The early 1980s for the New York Mets were less-than-stellar in terms of wins and losses. However, slowly the pieces were starting to come together for the success the franchise would experience later in the decade.
In January 1980, the team was sold from the Payson family to Doubleday & Company. The new owners promptly hired Frank Cashen to be general manager. In June 1980, Cashen engaged in his first amateur draft as part of the Mets’ organization. He had the first pick overall, and with that pick he selected a young outfielder from Crenshaw High School in Los Angeles. That outfielder was Darryl Strawberry. It was a wise pick by Cashen, because on November 21, 1983, Strawberry was named the National League’s Rookie of the Year.
Strawberry signed for a bonus of $152,500 and began his professional baseball journey. On May 6, 1983, he made his major league debut at Shea Stadium for a Mets team that was 6-15 on the season, badly in need of something positive. Tom Seaver started the game for New York and tossed eight innings of three-run ball with seven strikeouts. Strawberry played right field and went hitless in four official at-bats (he walked twice and struck out three times). He would score on a three-run walk-off home run by George Foster in the bottom of the thirteenth inning.
“The Straw Man” went on to play in 122 games in the 1983 season, posting a slash line of .257/.336/.512, with 26 home runs and 74 RBIs. He also stole 19 bases, and had an OPS+ of 134. Those numbers were good enough to net the National League’s Rookie of the Year award, making Strawberry the third Met to win the award in franchise history (Tom Seaver had won it in 1967 and Jon Matlack had done so in 1972). Since 1983, Dwight Gooden (1984), Jacob deGrom (2014), and Pete Alonso (2019) have been named Rookies of the Year.
Strawberry played eight seasons in the Mets’ orange and blue, slashing .263/.359/.520/.878 with 252 home runs and 753 RBIs. He remains the franchise leader in career home runs. After leaving the Mets in 1991, Darryl played for the Dodgers (three years), Giants (one year), and Yankees (five years). By bWAR, Strawberry’s best seasons were 1987 (6.4) and 1990 (6.3). In his post-Mets days, Strawberry’s highest bWAR was in 1998 with the Yankees, when he posted a 1.5 mark in 101 games.
Over his 17-year career, the native of Los Angeles had a slash line of .259/.357/.505/.862 with 335 home runs and 1,000 RBIs. In the 1986 postseason, Strawberry did not perform particularly well (.227 BA with two home runs in the NLCS and .208 with one home run in the World Series). However, his lone World Series home run was a memorable one, giving the Mets a much-needed insurance run in the bottom of the eighth inning of Game 7.
He hit off (and angered with his slow trot) Al Knipper of the Red Sox, and was cool and distant to Davey Johnson in the dugout (Johnson had removed him from Game 6) despite Ray Knight‘s behest to put the incident in the past. You can re-live the home run in the video below.
“It’ll take him about twenty minutes to go around the base paths.” What a line by the great Vin Scully.
Strawberry has struggled with addiction, as well as legal and health problems (colon cancer) since his retirement. He seems to have overcome those matters, and currently lives in Missouri. He is a born-again Christian, and does charitable work, notably the Darryl Strawberry Foundation, whose mission is to help autistic children.
Here’s a Metsmerized hat tip to the 1983 National League Rookie of the Year, Darryl Strawberry.
