NEW YORK — Darryl Strawberry stood on the grass at Citi Field as his No. 18 was being retired and addressed the New York Mets fans he had abandoned 34 years earlier.
“I want to say this from the bottom of my heart, I’m sorry I left you,” Strawberry said, his voice slowing down. “I am deeply, deeply sorry for leaving you. in front of fans bigger than you.”
Fans of the long-suffering team, which hasn’t won the World Series since Strawberry’s Mets in 1986, responded with a loud ovation, the emotional high point of their 16-minute speech before Saturday’s game against Arizona.
The No. 18 strawberry was cut into the center field grass and the home run apple was turned into a home run strawberry. The speaker system played “Strawberry Fields Forever” by the Beatles. Former teammates and family members sat on folding chairs on the infield.
He wasn’t sure if he could survive to this day. The Mets announced last August that they would retire Strawberry’s number this year along with Dwight Gooden’s number 16. heart attack on March 11one day before his 62nd birthday, and ended up at SSM Health St. Joseph Hospital in Lake St. Joseph.
“When I came out of surgery, my heart was at 32 percent,” he said.
Strawberry, who travels as a minister for more than half of each year, credits his wife Tracy with taking him to the hospital and saving his life.
“I was climbing and I was tired,” he said. “I came home for lunch and she said, ‘OK, that’s it. We’re out of here. And I didn’t want to go. I told her I would be fine and she said, ‘No, we’re going.'”
Strawberry was an eight-time All-Star, including seven during his time with the Mets from 1983-90. He hit .259 with 335 home runs, 1,000 RBIs and 221 stolen bases in 17 seasons.
First selected by the Mets in the 1980 amateur draft, he was unable to find a permanent home following his departure from Shea Stadium. He played three seasons for the Los Angeles Dodgers, one for San Francisco and five for the New York Yankees.
His career would have been much better had he not fallen prey to the alcohol and drugs that surrounded baseball stars in 1980s New York nightlife. He said Mookie Wilson, among the teammates present, and the late Gary Carter were examples he should have followed.
“I wanted to be what they were, not just a guy playing baseball, wearing the uniform,” Strawberry said during a pre-ceremony. Press conference. “I wanted to be that kind of man. I just didn’t have the courage to do what they were doing at the time they were doing it, and that means a lot to me because they drank milk and I drank alcohol.”
Strawberry wore a blue suit with a dark blue tie and a strawberry shake was in front of him as part of a promotion. He addressed his decision to leave the Mets after the 1990 season and sign a five-year contract with his hometown Dodgers. He attributed the move to “a broken relationship with the board and them saying, well, he needs to have a good season.”
“Well, you can’t say that to a ghetto kid because it doesn’t mean anything to us,” he said. “That means I’m going to show you and that’s what I had to do that free agent year.”
Strawberry recalled that he wore number 8 in high school, but it was unavailable when he arrived in New York in 1983 because of Ronn Reynolds. Strawberry wanted to keep an 8, so he chose 18.
“There was no reason to trade it, because if I had traded it, Carter had come, he would have taken it to me anyway,” Strawberry said.
Gooden, who spoke for three minutes when his number was withdrawn on April 14was by Strawberry’s side, as always.
“Doc was crazier than I was,” Strawberry recalls, a reference to his friend’s struggles with sobriety.
Gooden’s response to this was, “I don’t know about that. I learned from him,” he said with a laugh.
Mets owner Steve Cohen has pushed for the team to pay more attention to its past since purchasing the franchise before the 2021 season. David Wright’s No. 5 seems likely at some point in the future.
“It’s a reminder of those moments in Mets history and the people involved that give you a kind of hope for the future that this is possible,” Cohen said.
Deeply grateful to have made it to this day, Strawberry said his upbringing led him to his life’s struggles.
“Coming from a broken place kept me broken inside as a person, and I could never fulfill the happiness of what I was doing for myself when I was having success,” he said. “I came from a dysfunctional home and my father was a raging alcoholic and told me I would never amount to anything.”
“I don’t regret what happened to me because it made me the man I am today and I’m grateful for every challenge I had to face and every circumstance I had to go through,” he added, “because it simply just made me move forward to try to be a better man than my father was, and I think I succeeded. I think I achieved that.”
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