Home, Not Alone : Davis and Strawberry Walked Together Through Childhood, Took Different Paths to Stardom and Find Themselves Reunited on the Dodgers

In a matter of months, a simple friendship has become a front-page story, a television special, a hot new act.

These two buddies from South-Central Los Angeles have found themselves in a relationship so glittery, it almost appears fake.

Darryl and Eric hugging outside the batting cage. . . . Darryl and Eric working an intricate handshake at home plate. . . . Darryl and Eric engaged in horseplay in a parking lot, laughing amid their gleaming cars and jewelry and extraordinary talent.

Darryl Strawberry and Eric Davis, the Dodgers’ celebrated outfielders, remember that it wasn’t always like this.

They remember when they were the only ones watching.

“People may not realize, Eric really is my best friend,” Strawberry said. “They think it’s a show. It’s no show.”

“Many years together,” Davis said. “Many years walking many streets.”

They remember when, as teen-agers, they played together for three seasons for the Compton Moose, a summer Connie Mack League team.

That was the team that brought them together for the first time, stars from separate high schools and neighborhoods, sharing the isolation that sometimes comes with being gifted.

They remember that during a tournament in Seattle that first summer, because the team had no money, the players stayed in local homes. Strawberry and Davis were assigned to a house with just one extra bed.

A water bed.

“So we spent the week sharing this water bed,” Davis recalled, laughing. “But it was a big water bed.”

They remember during that same trip, breaking away from the rest of the team while watching the Seattle Mariners play the Minnesota Twins.

Strawberry and Davis raced to the visiting clubhouse, accosted Los Angeles product Ken Landreaux and told him they were going to take his job.

“They thought alike, those two cocky kids,” their coach, Earl Brown, said. “They dreamed alike.”

They also remember all those afternoons spent walking the two miles between their modest houses, two kids hanging out in the city, two moving targets.

A drug dealer would yell something at Davis, who wanted to react.

The big arms holding him back were Strawberry’s.

“I remember guys talking a lot of smack, jealous guys,” Strawberry said. “I was there for Eric, telling him it wouldn’t do him any good to go after anybody.”

They remember one day at Gonzalez Park in Compton, before a game, when gang members congregating in the picnic area began shouting at Strawberry.

“Darryl was getting ready to go off on some guy, and Eric stepped between them,” said Reggie Montgomery, a mutual friend and former teammate. “I can’t tell you how many times that happened. Always watching out for each other. Always protecting each other.”

For the last 15 years they have traveled different paths, in different parts of the country, each reaching baseball stardom at a different pace with different rewards.

The only thing that has changed between them is their problems.

When Strawberry was being treated for alcoholism in a New York clinic in 1990, Davis never let more than a couple of days go by without phoning.

“When Darryl was having his off-the-field problems, Eric was always the first one to tell him he was wrong,” Brown said. “Eric has always been the one who was down to earth, the one who took care of business.”

When Davis was in an Oakland hospital for eight days later that year after suffering a torn kidney in the World Series, Strawberry phoned.

“We stick together because we’ve been through everything together,” Strawberry said. “We are both high-profile players in cities where people expected us to do everything. When we didn’t do everything, people have immediately accused us of being drunk or on drugs.

“We’ve had to put up with a lot, and sometimes I think we are the only ones who understand.”

So perhaps it was ironic that late on the night of Nov. 27, when Davis called Strawberry to say he had been traded from the Cincinnati Reds to the Dodgers, Strawberry didn’t understand.

“I said, ‘Darryl, I’m coming home!’ and he just said, ‘Great, see you soon,’ and hung up the phone,” Davis said. “Turns out he had been sick and was sleeping.”

The next morning Strawberry phoned Davis and excitedly said: “When you said you were coming home, did you mean you had been traded here?”

Since then, they have done more than publicly profess that the situation is the answer to a dream. They have acted the part.

They have adjacent lockers at Dodgertown and Dodger Stadium, even though it eventually could cause media gridlock.

They wait for one another after workouts, not so anybody can see, but down the hall or around a corner.

When Strawberry gave his emotional news conference upon the release of his autobiography last week, Davis waited at the back of the room, then escorted him through the reporters to the parking lot.

“A friend is someone you can’t get a grip on unless you have one,” Davis said. “I’ve been there for Darryl when nobody cared about him. I’m going to be there for him now.”

And this season, Strawberry will be needed by Davis, who is clearly at a crossroads.

At 29, in the final year of his contract, Davis has experienced a decrease in batting average, home runs and runs batted in each year since 1989.

He also has experienced a decrease in games played, having been in a personal-low 89 last season while battling kidney problems. Since 1986, he has averaged 124 games a season.

The Dodgers want Davis to forget about last year, forget those other statistics and concentrate on bringing back the player that nearly started his own 40-50 club in 1987.

That year he had 37 home runs, 50 stolen bases and 100 runs batted in.

“He can do that now that he’s come home with me,” Strawberry said. “For once, he’ll have protection in the lineup. For once, he won’t have to be the main man every night. He’ll break out here, you just watch.”

Lou Piniella will be watching. Like many in Cincinnati, the Reds’ manager lost confidence in Davis during his final stormy months there last fall.

By the time Davis left town, boos had replaced the cheers he got for his home run in the first inning against the Oakland Athletics’ Dave Stewart that led the Reds to a 1990 World Series sweep.

“Eric takes great pride in what he does,” Piniella said. “He really wants to be totally healthy every night he takes the field. But to be quite frank, some days you’ve got to go out there when you aren’t quite right.”

Pete Rose, who also managed the Reds, said he wouldn’t be surprised if Davis “had an All-Star and MVP year. He is a great player, and I never would have traded him.”

Even so, Rose issued a warning similar to Piniella’s.

“Eric is a little bit different,” he said. “Somewhere along the line, he realized he could put up numbers in 135 games that other guys put up in 162 games. Eric wants to be just right when he plays, so he’ll take his days off to get healthy.

“I could handle that, because when he played, he played hard. But if Tommy (Lasorda) can’t handle that, they will have problems.”

Davis said he remembers something he learned from Hall of Famer Joe Morgan:

“Joe told me that Sparky (Anderson) used to get on him for just playing in 130 games. . . . Joe said he told Sparky, ‘Would you rather have me playing every game and hitting .270, or playing in 130 games and hitting .325?’ With the kinds of injuries I get, that’s the way I feel.”

Davis, whose injuries usually come from diving or leaping into fences while chasing balls, acknowledged he could have played more in Cincinnati.

“I could have played a lot of times that I didn’t, but if we are in a situation where I can’t run down a ball in center field, what good am I doing the team?” he asked. “You will never hear me make excuses about injuries. I won’t play if it’s going to hurt us.”

Contrary to popular perception, Davis did not suffer many injuries because of Cincinnati’s artificial turf, and the switch to a grass field may not be significant to him.

“I tore up a knee on turf and tore up a kidney on grass,” Davis said. “Maybe grass will improve my longevity, but for the immediate future, I don’t see a big impact.”

The biggest injury Davis suffered in Cincinnati, he says, came from the Reds’ organization. He still remembers being in an Oakland hospital for eight days after their World Series triumph and not hearing from anybody in the front office.

“Nobody called me, not Marge Schott (the owner), not Bob Quinn (general manager), not anybody,” he said. “It wasn’t a matter of someone not leaving a plane ticket. It was a matter of them acting like they didn’t care whether I was dead or alive.”

Of course, there was also the matter of a plane ticket, because Davis needed to charter a special plane to transport him, prone, back to Cincinnati. The trip cost $15,000 and, even though the procedure was approved by the Reds’ team doctor, they initially would not pay the bill.

Even though Schott eventually paid and publicly apologized, Davis still wonders.

“Did you see how everybody in that front office was pointing the finger at everybody else after that?” he said. “Nobody wanted to take the blame for what happened to me. It was too bad.”

Last season Davis felt the pointed fingers from the Riverfront Stadium stands, from which fans harassed him so much he also wondered about them.

“If you look around, you see that no black superstar ends his career there. They all leave,” Davis said. “Look at Joe Morgan. Look at Dave Parker. How about Ken Griffey?”

Davis has patterned his clubhouse demeanor after those three players, clubhouse leaders all. This is where he might help the Dodgers the most.

“Last year there was tension in here. This year this something different, something more stable, more relaxed, and I think Eric already has something to do with it,” Brett Butler said. “Just look at him working with a lot of the guys, passing on information, acting like a true veteran. Anybody can approach him. This is what we need.”

Davis is one of the most serious Dodgers during batting practice, often shouting out make-believe situations between swings and then trying to hit the ball to advance make-believe runners.

He is even more intense during batting-practice games, as the Dodgers learned last week when he exhorted his teammates, “C’mon now, this is what we have worked so hard for!”

From the other side of the cage, Butler laughed and shouted, “C’mon Eric, don’t be so serious.”

The only Dodger who will not give an interview once he steps onto the field, no matter what time of day? Guess.

“Batting practice is a critical time. It’s when you get stuff done you can take into a game,” he said. “I never talk to another player during batting practice unless it is about hitting.”

He even uses his head while running the bases during batting practice. His unpredictable base-stealing mechanics should make him the all-time stolen base percentage leader this season.

He has been safe on 87% of his 284 attempts, including going 80 for 89 in 1986.

His good friend Strawberry admittedly doesn’t do as much in pregame workouts, and Strawberry isn’t as quick to talk with youngsters in the clubhouse.

“We are very different people, absolutely,” Davis agreed. “But in important ways, we are the same. This year we will feed off each other. No telling what can happen.”

Earl Brown was speaking with Davis on the phone from Los Angeles the other night when he heard a voice in the background.

“It was Darryl, and I thought, ‘Are those guys still roommates?’ ” Brown said. “Then I realized, they probably at least have separate rooms now.”

Or at least separate water beds.