The High Price Of Hard Living

Strawberry continued to drift. On Nov. 8, 1990, he signed as a free agent with the Dodgers. "My first choice was to be back home," he said at the ensuing press conference, only to turn around moments later and say, "The Mets were the only organization I wanted to play for."

He tried religion, claiming in January 1991 that he was born again. He was free of drugs and alcohol, he said, while rationalizing, "I can have a glass of wine or beer if I choose. I choose not to." An L.A. teammate said that was a lie and that Strawberry still was sucking down beers. Born-again teammates on the Dodgers, Brett Butler and Gary Carter, would invite him to breakfast, but Strawberry wouldn't show.

"It wasn't a farce," his mother says. "I think he was genuinely living in gel his life together. But at the same time he did not want to admit to anyone how much trouble he was in."

Darryl and Lisa split again in January 1991, and she resumed divorce proceedings on May 28, 1992. The divorce was finalized on Oct. 15, 1993. Lisa was granted the couple's house in Encino, a 1991 BMW 750i, a 1989 Porsche 928, a 1991 Mercedes SL, $300,000 in cash, $40,000 in attorney's fees (in addition to the $55,000 Darryl had already paid for her attorneys and accountants) and $50,000 a month in spousal support. Darryl was ordered to pay another $30,000 a month in child support.

"His marriage was a bad one from the beginning," Ruby said in 1991. "Darryl wasn't that kind of person until he got involved with Lisa."

Lisa Strawberry did not respond to SI's attempts to reach her through her attorney.

On Dec. 3, 1993, less than two months after his divorce was finalized, Strawberry married Charisse Simon. The wedding occurred three months after Strawberry was arrested on a battery charge for allegedly striking her. Simon did not file charges. The couple has an 11-month-old son, Jordan, and is expecting another child in June, the fifth for Strawberry by three women. (In 1990 Strawberry was found by means of a blood test to be the father of a child by Lisa Clayton, of Clayton, Mo., who had filed a paternity suit against him.)

Strawberry's domestic problems affected him on the field. He admitted during spring training in 1987 that there were periods of "several days, even weeks where I didn't concentrate at all." Then his deportment grew worse. That year he reported late to work at least four times (once remarking, "It's tough getting up for day games"), walked out of training camp once and begged out of a critical game against the first-place St. Louis Cardinals with a virus after spending the afternoon recording a rap song. After that, Met teammate Wally Backman remarked, "Nobody I know gets sick 25 times a year." To which Strawberry responded, "I'll bust that little redneck in the face." And all that happened in a year when he had career highs in batting average (.284) and home runs (39).

"When a guy gets to the ballpark at five-thirty, six o'clock at night and he's sending somebody out for a burger or chicken and it's his first meal of the day, that's a sign of trouble," says Steve Garland, a former Met trainer. "And that happened a lot."

"You could always tell the days Darryl didn't want to play," says former Met Dave Magadan. "I mean, you knew. He'd show up looking as if he was knocking on death's door. You knew he wasn't going to play or you'd get nothing out of him."