Strawberry Takes a Giant Step in Return : Baseball: Former Dodger goes hitless in three at-bats but is embraced by fans who once derided him.

He recalled Candlestick Park as the arena he liked least during his time with the New York Mets. The wind. The bleary eyes he often took into day games that followed night games. The wind. The old chain-link fence in right. The wind. The cold. The wind. And the singsong “D-a-r-r-y-l” chant that eventually would follow him to other ballparks.

He heard it first in Boston in 1986. He considered it a tribute of sorts then, acknowledgment that he was the baddest man on the baddest team. But when the cold fans of Candlestick pestered him in May, 1988, it unsettled him. “They were mean,” Darryl Strawberry said Thursday. “They were on me big and mean.”

The same stadium sang a sweeter serenade to Strawberry on Thursday. No longer a member of the New York Mets that everyone everywhere once hated, no longer a member of the Dodgers everyone in San Francisco still hates, he was welcomed as if he already had done something to lift their dismal baseball team. Applauded, cheered, embraced and even appreciated for an out. “I guess they’ve been turned around,” Strawberry said, “just like me, just like my life.”

Another Darryl U-turn. What is this, the sixth? The 10th? The two-hundred forty-third? The calendar says he is 32. His swing, still lightning fast and supercharged, says 26. His mind isn’t certain what to say.

The Baseball Register says he is in his 12th season in the big leagues. Our memories say he’s turned around more times that Nancy Kerrigan in a spin.

“I know,” Strawberry said, anticipating skepticism. “And this is just another one. Right? I know. I know people are saying it won’t work. I don’t blame them. I’m trying to be honest with them, and I’m trying to be honest with myself. . . . This one better work.”

So far, so good. Depending on perspective, Strawberry’s latest about-face either is in its fourth month or its second day. He prefers the former view because he says he became honest with himself in April when he asked the Dodgers to help him after nine years of substance abuse. The latter view sees him only as player. “I’m more than that,” he said after his first day back in the big leagues.

The fans recognized him, not by the No. 17 he wore--for Keith Hernandez, he said--but by his physique and the power he demonstrated in batting practice. “Still awesome Straw-some,” Lenny Dykstra said from the trainer’s table even though he saw none of the three upper-deck jobs Strawberry launched.

They cheered Strawberry in batting practice. They stood and heralded his first walk to the plate, tolerated his two ground-ball outs and cherished the fly ball he hit into home run territory in nearly dead center field in the sixth inning. Disabled Dykstra never would have caught it; too short. Milt Thompson had to leap to deny Strawberry. “Only warning-track power, I guess,” Strawberry said.

And they booed the intentional walk in the eighth inning. “Familiar sound,” he said.

That was his final baseball of the day. He was removed from what became the Giants’ 5-4 victory for a pinch- runner. More cheers. But no hits. “Is it fair to say you were hitless, but not hopeless?” was the question posed afterward.

“Hitless but not hopeless,” he said. “Yeah. . . . I like that. Not hopeless as a person.”

For a player who often began his seasons with home runs, it was a modest first day. “It was apparent,” Phillie starting pitcher Shawn Boskie said, “he wanted to have a big-impact game.”

Matt Williams’ two-run homer, his 31st, highlighted a three-run sixth inning for the Giants, who broke a three-game losing streak and handed the Phillies their fifth loss in six games.

Strawberry recalled other new beginnings at Shea Stadium and his first day as the hometown hero in Los Angeles in 1991. “It’s better to be honest than to be home,” he said, acknowledging that taking his career to Los Angeles was a mistake.

Now he’s taken it to the team playing in what Giant owner Peter Magowan termed “a very tolerant market.” Magowan hoped not to pressure his newest employee but expressed hope Strawberry could do for the ’94 Giants what Fred McGriff did for the ’93 Braves.

Strawberry senses his skills are undiminished by time, back surgery, the intake of bad stuff and a lot of late nights. Boskie marveled at the bat speed as once-skeptical scouts had in March in Florida. Dusty Baker, Strawberry’s longtime friend and new manager, said he couldn’t believe Strawberry was so finely tuned after only three games in triple-A.

Strawberry even made a pretty running catch in right field.