News

Being Darryl Strawberry

Continued from page 2

Throughout it all, Strawberry's star still flickers. With his ever-graceful figure and easy smile, he remains one of the most recognizable athletes ever to put on a uniform — be it Mets blue or prison orange. At Church on the Rock, congregation members are known to interrupt his worship to shake his hand.

Though he's helped out the Mets in spring training camps in Port St. Lucie, Florida, for the past few years, Strawberry has pretty much turned his back on baseball. He went to the Yankees fantasy camp in January, in large part to hit up well-heeled attendees for donations to his recently established autism foundation.

"It was something that was birthed in us because of our faith in God," he says of his Darryl Strawberry Foundation. "The Bible tells you: 'to whom much is given, much is required.' Most people thought my calling was baseball, but it wasn't. That's just what I did. But my wife and I have a great vision in our life — to know the suffering of autistic kids. And we're fulfilling it."

Tracy Boulware says they were inspired to start the nonprofit organization by friends with autistic children. They expect to raise more than a half-million dollars by the end of next year for their benefactor, the Center for Autism Education in O'Fallon.

A churchgoer since boyhood in LA's gritty Crenshaw neighborhood, Strawberry embraced evangelical Christianity in 1991. Today he approaches religion with a passion once reserved for chasing down fly balls and throwing back cans of beer.

He attends Church on the Rock twice a week, reads the Bible to kids confined in a Troy juvenile detention center and trades text messages with Pastor Blunt to stay abreast of church happenings.

It's clear that Blunt, whose sermons often resemble self-help seminars and tread heavily on the theme of addiction, is saying exactly what Strawberry needs to hear.

"Work is a four-letter word, but it's not a dirty word. If it was easy, anyone could do it," the shaggy-haired preacher said at a recent service, eliciting an 'amen' from Strawberry. "God has a plan for your life, and the devil has a plan for your life."

Darryl Strawberry and Tracy Boulware huddle together on this winter day in a corner booth at a Culpeppers restaurant in O'Fallon. "All their food here is good," notes Tracy, a tall blonde who seems to wear a perpetual smile. A few patrons notice that Strawberry is in the house, but no one bothers him for an autograph.

Privacy is central to the couple's recovery lifestyle these days, which is why they declined to meet for interviews at their O'Fallon home — or, at least, that's why Tracy balked. She appears to run the show, acting as both Strawberry's caretaker and, for the preparation of this article, stage manager. She refuses to let a reporter talk to her husband directly over the phone.

Strawberry says he prefers his relative isolation, and that he rarely sees his old teammates, other than at an odd charity event or occasional team reunion. "I don't want them [to visit]," he says. "I'm here for a purpose. I'm here because I love God, and I've been called to do great things in the ministry."

"He's a man on a mission, and a man on a mission doesn't have time to be on a golf course playing with a bunch of millionaires," sums up Ray Negron, a special assistant to George Steinbrenner who frequently works with Strawberry on charity events.

Despite two bouts with colon cancer — the second of which cost him a kidney — Strawberry still looks fit enough to go extra innings, even though he claims he hasn't worked out in six years. A cross pendant dangles above his hooded sweatshirt. His four world-championship rings are absent from his fingers.

While the Strawberrys pay tribute to God in nearly every other sentence, it is Tracy who tries to convert people she barely knows. She spent a good fifteen minutes trying to win this reporter over to Jesus — until Strawberry gave her a dirty look. Often, in the midst of his wife's religious diatribes, he looks distracted.

Most of the time, however, he seems comfortable and at peace, choosing his words carefully and offering an occasional belly laugh.

Drowning glass after glass of raspberry iced tea, Strawberry says he spends most of his days at the couple's O'Fallon home, praying, reading his Bible and watching Christian stations on satellite television. Of course, if his oldest son's University of Maryland basketball games are on, he'll flip the channel.

Tracy no longer sells real estate, and instead devotes her full energies to the autism foundation and scheduling her husband's appointments. The pair live off of what remains of Strawberry's $30 million in career baseball earnings. Not long ago, Strawberry gave away a house, a Rolex and his luxury cars to friends and family.

"I got so tired of it all, because it wasn't important," he says. "It's not who I am. I live a simple life now; I'm a simple man."

But he adds that he has as much money as he needs and maintains trust funds for the five children with whom he stays in touch. (He says he's never met a sixth child, Eugene Michael Strawberry, born to a Clayton woman named Lisa Clayton. She successfully sued him for paternity in 1989.)

He says he remains on good terms with both of his ex-wives, despite the domestic-abuse allegations that marred both relationships. "They look at my life today, and they see I'm a different person. We were never on bad terms. It just didn't work for me. I had to move on."

On a January evening, he's just returned from Los Angeles, where he attended the funeral of Chris Brown, a high-school teammate and former big-leaguer who died from injuries suffered when his house burned down. Obituaries remembered Brown the same way Strawberry's will likely remember him — as a player of untold promise.

Early in his big-league career, Strawberry took to the bottle, egged on by his notoriously rowdy Mets teammates, who popped greenies and kept a brew-stocked fridge in the clubhouse.

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
Next Page »