A FAIR VERDICT ON STRAWBERRY

There is something terribly sad about Darryl Strawberry. He is by all
accounts a personable man with a nimble sense of humor. He is also, even
now, a formidable baseball player, blessed with coordination, power and one
of the smoothest swings in the game. He came up with the New York Mets in
1983 and drew comparisons to the young Ted Williams. He hit 280 home runs
before he was 30, but has hit only 55 since then - partly because he has
had a bad back, as well as colon cancer in 1998, but partly because of his
drinking and drug habits. Yesterday, a little over five weeks after he
tested positive for cocaine, Major League Baseball gave him his third
drug-related suspension since 1995, this time for a full year. Considering
his age, 38 this month, we may have seen the last of Strawberry in a major
league uniform.

The one-year ban is fair and it may eventually help Strawberry, even save
him, in much the same way that a similar suspension helped Dwight Gooden, a
teammate of Strawberry's on the 1986 World Champion Mets. There are those
who argue that Strawberry's ban is too severe, that another temporary
suspension would have been sufficient, that he cannot live without
baseball. But baseball has been down this road with Strawberry before. All
sorts of people, notably the Yankees' George Steinbrenner, have given him
second and third chances.

These arguments also misread the nature of addiction and the best way to
deal with it. Strawberry is in rather serious denial about lots of things,
drugs and booze included. He is deeply in debt to the I.R.S. and is still
planning to build an expensive new house in Florida. He has four children,
with a fifth on the way. But these obligations have not dissuaded him from
taking drugs any more than playing baseball has. The truth is that baseball
has been an enabler in Strawberry's addiction, paying him a handsome salary
and keeping him in the limelight but also - and this is the key point -
shielding him from the need to confront the truth of his addiction.

Bud Selig, the commissioner of baseball, has not given Darryl Strawberry a
bum deal. He may actually have given him a fair shot at life.