L.A.’s Smog Is Like Breath of Fresh Air to Strawberry

Darryl Strawberry looked like a guy who just caught the last lifeboat off the Titanic. Or who crawled ashore on a desert island and found a girl in a sarong waiting on the beach. A freed hostage.

In New York, he feels he got what most tourists get--a mugging.

In L.A., he gets $20 1/4 million, the most forgiving fans in the universe and a mean average temperature of 76 degrees with a windchill factor of 70.

There isn’t much evidence New York put up much of a fight to keep him. The general manager took to the airways to announce he didn’t think Darryl Strawberry was worth $5 million a year, which might be true enough but it violates the first tenet of show business: Never knock the product.

It’s hard to get down to New York’s thinking in this matter. I mean, here is a town that lost the Dodgers and the Giants to California and thus, in effect, lost Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale and Willie Mays, to say nothing of Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider and Gil Hodges. What’s next, the Empire State Building? New York has sprung a leak.

Of course, when you buy anything on Broadway, it’s advisable to bite it first or carry a jeweler’s loupe. And beware of the guy carrying the deed to the Brooklyn Bridge in his pocket.

But Darryl Strawberry doesn’t look like something that will turn green on your wrist before you get it home. This buy really can peel the vegetables.

First of all, a case could be made that Darryl Strawberry is the most exciting player in the game today. Jose Canseco might demur but Strawberry at bat in a pressure situation is the stuff of drama, the kind of scenario that made baseball great. Poetry. Casey at the bat.

To begin with, there’s that imposing figure. Darryl looks like 35 homers and 100 runs batted in just standing there waggling the bat. He’s as tall as a basketball forward, as slim as a one-iron and he has the most gorgeous swing this side of Duke Snider’s. He’s like a painting at the plate.

He makes a pitcher sweat. He makes the other manager start to fidget around nervously in his seat and look anxiously at the bullpen.

Sure, he strikes out a lot, 100 times-plus a year. So did Babe Ruth. So does Jose Canseco. A nice clean strikeout is not all that bad. Sometimes it kills a rally--but not the way a double play does.

Strawberry also drives in 100 runs a year, hits 30 or more homers, steals 25-30 bases, walks 70-80 times and scores 90-100 runs.

How can New York let that go with a shrug?

It’s not a signing, it’s a heist. Darryl Strawberry is 28. He’s just beginning to learn how to hit the curveball and to recognize when it might be coming.

New York is throwing away in mid-career a player who has hit 252 home runs already, who has 1,025 hits, 187 of them doubles, and who has driven in 733 runs.

Somebody goofed.

Or did they? You listen to Darryl Strawberry in his news conference the other day and you come away with the impression the only way New York could have kept Darryl Strawberry was if L.A. dropped out of the league--or Peter O’Malley dropped out of the bidding.

New York, which is a nice place to visit but you wouldn’t want to play there, had become Devil’s Island to him. You had the impression Darryl was digging a tunnel out under the barbed wire for a long time, and that he was just waiting for the guards to look the other way before he’d go over or under the wall and get out even if he had to swim through shark-infested waters.

It was not a move, it was a bustout. If you closed your eyes, you could picture Darryl running through the swamps, bloodhounds baying in pursuit. Little Liza crossing the ice to freedom. He just looked around him, blissfully murmuring that it was an eight-year dream come true.

Well, in the words of the old Durante song, we know darn well he can do without Broadway but can Broadway do without him?

Probably not. The Mets will almost surely be a second-rate power without him. But will the Dodgers become first rate?

If any ballplayer today can be said to be worth $20 million, Darryl Strawberry would seem to be that player. If Strawberry’s next eight years match or exceed his first eight--and that would seem to be the way to bet--you are talking Hall of Fame numbers.

In addition to the putative 500-plus homers, you are talking of a hit-to-RBI ratio that borders on leaving you incredulous. His 733 ribbies to 1,025 hits is perfectly astonishing when you consider the greatest RBI man in history, Henry Aaron, had 2,297 runs batted in on 3,771 hits. This is Dangerous Darryl. Darryl goes for the knockout.

As his ex-manager Davey Johnson once said when someone remarked “He don’t hit much for average,” “He don’t have to.”

Even the name helps. Darryl Strawberry is not your basic blue-collar baseball name. It’s not Chuck Klein or Eddie Collins or Jim Rice. The game makes the name but Strawberry adds flavor to it. He’d have to be twice as good if his name were Bill Smith. Even a Jackson has to be Reggie or Shoeless Joe. Every tabloid headline writer in New York today must be holding his head today. They’ll miss him more than the Mets.

In a sporting era when, for your $20 million, you can buy a gold brick, or a goldbricker, Strawberry does not seem apt to send his buyers howling to the Better Business Bureau. And it’s for sure Darryl will play his best. He doesn’t want to get deported.

As someone said when asked if he thought Darryl Strawberry would get booed when he shows up in Shea Stadium in a Dodger uniform, “Why not? They booed him when he showed up in a Mets uniform.”

Will he get booed at home in a Dodger uniform? Probably not. Booing in L.A. is like honking your horn. Only tourists do it.

Anyway, Darryl must feel like the Count of Monte Cristo or those guys who put to sea off Alcatraz. Now that he’s off that rock, it’s all Strawberry and cream.