Advertisement

John Shipley: Darryl Strawberry’s St. Paul stay was short, but it definitely left a mark

john shipley, pioneer press
·5 min read

The St. Paul Saints didn’t save Darryl Strawberry, but his brief stay here in the early summer of 1996 stands as a high point in what wound up being — despite addiction, suspensions, cancer and ultimately a short jail term — a splendid baseball career.

And a wonderful life. Sober, living with his family in a suburb west of St Louis, Darryl Strawberry is comfortable in his own skin, preaching the Gospel and sharing his story of addiction and salvation.

“There were a lot of opinions saying, ‘Well, let’s see how long this lasts,’ ” Strawberry said Friday from the home dugout at CHS Field. “It’s been over 20-some years that I’ve been preaching, and they’re still waiting for me to come back. … They’re going to be waiting a long time.”

Strawberry was in St. Paul on Friday because the Saints are retiring his No. 17 jersey during a ceremony before Saturday night’s game against Louisville. He was only in St. Paul for 29 games in early summer 1996, but it was a good run for both team and player, who was out of baseball when the Saints came calling.

After receiving a 60-day suspension for violating Major League Baseball’s drug policy in 1995, the first of three such suspensions, Strawberry was certain he was done with baseball. “After that,” he said. “I thought it was over.”

But it wasn’t, in no small part because Strawberry was thrown a life vest by the St. Paul Saints who, through co-owner Marv Goldklang, lured the eight-time National League all-star to independent baseball in time for the Saints’ June home opener against Winnipeg.

“Marv kick-started it,” Strawberry said.

Goldklang, who also owns a piece of the New York Yankees — which had last employed Strawberry — spent a lot of time trying to convince Strawberry and his agent, Eric Grossman, to give St. Paul a shot. But hours before Strawberry’s introductory news conference at Midway Stadium, he received a telephone call from St. Paul.

“I changed my mind,” Strawberry said.

Goldklang didn’t tell co-owner Mike Veeck, who was in St. Paul planning the next day’s news conference, “because he’d have a heart attack.” Instead, he stayed on the phone and, after an hour and a half, “Things got turned around. He agreed to give it a shot.”

Strawberry certainly made a mark in St. Paul, hitting .435 with 18 home runs and 39 runs batted in — “If I had stayed here another 29 games, I don’t know … I might have had 40 home runs at the pace I was going,” he said — and ultimately earned another shot with the Yankees.

It was a major coup for the Saints, too. Strawberry was the biggest, most popular major leaguer to play for the local independent team that, playing 15 minutes from the major-league Twins, needed former major leaguers to attract media attention and market share.

Strawberry and Jack Morris were among seven former major-league players to don a Saints uniform in 1996. And while we can argue about whether he was as important to the franchise as Morris, a St. Paul native who would be inducted into Cooperstown in 2018, Strawberry remains the elite position player of all the Saints’ big-league coups.

Strawberry re-signed with the Yankees in July and, after two games with Triple-A Columbus, became a key player on New York’s first World Series championship team in 18 years. And while Strawberry wasn’t close to ending his personal problems — MLB suspended him 140 games after an arrest in April 1999 — he ranks his experience in St. Paul as a key piece of his recovery.

Strawberry, in fact, called his stay with the Saints the high point of his baseball career, which included four World Series championships with the Mets (1986) and Yankees (1996, 1998 and 1999).

“That would rank at the top,” he said. “I have played at every high level and done everything from a professional level, all my life. But to experience people, and I keep saying that — coming here and the people, their fans — they were incredible.

“They treated my family with love and care. We had never experienced that because of those challenges in my life. Everywhere I was going, so many people were pointing fingers at my failures. Here, they didn’t do that. I thought that was remarkable.”

Sober for more than a decade, Strawberry said his initial response to the Saints’ offer was, “No.” And he said it a lot. Goldklang said he first thought of approaching Strawberry’s agent when his son, Jeff, pointed out in March 1996 that the slugger was not in a major-league camp. It took months to convince Strawberry to try the independents.

“My agent was telling me, ‘It might be fun. Just see if you want to play again,’ ” Strawberry said. “That’s really the only reason I gave it a shot, to see if it was fun again.”

And it was. At the pace he was going before he signed with the Yankees, Strawberry would have hit about 54 home runs and driven in 117 runs in a full Northern League season. And while it clearly wasn’t the majors, he fell in love, he said, with baseball again.

“I’d never done anything like that before, not even in high school,” Strawberry said. “And high school was pretty good.”

Related Articles