threatening his first wife with
a gun and wound up in Smithers Institute in New York to be treated for
alcohol abuse.

In his next incarnation, with the Dodgers, after he became a born-again
Christian, Strawberry was arrested in front of his kids for hitting the
woman who would become his second wife, was investigated by the IRS for tax
fraud (he was eventually sentenced to home confinement and fined, setting
up his current financial woes), and got heavily into cocaine, resulting in
rehab stint number two, this time at the Betty Ford Center in Palm Springs
in 1994.

He lasted less than a year with his next team, the San Francisco Giants,
after having a drug relapse that earned his first suspension from baseball.

Then along came Steinbrenner and the Yankees, who had given seven-strikes
Steve Howe, a cocaine abuser, a chance to pitch for a World Series
franchise and later would bring another addict, Dwight Gooden, back to the
game.

Strawberry became the ultimate team player, and a beloved figure. He didn't
complain about his diminished role and no longer being a star. He drew
nationwide sympathy when his colon cancer was diagnosed at the start of the
1998 World Series. Steinbrenner sat with Charisse during his surgery,
earning Strawberry's undying support.

Then Strawberry got arrested last spring for cocaine possession and
soliciting prostitution. Baseball suspended him, then reduced the sentence,
offering Strawberry yet another chance. He came back, promising he had
conquered his problems. He and Charisse wrote an inspirational book,
"Recovering Life," and went on a book tour last winter. He was a hero. And
then he succumbed to cocaine, again.

Nobody Is Bulletproof

To say that someone doesn't deserve another chance at redemption--that
stumps me. History is loaded with examples of people who screwed up big
time, but who nonetheless got another shot at starting over.

- --Charisse Strawberry, "Recovering Life"

Darryl and I were the spokesmen for second chances.

- --Dwight Gooden, in his autobiography, "Heat"

Second chances. Third chances. Fourth. Darryl Strawberry is not the only
one to be given a new life. Howe, the former Dodgers and Yankees pitcher,
holds the record - he was given seven new starts, despite being busted for
cocaine over and over again. There are so many names that can be mentioned:
Micheal Ray Richardson. Lawrence Taylor. Manley. Gooden.

Gooden is pitching for the Houston Astros now, in his fifth year, he says,
of being clean and sober. He came up with Strawberry in the Mets' system,
visited Smithers a few years before Strawberry did, visited Betty Ford a
year afterward. For Gooden, there was a "bottom" - a moment in 1994, after
he'd tested positive for cocaine, been suspended from baseball, tested
positive again, been suspended for an entire season, collapsed into total
addiction, missed his own daughter's birthday party in a drug-induced haze.
He found himself in his St. Petersburg home holding a gun to his head when
his wife, Monica, walked in the door. He thought his life was over.

"I can tell you this about Darryl," Gooden says now, as he drives from a
spring training appearance in Winter Haven back to Tampa to see his younger
daughter appear in her first softball game. "I'm sure that when he left his
home that day, he didn't say, 'I'm going to get high.' But somewhere along
the way, something happens to make you do it. And when it does, he wasn't
thinking, 'I have a [mandatory drug] test in two days.' That doesn't hit
until the next morning. When it's too late."

Too late, or maybe not too late. Like Strawberry, Gooden got another chance
with the Yankees. He pitched a no-hitter in 1996, was a member of the best
franchise in baseball. He got his life back. He's grateful, and he refuses
to begrudge anyone else that opportunity, no matter what he thinks of
Strawberry's inability to confront what Gooden refers to as "the trigger"
to his problems.

"I don't think there should be a number set on the chances anyone gets,"
Gooden says. "You should be allowed to make a living, take care of your
family. But should there be a punishment? Yes."

Manley is different. He says he needed to go to jail - which is where he
wound up in July 1995 - in order to straighten out a life defined by two
things: the NFL and his cocaine addiction. Manley was in Betty Ford with
Strawberry in 1994. He has lived a life, he says, so much like
Strawberry's, in a world where someone is always ready to pick you up and
put you back on your feet. And he is here to say it is a crock.

"People have a lot of compassion for a person who is mentally and medically
ill - as Strawberry is with the cancer - and so the whole country is
rallying behind him, and it's easy to get caught up, to feel self-pity and
believe all these caretakers," Manley says from a law office in Houston,
where he has held down a job as a paralegal for 12 months now. "What
Strawberry has to realize - what I had to realize - is that I am not the
number that is on my back. I thought I was bigger than life, and I had
radio shows and television shows and the contracts and so many people
enabling me on the way.

"And the problem is," Manley continues, "none of that helped me and none of
that helps Darryl Strawberry. What that does is keep Strawberry into his
addiction. He thinks he's bulletproof. So did I. But we're not."

'If He Wasn't a Baseball Player ... '

Last week, Strawberry went back to rehab, entering an undisclosed treatment
center here in Florida. A family friend says he is not even thinking about
his baseball future. But baseball is thinking about him. In Newark, Cerone,
who has known Strawberry for years, is not dishonest about his - and other
people's - interest.

"Let's not fool ourselves," he says. "He can hit a baseball as good as
anybody. If he wasn't a baseball player, we wouldn't be talking about this,
and he wouldn't have gotten three or four more chances."

That said, Cerone argues that baseball has done Strawberry's life good.
"When he's there, when he's around the league, he's the happiest you ever
see him." Some point out that Strawberry's major downfalls have almost
always come during the offseason. This failed drug test came on Jan. 19.

These are the arguments for letting Strawberry back into the game, for
giving him the framework to rebuild his life. It is a common argument in
sports. When college football star Lawrence Phillips dragged his girlfriend
down a staircase by her hair, in a not-uncharacteristic bout of violence,
those close to him argued that he should not be suspended from the
University of Nebraska because, as his high school coach and mentor put it,
"football is the only thing saving him from the streets. He needs the
game." Those on the other side argued that football's violent nature only
fed Phillips's problem. Phillips came back after a minor suspension, was
drafted by the pros and went on to make a mess of his every opportunity,
getting dumped by team after team.

Then there is John Lucas, a former abuser who has turned his life around,
and has made it his mission to help as many athletes as possible. He's now
an assistant coach with the Denver Nuggets, a man who preaches second
chances, who constantly reminds listeners that, for addicts, one clean day
is an accomplishment.

In our world, where, as Cone put it, "people are so much more understanding
and accepting of addiction as a disease than they were 10 years ago," there
are few who would argue with that. Even McCarver, who is more hard-line,
agrees that Strawberry is suffering from a disease. What he doesn't agree
with is the way baseball confronts that disease.

"I'm tired," he says, "of hearing that it's unfortunate or sad. Sports has
insulated athletes with the language it uses to address their problems and
[those problems'] connection with sports."

But even McCarver has a soft spot for Strawberry.

'He's Human, Just Like Us'

In the clubhouse at Legends Field, the Yankees' spring training home, Cone
is trying to explain why everyone loves Strawberry so much. Perhaps it is
the smile. The gentle affection. The way he takes to the younger players,
like Derek Jeter, who so admires Strawberry he wrote the foreword to his
book. Jeter is almost the antithesis of Strawberry - a guy who grew up with
a good family environment, who has lived an exemplary life on and off the
field, who currently serves as one of major league baseball's best
ambassadors. Smart, attractive, extremely talented, and never in trouble
with drugs or the law in his lifetime.

And he's not the one that the boys and girls in Jordan Park idolize.

In an office at the Southside Boys and Girls Club, Lavender is making the
case that the "real" heroes in this world are guys like Michael Boykins,
who helps run this club, a guy who grew up in this neighborhood and has
stayed here to try to make a difference. In the same breath, though,
Lavender is talking about Strawberry, about how he touched the kids here,
about how they will welcome him back. About how he is an inspiration to
these kids, no matter his failings. Boykins is trying to help.

"Derek may be their ambition," Lavender says, "but Darryl is their soul."

Boykins tries to help the explanation. "The kids, they identify with
Darryl," he says.

Twelve-year-old Nikiara does not disagree. She lives with her mother and
older brother, has never seen her dad. She knows people on her block who
struggle with addiction. She wants to grow up to be either a track star or
a singer. She idolizes Lauryn Hill and her mother. As for Strawberry? She
wants to see him again.

"I understand," she says, "because he's just a man who needs help. Just
because he's an athlete, just because he's, like, famous and stuff, that
doesn't make him any more or less than anyone here. He's human, just like
us. That's why you have to give him another chance."