The High Price Of Hard Living

Less than three years later, in 1983, Strawberry was in the big leagues. He had 26 home runs that season, beginning an unprecedented run of hitting more than 25 home runs in his first nine seasons, all but one of them with the Mets. Only two other players in history had hit that many homers in more than their first four seasons: Frank Robinson (seven) and Joe DiMaggio (six). During that span Strawberry never hit 40 home runs in a season, and he averaged 92 RBIs—a relatively low total for someone with his power. He also missed an average of 21 games a season in those years. And he played just 75 games over the 1992 and '93 seasons because of a herniated disk that required surgery.

"He should have averaged 100 RBIs and 40 home runs," Jongewaard says. "He has underachieved. And that's a hard thing to say because he put up some very good numbers, but that's how much talent he had."

Those sort of expectations alternately inflated Strawberry with pride and wore him down. In typical Straw-speak, one day he would promise "a monster season" and the next he would complain about having to carry too big a load. His quotes were often outrageous and typically hollow. He continually drifted, as if pulled by the current, and if he ever sought moorage during his years with the Mets, he did not find it at home or in the clubhouse.

"I was at their wedding," a friend says of Darryl and Lisa's marriage, "and they were at each other's throats from Day One. It was like they hated each other from the start. And his mother didn't like her at all. That put a drain on Darryl. And it was no secret how they went through money. It was almost like a contest they had to see which one could outspend the other."

Darryl married Lisa in January 1985, two months before signing a six-year contract worth $7.2 million. Much of that money was scheduled to be deferred. It wasn't long before he dipped into that account.

The Strawberrys would separate and reconcile routinely over the next seven years. Once, at dinner with another couple, Darryl and Lisa shouted obscenities at each other so loudly in a restaurant that "we were embarrassed," says one of the other diners. "I said to Lisa, 'Why don't you try being nice to him?' And she said, 'If you only knew what he puts me through.' "

One of Lisa's attempts at reconciliation occurred in Houston during the 1986 National League Championship Series. Darryl says he spent one night drinking with friends at the hotel bar, and when he returned to their room he found Lisa had chained the door shut. He banged furiously on the door as they screamed at each other. When she finally opened the door, Darryl uncorked a punch to her nose that sent her to a hospital.

"It was scary," he says. "I did some of the same things in my marriage that I felt my father did to me and our family. It's unfortunate it had to happen like that, but I was turning into him. That's what I found out later from the people at Betty Ford."

Lisa filed for legal separation and an order of protection on Jan. 29, 1987. She and Darryl reconciled eight months later. On June 2, 1989, Lisa began divorce proceedings. The Strawberrys reconciled again later that year. At 3:45 in the morning of Jan. 26, 1990, during a fierce argument in which Lisa whacked Darryl in the ribs with an iron rod, he pulled out a .25 caliber pistol and pointed it at her. He was arrested and jailed briefly on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, but no charges were filed.

Recalling that night in his 1992 autobiography, Darryl, he wrote, "Just be glad, I remember saying to myself as I tried to find something positive in this whole mess, that you aren't involved with drugs." That, of course, was a lie. Eight days after the fight, at the Mets' recommendation, Strawberry checked into Smithers for alcohol abuse. As it turned out, this was a convenient move to help avoid prosecution. That was another one of Darryl's lies. "Going to Smithers was my cover-up," he admits now. "I never even bothered telling them about the drugs."