RK Review: Straw: Finding My Way

with John Strausbaugh (HarperCollins).

What is it with Harper Collins? Have I not been paying attention, or has this become the go-to publisher for titles dealing with New York baseball players and their problems of one kind or another? I may be wrong, but I believe Darryl Strawberry’s autobiography was on the docket before Selena Roberts’ A-Rod expose. Who’s next? Lenny Dykstra on his gambling addiction?

Strawberry was supposed to be the savior of the Mets in the early 1980s — their Ted Williams– after they had been stinko for almost a decade. He had his partner in crime (not literally, mind you, though it was close), Dwight Gooden, were the new batch of wunderkinds that would lead the team into a new era of good feelings, capturing — or a least contending for — pennant after pennant.

Alas, being young, gifted, and newly rich proved to be too difficult a burden, according to Strawberry. Access to easy drugs and women were too powerful to turn down, and he is quite blunt in his descriptions and how great it was at the time. Add to that the difficulties of growing up with an abusive father who never showed him any love, who constantly told him he would never amount to anything, and what else could you expect, he seems to say.

Seems.

At one crucial juncture, Strawberry found God and sees the error of his ways. Not that was a guarantee of a pious life from that point forward. He is very honest that he strayed constantly, returning to the behavior that perhaps cost him a chance to be a Hall of Famer, back to the bottle, back to the drugs, back to the groupies, despite the fact that he had married twice. He knows he needs to do better, sincerely wants to do better, but those demons are strong and seductive.

Just when it looks like he might break the devil’s grip comes a new challenge: colon cancer, in which he is againmost forthright, describing the mental and physical fatigue that made him doubt his continued existance and lead him back to previous sins.

Strawberry and Strausbaugh paint a sympathetic picture: the former athlete seems genuinely contrite, wishing to leave his bad self in the past, presenting a new good, charitable self for the future.

Again I say “seems.” I know I come off as very cynical here sometimes, but how often have we been disappointed by the men and women we hold up as heroes, only to be disappointed when they fall? Strawberry knows this too well, as he writes about his repeated attempts for redemption and his repeated failures. I don’t think any reader of his book will wish him anything but the best of luck and peace, but total belief is now reserved for the incurable optimist. We’ve been burned too many times before to pledge blind belief.