The Next Straw

You probably remember some of his 335 home runs. The Darryl Strawberry dinger was a moonshot, a flyball that was often still rising as it passed over motionless outfielders and that descended so softly, it could be caught by a kid with a butterfly net. The long, lean source of these blows was the same way, at once powerful and gentle. He had a cartoon surname and a playful smile, and you imagined he was kind even to the hookers and coke dealers with whom he squandered many nights and much talent. Grandmothers and sentencing judges seemed to like him. � And there he was on a recent week-night, eight months out of prison after his sixth probation violation and back in circulation. A new man, he said. We've heard this before, but something about Darryl Strawberry, a cancer survivor among other things, tends to engender hope. He was at the game between Maryland and Wisconsin, seven rows behind the home bench at the Comcast Center in College Park, Md. He was with his second wife, Charisse, and their three young children, one or two of them often on his knees. On the court was his firstborn.

This was Dec. 2, a 9:30 p.m. game on national TV, part of the ACC/ Big Ten Challenge. The young Terps were unranked. Wisconsin was No. 15. Maryland led for most of the first half. The retired slugger took the whole thing in: the cheerleaders, the band, the $3.75 Dove bars, the arena packed with screaming college kids. At times they called out for his namesake—Darryl Jr. on his birth certificate, D.J. everywhere else. D.J. is a long, lean freshman, the second player off the Maryland bench, a menace on defense, all limbs and energy and solid fundamentals. He's all over the court; even his teammates don't know exactly what position he plays.

In the second half things got tight. Maryland coach Gary Williams, desperately seeking defense, put D.J. in and (pretty much) kept him in. D.J. stopped a layup. His bony hands and quick feet disrupted the Badgers' passing game. When the rest of the house stood, Darryl Strawberry sat on his armrest. He's 6'6", an inch taller than his
18-year-old son, and he didn't want to call attention to himself. A quarter-century ago at Crenshaw High in Los Angeles, he was a basketball star, with a superb lefthanded jump shot, and even signed a letter of intent to play at Oklahoma State. When he spotted a traveling violation at the Comcast Center, he rotated his wrists, one around the other, well before the whistle sounded.

With a second and change left in regulation and the score tied at 61, D.J. intercepted an inbounds pass at half-court and let loose a moonshot of his own. It caught the back of the rim, bounced to the front and fell out. The rest of the house groaned, but not D.J.'s father. He rubbed his shaved head with his left hand and didn't say a thing. Later, after Maryland had won in overtime 73-67—D.J. scored an insurance basket on a breakaway layup following another steal—the home fans stood for the playing of the alma mater. For a moment Darryl Strawberry didn't know what to do. Then he stood along with everybody else.

D.J.'s point total didn't reveal much about his game. It seldom does. He had three points against Wisconsin, 1.8 below his average at week's end, but he also had two blocked shots and a game-high four steals. Maybe the most telling thing was his playing time: a hearty 26 minutes.

By the time D.J. emerged from his shower and his interviews, it was nearly 1 a.m. His father was waiting in the stands. They shook hands, soul-style, and had a quick hug. "Nice game, son," the father said.

Senior is back in Junior's life. There have been times when he was and times when he wasn't, and now he is.

Thousands of miles from College Park, out on the West Coast, two people were watching the Wisconsin game with particular interest. One, in Pasadena, was Lisa Andrews-Watkins, D.J.'s mother and Darryl Strawberry's first wife. They divorced when D.J. was eight. She played high school basketball, too—forward at Pasadena's John Muir High—which Darryl, way into his own thing, knew nothing about. It was she who bathed D.J. when he was a baby, she who got D.J. to school when his father was arrested again and D.J. didn't want to face his classmates, she who filled out the tedious paperwork for the Maryland admissions department. She knew her ex-husband was at the Wisconsin game. She saw him on TV. Whether she's comfortable with Darryl and D.J. spending time together she will not say. "He's 18," Lisa says. "What am I to do? He's a man. He makes his own decisions."

The other interested viewer, in Spokane, was Mark Few, the basketball coach at 17th-ranked Gonzaga. He was preparing for his team's game against Maryland four days later in the opening round of the BB&T Classic in Washington, D.C. Few's eye kept going to D.J. Strawberry, even though the ball was almost never in his hands. Later, at a team meeting, Few told his players to watch out for number 5, who played defense with unusual confidence for a freshman. "Watch him shoot the [passing] lanes," the coach said. The message: Sometimes it's not the guy who scores 22 who's going to beat you.

Strawberry may never score 22 in a college game. He's not a natural shooter. He's not a natural basketball player. When he was growing up in Southern California, baseball was his game. But in baseball he was always Darryl's kid. During the 1996 World Series, when the New York Yankees were playing the Atlanta Braves, 11-year-old D.J. was staying with his father and Charisse at their luxurious house in New Jersey. The father and son would drive to Yankee Stadium together in a big new Mercedes-Benz. Everywhere they went, D.J. would hear people call out his father's name and wish him good luck. "It was glamorous," he says. He's intense and scowling on the court, and quiet and serious off it. He worked a few regular-season games as a Yankees batboy. He remembers Derek Jeter being nice to him. He had a little pinstripe uniform and big pinstripe dreams. Later, as his father's home run production stagnated and his rap sheet grew longer, D.J. buried his baseball ambitions and started planning a future in the NBA.