“We hauled around more Bud than the Clydesdales”

Screw the Joe Torre, Darryl Strawberry is the author of the book I most want to read this April:

he New York Post reports the one-time baseball prodigy has a book due out in April and that “Straw: Finding My Way” will detail the boozing, skirt-chasing New York Mets of the mid-1980s.

“We were the boys of summer. The drunk, speed-freak, sneaking-a-smoke boys of summer,” Strawberry writes. “(An) infamous rolling frat party . . . drinking, drugs, fights, gambling, groupies.”

Strawberry’s teammates from the 1986 championship team included big names such as Keith Hernandez, Dwight Gooden, Lee Mazzilli, Ron Darling, Lenny Dykstra, Ray Knight and Mookie Wilson.

Strawberry says beer “was the foundation of our alcoholic lifestyle. We hauled around more Bud than the Clydesdales. The beer was just to get the party started and maybe take the edge off the speed and coke.”

I have no idea if it will be a good book or not, but I know one thing: Strawberry’s story of alcoholism and hard drug use derailing the competitiveness of a fabulous team and a number of fabulous young talents will not be judged nearly as harshly as the story of PEDs used in the service of enhancing the competitiveness of more recent players. Booze, coke and speed are colorful, we will be told. Steroids are the tool of evil, godless cheaters.


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The Common Man
15 years ago

I hope he tells us what went wrong with Howard Johnson in ‘88 and ‘90.  Was he doing more or less blow in those seasons? 

By the way, given the financial context he’s playing in, is Darryl Strawberry going to the Dodgers the worst free agent signing ever?

http://www.the-common-man.com

Jason @ IIATMS
15 years ago

That quote goes in the pantheon of great quotes.

Rob
15 years ago

One advantage that the booze, coke, and speed have over steroids is the pale, clear light of time.  As I recall, no one was talking about how “colorful” that drug abuse was at the time.  And considering the continued tut-tutting that Tim Raines gets over the story behind his head-first slides, I’m not sure that the drug angle has quite reached the levels of the Babe’s boozing and womanizing.

But I will point out that alcohol abuse is, has always been, and probably always will be treated much differently than any level of drug abuse.

Sabertooth
15 years ago

So Darryl Strawberry is so hard up for cash that he’s selling out his former teammates, after letting them down for years with his character deficiencies.  Once a lowlife tool, always a lowlife tool.

GWB
15 years ago

What’s the story behind the Tim Raines head first slides? Haven’t heard that one.

Dodgerblue
15 years ago

Shyster,

I saw this stuff firsthand. Me and some friends stayed in the same hotel as the Mets did when they were in Philly (when Gregg Jeffries was a rookie and still underage). I won’t name them, but those guys had groupies all over that hotel. Saw Darryl stroll into the hotel around 3am for a 1pm Sunday game….nice.

Craig Calcaterra
15 years ago

GWB:  the story goes (maybe from Raines himself) that he used to slide head first because he kept a little vial of cocaine in his back pocket of his uniform and he didn’t want to break it.

I have heard it repeated many times, but I’m not certain of it’s provenance.

studes
15 years ago

If you want stories about the 1986 Mets, I HIGHLY recommend this book.

Chris H.
15 years ago

While you are no doubt correct about how these revelations will be received relative to the various PED revelations, I nonetheless must insist that your argument is something of a Straw Man.

(I’m so sorry.)

bigcatasroma
15 years ago

*THIS* is what we expect of our ballplayers.  Not the tanned, pretty-boy, muscle-bound ‘roid heads like Rodriguez and Bonds.  *THIS* is why fans, and clubs, condemn ‘roids while turning a blind eye to people like Straw (and signing him, as long as he isn’t in jail).  There is a realness to it; fallen stars of common error are more forgivable then stars that do ‘riods.

Chris H.
15 years ago

One more bad pun will be the Straw that broke the camel’s back.

(I thought about extending the pun with Cole Hamels’ name, but couldn’t find a way to make it work without seeming forced.)

Jason B
15 years ago

@ Chris H: *Snicker*

We could do some polling here to see how people feel about these transgressions, vis-a-vis the recent steroids revelations and allegations. Ya know, take a Straw poll…