JUPITER, Fla. — Eric Davis and Darryl Strawberry have known each other since they were 10 years old and living in Los Angeles, drawn together the way kids are when they have more athletic talent and deeper passion than the rest of the boys in the neighborhood.
Who was the better athlete, way back when?
“I was the best athlete ever to come out of LA,” Davis answered matter-of-factly yesterday, before the Cardinals’ first full-squad workout of spring training.
Davis, 37, said he was recruited to Fremont High School as a football player, but quit that sport after his sophomore year because of a disagreement with the coach. He said he was such a good basketball player that if he had pursued that sport, he would have made it to the NBA.
“No question,” Davis said. “No question.”
And Darryl, what kind of basketball player was Darryl?
“Darryl was a good inside player,” Davis said. “He wasn’t as phenomenal a basketball player, but he was good. He always wanted to be a baseball player. That’s all he ever wanted to be.”
Until a decision about his fate is handed down by Commissioner Bud Selig, likely today, Strawberry remains a baseball player.
After that, he becomes an ex-baseball player, possibly forever.
Maybe it’s time for Strawberry to just forget about baseball and get on with his life, it was suggested to Davis.
It’s not that simple, Davis said.
“Baseball is his life,” Davis said. “So when you say he should get on with his life, what does that mean?”
It means baseball won’t last forever. He hasn’t straightened himself out as a baseball player and it’s time to address life after baseball. See if that works any better.
Whether Strawberry plays again or is forever an ex-ballplayer, Davis worries about his old friend. Worries and wonders and asks himself why Strawberry hasn’t learned that getting high isn’t the way to go, wonders why Strawberry hasn’t reached that decision.
It’s easy to say Strawberry needs to get on with life after baseball, until Davis stops you by raising the question of if not baseball, then what?
“Your actions on the field are one thing, but off the field, he’s tainted,” Davis said. “There are not too many people who are going to give him an opportunity to make money off the field. That’s what’s sad.”
Selig will come down hard on Strawberry because this will be his third suspension and because Selig firmly believes that baseball players who mess with drugs, unlike plumbers or carpenters or stock traders, damage far more than themselves because of the unavoidable reality they are role models.
This has been the pattern for Strawberry: Flunk a drug test, check into rehabilitation, listen to handlers who tell him to become an anti-drug spokesman urging children to stay off drugs; become a productive baseball player; flunk a drug test; rinse and repeat.
Before last April’s arrest for cocaine possession, Strawberry had rehabilitated his image so thoroughly and could have spent the rest of his life commanding top dollar as a spokesman for some people trying to beat drug addiction, others trying to survive cancer. He was set for life.
That was then. Now his credibility is shot.
“What kid is going to listen to him now?” Davis asked. “If you are a kid listening to him tell you not to do drugs, you’re going to say, ‘How can you tell me not to do something when you continuously do the same thing?’ That would be like a bank robber telling his kid not to steal.”
Better that Derek Jeter tells children to stay off drugs. He has the credibility that comes with innocence. He has chosen not to do drugs and it hasn’t worked out too badly for him.
Strawberry has credibility as a hitter. If he tells an audience how to hit a baseball, that audience should listen. He knows enough baseball to make a good instructor some day, but even if he had the patience and perseverance to perform that less glamorous job, it will be difficult for him to land it now, unless George Steinbrenner wants him.
“He would have to prove to some organization he’s clean before he gets the chance,” Davis said.
Davis, coming off rotator cuff surgery on his left shoulder that might prevent him from opening the season on the active roster, said he first learned of Strawberry’s latest failed drug test from reading the crawler on his screen while watching ESPN2.
“I was hurt, upset, angry,” Davis said. “When is enough enough?”
Pretty much the same way he felt last April, when Strawberry was arrested. The two old friends had just spent the day together filming a segment for ABC’s 20/20, during which they talked about their eerily similar bouts with colon cancer.
“It was just a few days after that that it happened,” Davis said.
It happened again.
“This may be the final straw for Straw,” Davis said.