Former baseball player Darryl Strawberry admits he would have eagerly used anabolic steroids if they had been readily available during the 1980s in Major League Baseball. In a rare display of honesty from a pro athlete on the topic of steroids, Strawberry acknowledges the appeal of steroids to highly competitive athletes (“Strawberry says he would have taken steroids,” March 3).
“Hell yeah, I would have used them. Are you kidding me? I mean, come on. We’re competitive creatures and we have tremendous drive, high tolerance, all these things. I’m not saying that was the right thing to do. But if that was going on in the ’80s, that probably would have been in my system, too. I wouldn’t have denied it because you guys know I don’t deny anything.”
If Strawberry had not been consumed with self-destructive addictions that derailed his career perhaps he would have been more focused on behaviors that would have actually enhanced his performance e.g. anabolic steroids.
Ironically, Darryl Strawberry will probably not be judged as harshly as contemporary MLB players who have, either through admission or implication, been linked to performance enhancing drugs. Strawberry’s numerous off-field transgressions involving his cocaine addiction, sexual escapades, and spousal abuse did not improve his performance on the field; therefore, the general public and baseball fans who decry athletes of the so-called steroid era of baseball are not as offended by Strawberry’s misdeeds. A history of substance abuse, domestic violence involving various women including a pregnant woman, failure to pay child support are one thing but the use of steroids apparently represents an unforgiveable violation that forever tarnishes a player’s reputation.
Sports fans long for the period in baseball history when athletes were not so obsessed with enhancing performance, increase muscle strength and size and justifying the performance expected as part of multi-million dollar contracts. Instead, they express nostalgia for a time when baseball players were more interested in banging groupies before, during and after games. Strawberry provides fans with a refreshing break from the steroid scandals involving Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds in a new autobiographical book, written in collaboration with author John Strausbaugh, a noted social commentator on recreational drug use (“Darryl Bares Mets Sexcapades,” February 11).
“We were the boys of summer. The drunk, speed-freak, sneaking-a-smoke boys of summer,” writes onetime home-run legend Darryl Strawberry in “Straw: Finding My Way
,” out in April from Ecco. “[An] infamous rolling frat party . . . drinking, drugs, fights, gambling, groupies.” […]
Beer “was the foundation of our alcoholic lifestyle,” he writes. “We hauled around more Bud than the Clydesdales. The beer was just to get the party started and maybe take the edge off the speed and coke.”
The team’s mantra on the road, he writes, was to “tear up your best bars and nightclubs and take your finest women . . . The only hard part for us was choosing which hottie to take back to your hotel room. Lots of times you . . . picked two or three.”
Although he doesn’t name names, Strawberry relates how team members picked out girls from the stands for quickies. He once watched a pitcher march a frisky fan to a private room for oral sex: “I was jealous. When I saw her heading back to her seat, I gave her a sign. She smiled, turned right back around, and met me in that same little room . . . I had to be quick and run back out on the field.”
Those were the innocent days of baseball that preceded national discussions of marking up the record books with asterisks.
About the author
Millard writes about anabolic steroids and performance enhancing drugs and their use and impact in sport and society. He discusses the medical and non-medical uses of anabolic-androgenic steroids while advocating a harm reduction approach to steroid education.
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