Here's a really long feature article from St. Louis' free entertainment newspaper, The Riverfront Times -
Baseball's bad boy is now doing the Lord's work in O'Fallon, Missouri. How long will that last?
Selected quotes:
The baseball diamond was his oyster, and in 1980 the New York Mets made him the first overall pick in the draft. The only person not impressed with his athletic prowess, it seems, was his father, an alcoholic who abandoned the family when Strawberry was twelve.
"When I was a kid, my dad beat the crap out of me, told me I would never be nothing," remembers Strawberry. "Those scars stay with you."
By 1995 Strawberry's stock had reached an all-time low. When no major league club expressed any interest in him, he was forced to turn to an independent minor league outfit, the St. Paul Saints, from whom he earned $2,000 a month.
But after he blasted tape-measure home run after tape-measure home run during his dues-paying two-month stint in the bush leagues, the Yankees' bombastic owner, George Steinbrenner, decided Strawberry might be ripe — as the Giants wrongly figured — for reclamation.
Nothing made fans and the baseball establishment more anxious to forgive Strawberry's past than his bout with cancer. There wasn't a dry eye in the Bronx clubhouse after manager Joe Torre broke the news to the team before the start of game two. For game three, they wore caps with Strawberry's number, 39, stitched into them.
Letters of support poured in from around the country, and the Yanks eventually went on to sweep the San Diego Padres and win the World Series. "We rallied around him," says Nelson. "We went out and did it for him."
But Strawberry's accumulated goodwill dissipated after his arrest for cocaine and soliciting a prostitute in April 1999.
Though only a .259 career hitter, Strawberry belted 335 home runs and drove in 1,352 runs.
"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...
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.
Strawberry, meanwhile, long ago grew weary of being pegged the black Ted Williams. More recently, he's even grown tired of being Darryl Strawberry. Who among us cares to hear constant reminders of squandered potential?
The Straw Man, perhaps, has at last come to terms with his careless voyage.
"I have no hard feelings about life," he says softly. "Everyone has their own journey to go through. Everyone suffers, and everyone has problems. The real key is trying to get through them."
The whole tamale:
http://rftstl.com/2007-02-21/news/being-darryl-strawberry/
Baseball's bad boy is now doing the Lord's work in O'Fallon, Missouri. How long will that last?
Selected quotes:
The baseball diamond was his oyster, and in 1980 the New York Mets made him the first overall pick in the draft. The only person not impressed with his athletic prowess, it seems, was his father, an alcoholic who abandoned the family when Strawberry was twelve.
"When I was a kid, my dad beat the crap out of me, told me I would never be nothing," remembers Strawberry. "Those scars stay with you."
By 1995 Strawberry's stock had reached an all-time low. When no major league club expressed any interest in him, he was forced to turn to an independent minor league outfit, the St. Paul Saints, from whom he earned $2,000 a month.
But after he blasted tape-measure home run after tape-measure home run during his dues-paying two-month stint in the bush leagues, the Yankees' bombastic owner, George Steinbrenner, decided Strawberry might be ripe — as the Giants wrongly figured — for reclamation.
Nothing made fans and the baseball establishment more anxious to forgive Strawberry's past than his bout with cancer. There wasn't a dry eye in the Bronx clubhouse after manager Joe Torre broke the news to the team before the start of game two. For game three, they wore caps with Strawberry's number, 39, stitched into them.
Letters of support poured in from around the country, and the Yanks eventually went on to sweep the San Diego Padres and win the World Series. "We rallied around him," says Nelson. "We went out and did it for him."
But Strawberry's accumulated goodwill dissipated after his arrest for cocaine and soliciting a prostitute in April 1999.
Though only a .259 career hitter, Strawberry belted 335 home runs and drove in 1,352 runs.
"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...
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.
Strawberry, meanwhile, long ago grew weary of being pegged the black Ted Williams. More recently, he's even grown tired of being Darryl Strawberry. Who among us cares to hear constant reminders of squandered potential?
The Straw Man, perhaps, has at last come to terms with his careless voyage.
"I have no hard feelings about life," he says softly. "Everyone has their own journey to go through. Everyone suffers, and everyone has problems. The real key is trying to get through them."
The whole tamale:
http://rftstl.com/2007-02-21/news/being-darryl-strawberry/