Strawberry Stretches Single Appearance Into a Homer

I’m not a fan of Darryl Strawberry, a byproduct of too many years rooting against his old team, the Mets, and of having no affinity for his new team, the Dodgers. Five million bucks a year for this guy? Ouch.

I suspect the baseball public--even Dodger fans--will always have a love-hate relationship with him too, just because of the way Darryl goes about being Darryl. He simply breaks your heart too much on the ball field for any sane person to fall completely in love with him.

But it wasn’t Strawberry, No. 44 and playing right field, who came Saturday to Orange County. It was Strawberry the man and, inseparable from that, Strawberry the magnet.

Let’s face it, we all contribute to turning athletes and movie stars into demigods. We pay them enormous sums of money for entertaining us, then cluck our tongues when they hire entourages or when they seem petulant or overbearing.

So it wasn’t surprising Saturday when Strawberry showed up 75 minutes late for an autograph-signing session in conjunction with a baseball card show at Huntington Beach High School. And it wasn’t unusual that one of the boosters, speaking to the crowd over a microphone, made Strawberry’s approach to the area sound as titanic an event as the return of the space shuttle. “We’re expecting him here shortly. . . . He’s on surface streets, he’s five minutes away! . . . He’s on campus! . . . Are we ready? He’s right around the corner!”

Scheduled to sign autographs from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m., Strawberry arrived to a polite reception and even a sprinkling of boos. More than 2,000 people had showed up, sponsors said, about half of them having paid $8 to get a personalized Strawberry autograph.

“It’s hard to comprehend how we put these people up on a pedestal,” says Principal Jim Staunton, himself a sports fan. As an educator, he’s concerned about kids who think they can emulate Strawberry’s athletic success and base their hopes for a successful future on that highly unlikely chance.

And then, the afternoon unfolds and you watch Strawberry sign 1,000 autographs. You watch him pose for pictures with little kids and hold babies while their parents photograph them. You talk to various people and learn some interesting things.

Such as the $8 ticket is probably less than half what a player of Strawberry’s stature could have commanded. Such as the booster club may generate thousands of dollars from his appearance. Such as Strawberry’s share will either go entirely or in large part to the Police Athletic League in Los Angeles, of which his older brother, Michael, is a director. Such as Strawberry ends up signing all the autographs, eventually staying 30 to 45 minutes longer than his scheduled three-hour stint. Such as he then goes into a private room with the Huntington Beach High baseball team and signs individual items for every player on the team.

You start thinking about the drawing power of a Darryl Strawberry. “Every person who’s here is here for Strawberry,” card show dealer Darryl Fried says. “If Strawberry was not here personally, you’d have three, four hundred people, probably.”

You realize what that will mean to a high school sports program that is strapped for money.

You realize that nobody arranged press coverage. You realize that Strawberry would have been here without publicity, and you wonder how many other things he does in a year that the public doesn’t know about.

You watch his demeanor. Ballplayers are notorious for being downright sullen at card shows.

“He’s still in a good mood,” says Rick Shima of Santa Ana, who’s near the end of the line.

“Most of the superstars at shows like this, by the end of the day, they sign their name with a letter and a straight line and a letter and a straight line,” says Shima, who’s been to card shows before. “Guys like Darryl, it’s neat to say something to them, because they’ll talk back to you. I asked him how his walk was going, meaning his walk with the Lord, and he said it’s going great, man.”

Strawberry’s brother is 31. I ask him whether Strawberry likes events like this. “It’s not so much a matter of coming out and letting people see him. He doesn’t need that,” he says. “That’s not the reason.”

He says Darryl does most of his charity work for youth groups but had noted that “he had never done anything out here” in Orange County. Because a Huntington Beach booster knows Michael Strawberry, Darryl agreed to do the Huntington Beach event.

When the afternoon was over and Strawberry was driving off with his brother, I was on campus and looking for directions to the parking lot.

One of the students pointed the way, then said, “Hey, you missed the Straw man.”

“No, I didn’t,” I said. “I saw him.”

Maybe even a little differently than before.