The Straw That Stirs

I think the Gump Man said it best when he said it's funny what a young man recollects.

Darryl Strawberry is among the first ballplayers I can remember really following. One of my earliest, clearest Mets memories is of Strawberry hitting a home run to deep right field at Shea Stadium.

I can't remember the circumstances, nor can I articulate why this home run was so memorable for me, but I remember it was late at night (for me), and that I was in my parents' bedroom at the time, on their couch at the foot of the bed.

Other memories abound. I distinctly remember one afternoon on Randall's Island where I decided to emulate Darryl's upper-cut like swing. I was probably 8 at the time.

Every Friday a young and fiery A.F.O.M.G. and his classmates would crowd the bus bound for Randall's Island, which the after-school sports program Cavaliers used to call home. I was a bit of a natural back in the day, but trying to mimic Darryl's swing was murder on my stroke. I took an 0-fer that afternoon and decided to go back to basics.

For all my memories of Darryl (and these are just a couple), one thing I don't really recall is his relationship with the media. The closest memory I have in this area is the back page of the Post or Daily News the morning after he defected to Los Angeles, with Frank Cashen's (I think) face next to the words "We'll Be Better Off Without Him".

But as for Darryl's relationship with the press, I've got nothing there. Did he tell it like it was, always good for a quote? Was he sullen and inaccessible? Was he only willing to talk those days he hit a home run? I don't have any recollection.

Well, Darryl found himself in the middle of the press the other day when he unequivocally said he would have used steroids if the juice had been around in his day.

"Hell yeah I would have used them. Are you kidding me?" Strawberry said. "I'm not saying that was the right thing to do. But if somebody asked me... what would I have done if that was going on in the era of the '80s... I probably would have been a part of it, too."

* * * * *

I, for one, am really glad he came out and said it. For all the moral indignation mustered up by politicians, fans, the media, bloggers and whoever else, I wonder what everyone else would have done if they'd been in the same position?

As far as punishments go, the steroid era was a consequence-free environment. There was no penalty for using steroids, except that abstinence meant your performance figured to suffer, and that your career and compensation would decline relative to your peers. Essentially there was no reason whatsoever not to use steroids beside health defects that frankly, you'd probably figure you'd be rich enough to pay for.

Say you're a paralegal somewhere. If all the other paralegals started taking a substance that was not explicitly against the rules and they started to perform better and get paid a lot more, what would you do?

Some people would have kept the moral high ground, and for a lot of us it's easy to think we would have as well. But I feel certain most people would have done like Darryl and said, "Hell yeah."

We've said it before here at Y2K, but if baseball is ever going to get serious about stamping out steroids and other performance enhancing drugs, it needs to get tough in terms of the penalties for positive tests.

Fifty game suspensions aren't enough. I piss 50 games. What's needed is a penalty grievous enough to eliminate the incentive. For me it's a two-year suspension. Implement a two-year suspension and you'll see a lot of "hell yeahs" turn to "hell nos".

Better yet, implement a two-year suspension and we can all stop talking about this issue.

- A.F.O.M.G.