The Next Straw

He prefers basketball, not baseball. That’s the first good sign. In this comparison, the more differences the better.

He is at the age when it’s all about the future, yet his name can’t help but bring up memories of past failures.

He is Darryl Strawberry. Junior.

As if the name doesn’t carry enough of a burden on its own, the suffix seems to bring in the unwanted weight of others.

Type Darryl Strawberry Jr. into Google’s Internet search engine and up pops a string of links to stories about the drug-related woes of his father and Robert Downey Jr. Like that’s fair.

So we’ll honor another difference and call Darryl Jr. by the name most people use: “D.J.” That’s the name that brings up stories about success (such as his Santa Ana Mater Dei High team’s CIF Southern Section divisional championship) or potential (he is rated among the top 10 prep shooting guards in the West).

He is 17 and inherited more than just the fruit-flavored last name. He has a body tailor-made for athletics. It’s 6 feet 4 now, with plenty of muscle to come and, he is told, three more inches.

“He’s thin and strong,” says his mother, a description we used to always hear about his father.

And if the posture looks the same--hands on his waists, shoulders forward--the circumstances couldn’t be any more different.

A recent day found D.J. playing ball at the Veterans Sports Complex in Carson. One of his teammates was Cuttino Mobley of the Houston Rockets. Utah Jazz guard Bryon Russell and former Arizona Wildcat Miles Simon also shared the court at different times.

On the other side of the country, Darryl Strawberry Sr. was in the Gainesville (Fla.) Correctional Institution, serving an 18-month sentence for violating terms of his probation for 1999 cocaine possession charges. A jail cell almost seemed like an inevitable destination for Strawberry after drugs and alcohol took the former No. 1 draft pick of the New York Mets off the path to greatness and sent his life plunging. Some have suggested he might even be better off in prison; it might be the only place to keep him from his self-destructive ways.

Strawberry, 40, is past the point where he can expect to sign another lucrative contract to hit baseballs a long distance.

For D.J., that basketball he handles so easily can still take him places. Maryland, the defending NCAA champion, is interested in him as he prepares for his senior year. He’s also looking at Kansas and California.

As you might imagine, baseball had been a part of his life. “Since I was born,” he said. He remembers spending time on the field for family days, wearing the miniature uniforms, the works.

“That’s what I grew up with, was baseball,” he says. “Then I got into basketball when I was around 7.”

His mother, Lisa Strawberry, signed him up at a park league one off-season and he was hooked.

“It’s an up-and-down, fast-paced game,” D.J. says. “I love it. Baseball’s kind of boring.”

He’s gifted at baseball, but “he won’t do it,” Lisa Strawberry says.

“If he put as much time and effort into baseball as basketball, he’d be--not like his dad--but he’d be a good player.”

Maybe he could have hit more than the 335 home runs his father hit in the major leagues. Maybe he never could have lived up to the expectations created by the name.

The comparisons are hard enough as it is. Opposing fans serenade him with the “Daaa-rryl, Daaa-rryl” chant. He can’t avoid the news reports.

For Lisa Strawberry, who also had a daughter during her nine-year marriage to Darryl that ended in 1993, the legacy of that last name also means counseling the children through their father’s failures.

“It’s very hard for them,” she says. “But it’s something that they’re used to. They have a tough skin. They can deal with life. It’s unfortunate, but it’s something that [D.J.] has to deal with.”

She tells him that “He’s not responsible for his dad. He’s his own individual.”

D.J. still talks to his father, but he hasn’t seen him for a couple of years and doesn’t sound ready to head down to Florida for visiting hours any time soon.

“It hurts me sometimes, but I have to realize that what I have to do is stay up on school and basketball and whatever I’m going to do to succeed in life,” he says about his father’s problems.

“It makes me not want to be like him. It makes me want to be a better person than he was, to go farther. If he would have just stayed clean, he would have been a Hall of Famer, maybe. It gives me the drive to not do drugs, keep clean and keep going for all my goals.”

D.J. is a good kid; his mother’s only complaint is that he doesn’t take out the trash as frequently as she’d like. All she wants for him is to get an education and lead a productive life.

The word that keeps coming up to describe D.J. is “quiet.”

Even his game can be quiet. Amid the noise in the Veterans gym (much of it coming from Mobley), Strawberry fades into the background like the stored bleacher seats.

“He’s down to earth, but man, he’s going to be phenomenal,” says DeAnthony Langston, his AAU coach.

As the youngest player on the court during these summer pickup games, “You don’t have to try to dominate the game,” Strawberry says. “You can sit back and enjoy the game. It’s just fun. They teach you things that you wouldn’t learn as just a high school player. It’s fun to come out here with NBA players and learn, have a good time.”

Strawberry wishes he could play in the Nike Real Run, a five-week summer pro league Langston runs featuring the likes of Paul Pierce and Baron Davis that starts at Veterans Sports Complex this Friday, but it would cost him his eligibility.

So he settles for playing against the pros in the mornings.

When he does get the ball, he knows what to do with it. He handles the ball smoothly. He knocks down a turnaround jumper, which seems to inspire him to come up with a steal on defense and convert it into a layup.

Afterward, as Mobley keeps D.J. on the court to give him some tips about keeping defenders off-balance, one of the players comes up to Langston and says, “Strawberry is going to be the Bobby Jones of this year. Your boy is putting in work.”

Jones was a Southern Section player of the year at Long Beach Poly last year.

Langston first saw Strawberry play at Michael Jordan’s summer camp.

“I was like, ‘That’s Darryl Strawberry’s kid? You’ve got to be kidding me. Darryl Strawberry’s kid can play basketball,’ ” Langston said.

Langston’s California select team played in the Memorial Day Classic in Indianapolis last year, and Strawberry played well in a field that included Bracey Wright of Texas, and Syracuse-bound Carmelo Anthony of Oak Hill Academy, who has held his own against prep superstar LeBron James in head-to-head competition.

“There were a lot of good players out there,” Strawberry says. “That’s when I knew all these players are ranked ahead of me, but I still can compete with them.”

Eric Bossi, who filed a report for an Internet scouting service, described Strawberry as “a very well mannered and quiet kid with a game that is going to merit some serious recognition in the future.”

Once again, the future is in Darryl Strawberry’s hands. It’s back to talent and potential as good things, not talent preceded by “what a waste of...” and potential unfulfilled.

The only thing hanging in D.J.’s room is a framed, autographed red Chicago Bulls Michael Jordan jersey. Can Strawberry picture that name, with all of those letters and all that history, on an NBA jersey?

“Every day,” he says, smiling. “I hope I can make it.”

Life kept giving his father chances, and he squandered them. Maybe this time, all this Darryl Strawberry needs is one.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at: j.a.adande@latimes.com