Strawberry Home--and Finally at Peace

There are only four pieces of furniture in Darryl Strawberry’s living room, not including the big cardboard boxes in which the stereo-component system arrived. They linger in a prominent spot near a sliding-glass door. Otherwise, there is only a glass coffee table, a sectional sofa, a floor-model television and a stereo-component system.

The walls are virtually bare, except for a clock and a small landscape painting, the kind you might find in a roadside motel room. An ironing board and iron have been left in the doorway of one of the three bedrooms.

The view from the balcony takes in another red-brick apartment building across the parking lot. The television is on with the sound turned down and the stereo is tuned to a station playing dance music. But you still can hear the traffic and the occasional horn blowing only half a block away on Ventura Boulevard, a busy stretch of gas stations, strip malls, low-rise office buildings and fast-food joints.

This is home for the highest-paid player in baseball this year. An apartment complex in Encino, about 20 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. “A nice Jewish neighborhood,” Strawberry said.

Strawberry, in bare feet, fashionably torn blue jeans and a T-shirt, stretches out on the sofa and says he knows he could have “some great big house,” but that “I have what I need.”

More than two-thirds through his first season with the Los Angeles Dodgers -- his first season playing in his hometown -- Strawberry is living what for him is the life of a minimalist. He has scaled down most everything: his circle of friends, his marriage, his drinking, his fits of anger and, as it has turned out, his home runs, too.

Cincinnati Reds’ outfielder Eric Davis, Strawberry’s close friend since childhood, warned that it’s “easy to lose your focus” when you are playing in your hometown and dealing with the distractions of friends and family. But Strawberry, who grew up in a lower-middle-class section of the city, has come home to a different life. As a born-again Christian, he is a changed man. A better man, he says.

Strawberry is donating 10 percent of his earnings to his church, Root of David Christian Center in Encino. The tithing works out to more than $2 million over the next five years from his baseball salary alone, including $380,000 this year.

Strawberry lives alone. He is estranged from his wife, Lisa, who lives in their house only 10 minutes away. When asked about divorce proceedings, he said, “We’re going in that direction. She would like to have a relationship. (But) when you have a believer and non-believer, that’s a marriage that can’t work.”

His mother, Ruby, lives near San Bernardino, more than an hour away. She hasn’t seen his new place yet. By the appearance of his apartment and the hours and company that he keeps, Strawberry has found peace in his life. He spends his days watching television, listening to music, reading the Bible, or taking his two children, Darryl Jr., 6, and Diamond, 3, to amusement parks, arcades or playgrounds.

“I love to play with them on the swings,” he said. “We usually end up at 7-Eleven to get Slurpees.”

He is asked if he ever gets lonely, an estranged husband and father living in a bachelor’s apartment, and he said, “Not anymore. I’m in the presence of God. God never leaves you empty. I think loneliness is simply thinking about all the things you could have been doing. That’s not to say you don’t get depressed. Everyone gets down. When that happens to me, I just pray about it.”

One Friday in January, Ruby Strawberry came home and her daughter, Regina, had left a message.

“Darryl called,” Regina said. “He said, ‘Tell mom I’m going to get my life together. She’ll know.”’

“I shouted, ‘Praise the Lord!”’ Ruby said. “I knew he wouldn’t be the same again.”

She knew exactly where he was going: a Morris Cerullo evangelistic world conference at Anaheim Convention Center, south of Los Angeles in Orange County.

He had been baptized in 1983, the same year Ruby was born again. But, Ruby said, “After that, nothing else happened. He didn’t go to church, didn’t read the Bible. I think the basics were there, but he let his faith lay dormant all those years.”

Then Darryl began regularly attending church services when he returned home from New York after last baseball season. “I started listening to what the pastor said. I started to hear the word. I wanted that same joy,” he said. “The more you go, the more you get. I wanted more.”

When Strawberry’s religious experience became public, many people, including his former teammates with the Mets, scoffed at it. One of them said, “How long will it last? Until the first road trip.”

With the Mets, Strawberry lived a combustible life. There were flare-ups on and off the field. Every time one fire appeared out, another would burst into flames.

“Was it as bad as people thought? No,” Ruby said. “It was even than that. I think there was a lot of anger inside Darryl. With a person like him, people expect you to be a certain way. He got caught up in being what other people expected instead of what he was.”

Darryl says the marriage is over for good. There is no escaping their religious difference, he says. He is seeing another woman. “She works and goes to school,” Darryl said. “She’s Catholic.”

His Louis Vuitton briefcase is stocked with religious literature and, of course, the Bible. He reads it the way his teammates scour the sports pages.

“People didn’t want to believe it at first, but it’s genuine,” Los Angeles teammate Bob Ojeda said.

His closest friends on the team are Brett Butler, Gary Carter and Orel Hershiser, all born-again Christians. Butler flatly acknowledges that the Dodgers signed him, in part, to counsel Strawberry. He has worked at that task all year, once pulling him aside in the outfield during a pitching change to tell him to be more aggressive.

“Darryl is in a weeding process,” Butler said. “It takes time. God is not a good-luck charm.”

Strawberry bought season tickets for his family, and his daily pass list normally runs only to about 10 people.

“There haven’t been any distractions,” Strawberry said. “It was worse in New York. I have a small group of friends now. My friends are believers, too. I don’t go out much. When I went to New York, I stayed in my room for four days. Guys said to me, ‘Darryl, this is New York. Aren’t you going out?’

“I know people in New York think of me in a different way,” he said. “It’s hard for them to understand. I’ve done it all. The drinking, the women, the partying, the good times. I was living a life of the world, and it has nothing to offer me anymore. It’s good to know I’m far from that. You see things differently when you walk with the Lord. Your life changes. Things of this world don’t matter anymore.”