The recent radio commercial for opening days at the Citi Field goes like .. bring the whole family, tour the new facility for $3 with free parking (during the game day, it’s $18) .. meet Strawberry. It reminded me of Disney has mickey mouse, Buckingham Palace has Queen and the baseball stadium in Queens has Strawberry Field.
I enjoy play softball but baseball is never my cup of tea. However, I know Darryl Strawberry, he’s to baseball to me as LT – Lawrence Taylor, never Larry Taylor 🙂 – or Joe Montana to football: the most prominent and striking figure of the sport when I started getting to learn.
Straw’s pics, two thick black stripes under his playful and curious eyes were all over New York in the 1980s. He’s tall and gracious build, a piece of an artwork. That’s my impression of him, the fearsome slugger of Mets that won 1986 World Series championship with Mets. When later he became of a real artwork with all sort of troubles in life, and even he won 3 more World Series with Yankees, I seldom paid any attention.
He’s been in the news lately, either to promote the Citi Field or his book or both. I was amused to hear one day on SNY where he’s an announcer now, the interviewer asked him about the Mets. And he replied that Mets is a great team with a huge potential – that was the identical word the former GM used to describe him when Frank Cashen refused Straw’s demand, a José Canseco type of contract.
This last Tuesday we took my father-in-law to the game. There wasn’t Straw in the field. Under the above 90 degrees weather, the Mets scored 2 runs in the first inning and one more in the second. But Florida’s Marlins ended up won the game.
