Sports
Darryl Strawberry wanted to quit baseball at 19. These two Mets brought him back
To this day, 43 years later, Darryl Strawberry still has a nickname for his 1981 season with the Class A Lynchburg Mets.
“I call it,” Strawberry said by phone last week, “the suck season.”
The suck season was, at the time, the most challenging of Strawberry’s life. It was the season he first confronted failure on the baseball diamond. It was the season he first heard racist slurs from the stands. It was the season he came oh-so-close to quitting baseball and hanging up his jersey for good.
And so when Strawberry’s No. 18 is retired June 1 at Citi Field, it’s only fitting that among his honored guests will be the two people who pushed him through the suck season: manager Gene Dusan and teammate Lloyd McClendon.
“Everybody looks at the success, but I look at the people who had a great impact on me,” Strawberry said. “There’s no way that I would be standing on the field having my number retired had it not been for people like them getting me through the most challenging, difficult times at a young age.”
The first month of Strawberry’s first full season in pro ball had not gone well. Failing on the field for the first time is hard enough for any player. Strawberry had several extra spotlights on him.
The prior summer, he had been the No. 1 pick out of Crenshaw High School in Los Angeles, where his coach had called him “the black Ted Williams” in Sports Illustrated. His signing bonus, while not a record, more than doubled that of the previous No. 1 pick.
And he was a black man playing in a southern city in Virginia. So when he struggled on the field, he heard it from the Carolina League crowds. Home games, road games, any games — Strawberry heard the worst of it.
“They were calling me all kind of names and saying negative things,” Strawberry said. “You’re talking about the deep south. I was like, ‘This is crazy.’ I grew up in Southern California and we never had to experience that growing up.”
“Listen, it was 1981. Society as a whole didn’t quite embrace us — black folks,” McClendon said. “They used to pass the hat for anybody who hit a home run. We hit home runs and we got nothing.”
By early May, Strawberry wanted to take his bat into the stands, he said. Instead, he took his bat home.
“I just checked out,” he said. “I did go AWOL.”
“He left for a couple days,” Dusan said. “It was concerning that he left. I felt like he’d be back. I knew he’d be back.”
Rather than chase Strawberry, Dusan gave him space. He didn’t even tell the higher-ups in the Mets front office.
“If I did that today, they’d fire me,” he chuckled. “Things were different in the early ’80s.”
Two days later, Strawberry returned to the park, thanks largely to his relationships with Dusan and McClendon. Strawberry and McClendon had bonded the year before in rookie ball in Kingsport, Tenn., when they roomed together and had each other’s backs during their first summer in the South.
“I guess we had to protect each other,” McClendon said.
Lloyd McClendon, pictured in 2019 as a coach with the Tigers, was an important figure in Darryl Strawberry’s early pro years. (Rich von Biberstein / Icon Sportswire via Associated Press)
And McClendon hadn’t been there at the start of the ’81 season in Lynchburg because of a broken hand he suffered in spring training. But when Strawberry left the team, that rehab period became a lot shorter for McClendon.
“When I saw him at the park, then I was happy,” Strawberry said, “to see a face and someone of color just like me.”
Dusan made sure the two roomed together again, even though McClendon had gotten married.
“You have to take care of him,” McClendon remembered Dusan saying, “because he’s not going to make it if you don’t.”
“I don’t know if I was old enough to be a mentor at the time,” said McClendon, who was 22 that season, “but I was certainly a friend and a voice he could talk to. Whatever little wisdom that I had I tried to pass along.”
And Dusan’s tough-love approach as a manager was what Strawberry needed at that point. The day Strawberry returned to the club, Dusan didn’t exactly rejoice.
“I’m glad you’re back. I’m glad you’re healthy,” he told the player. “We’ve got to go to work.”
From that day forward, Dusan remembered, Strawberry became the best player he ever coached.
“He was there every day for extra hitting,” Dusan said. “Once he applied himself, he was the man.”
There was a reason Strawberry was always there for extra hitting.
“Let me put it this way: In a very good way, Gene was a pain in the ass to Darryl and I,” McClendon said. “When we were on the road, he would wake us up at 8 every morning and we had go to the ballpark. I guess he saw something special in both of us. He saw it in Darryl, for sure.”
“Gene Dusan was like a father figure to me that I didn’t have. He embraced me to fight through some adversities early,” Strawberry said. “I became a part of his family. It was just very personal to me.”
How much a part of the family? Strawberry helped babysit Dusan’s children.
“Geno kept me going, kept me focused on not looking up there and interacting with the people up there (in the stands),” Strawberry said. “That really helped me because I really didn’t want to play anymore, for a minute there.”
“He taught us so much about not just baseball but life in general and how you go about your business,” said McClendon, who went on to manage more than 1,100 major-league games. “You stand up and live by your word and learn to be a man of honor. It was pretty cool.”
For Strawberry, the suck season remains an important part of his story. That first experience of adversity helped him through the many later challenging periods he endured, both self-inflicted and not. It was a learning moment, he said, one that came up whenever his children wanted to give something up at a difficult time.
In ’82, playing for Dusan in Double-A Jackson, Miss., Strawberry broke through with 34 homers, 45 stolen bases and an OPS over 1.000. Two years after the suck season, Strawberry was the National League’s Rookie of the Year.
“I made the right decision to fight through the adversities and start believing,” Strawberry said. “I’m forever thankful for that and for real people. These are real people. These are not people that sugarcoat everything about you. But the people that showed me how to overcome.”
“It’s hard to believe,” Dusan said about watching the teenager he managed have his number retired. “I appreciate how he feels about me. I’m proud of him.”
(Photo of Darryl Strawberry batting for the
Even SEC football is jealous of what SEC basketball is doing right now.
The league went 14-1 this weekend and has been so dominant that you’re going to hear a lot of “The SEC is the first league to (fill in the blank)” for the next few months. My Top 25 ballot this week includes 10 SEC teams, with five in the top 10. Three others — Missouri, Arkansas and Texas — have arguments to be included. Just going by the numbers, Auburn could be the best team at this point of the season in the last decade. (More on the Tigers below.)
Remember all of that preseason talk about how many Big 12 teams were in the top 10 and how ridiculously good that league was going to be? Well, the SEC is walking the walk.
This is going to be one fun league race to watch.
Reminder: Below my Top 25, I give nuggets on an unspecified number of teams each week. So when a team appears in the table but not in the text below, that’s why. Scroll on for notes on Auburn, Tennessee, Iowa State, Florida, Kentucky, Kansas, UConn, Texas A&M and Dayton.
1. Auburn
How good has Auburn been? After running previously Top 25 Ohio State off the floor in a 91-53 win in Atlanta on Saturday, Auburn now has an efficiency margin of 35.01 at KenPom. KenPom has this fun sorting tool that allows you to see the ratings at any point in the season dating back to the 2011-12 season. Turns out, Auburn is his database’s best team on Dec. 15 in the last 14 seasons — by a lot.
Now, you’ll notice that the best team at this point in time doesn’t always win the national championship. Three of the last 14 teams that were No. 1 on Dec. 15 went on to win it all: 2011-12 Kentucky, 2017-18 Villanova and 2022-23 UConn. What we can assume is that Auburn is probably going to have a No. 1 seed; 2016-17 Duke is the only team with a plus-30 efficiency margin at this snapshot in time that did not end up a No. 1 seed.
You’ll also notice this year’s Tennessee and Duke teams are also in this top-10, which is another way of saying that in just about any other year, those teams would be No. 1 at this point.
So, Auburn has been really, really, ridiculously good this season. I’m not going to argue against anyone ranking Tennessee No. 1, especially after the Vols won at Illinois on Saturday. But the Tigers have been historically dominant so far.
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2. Tennessee
The Vols started to close the resume gap with Auburn in a 66-64 win over the Illini in Champaign. (The one thing Auburn is missing is an impressive road win. Technically, beating Houston in Houston didn’t count because the game was played at the Rockets’ arena.)
Tennessee showed the value of a strong bench in its win at Illinois. Its best two players, Chaz Lanier and Zakai Zeigler, both fouled out. Zeigler barely played the second half. Starting center Felix Okpara was also limited to nine minutes because of foul trouble, and he just didn’t really fit in this game. The Vols still found a way, mostly because sixth man Jordan Gainey stepped up to score 23 points, including the buzzer-beating game winner.
[Fran Fraschilla voice] A lesson for young guards: Be able to drive either direction. Gainey has had 12 drives to the bucket this season — seven to the right, five to the left — and has now converted four out of the five times he’s gone left. This play was going to allow him to go either direction. The Vols placed Cade Phillips near the top of the key and had him try to set a butt screen. He didn’t make any contact, but it was just another obstacle for the defense. Illinois was in a tricky spot from the start, with Gainey getting a running start and Kasparas Jakucionis backpedaling and eventually opening his hips when Gainey hit him with an in-and-out dribble.
Ideally, Illini big man Tomislav Ivisic would have tried to contest this shot, but he stopped to box out Phillips, who is one of the best offensive rebounders in the country. If the Illini had it to do over again, Kylan Boswell probably would have plugged that gap since he’s guarding Jahmai Mashack, whom the Illini cheated off all night. It’s hard to make those quick decisions in such a hectic setting, and credit to the Vols for knowing exactly what they wanted and executing it. That’s why you practice special situations. (Also, credit to Rick Barnes for the play call, one he got from legendary high school coach Morgan Wootten.)
Iowa State’s offense continues to hum along as one of the best in college basketball, which isn’t something most had on the preseason bingo card. One big boost to the Cyclones has been the passing of power forward Joshua Jefferson, who had a season-high seven assists to go along with 19 points and 10 rebounds in a 89-80 comeback win over Iowa on Thursday.
Jefferson is such a good passer because he stays composed in traffic and understands passing angles. Iowa was doubling the post, and Jefferson was welcoming that double. Watch how he takes a wide step to his left to pull the second defender further up the floor and create a better angle to feed Dishon Jackson.
This inbound is an example of a hectic situation that had to go off-script. This looked like it was designed to go to Jefferson, but he wasn’t able to get it as easily because Drew Thelwell (No. 3) was not where you’d expect him to be. Jefferson realized Iowa’s defense was misaligned, looked middle to assess and then made the skip pass to Nate Heise.
Jefferson always has great awareness of where the help is coming from. This was a smart and timely cut from Heise, as well.
This final Jefferson assist iced the game for the Cyclones. Iowa’s Josh Dix saw the short roll develop and came down from above the 3-point line to tag Jefferson. Again, Jefferson calmly assessed the floor, realized where Dix came from and got Curtis Jones a wide-open look:
Florida is the top-10 team you could most easily argue against because its schedule doesn’t compare to the others in this range. But the Gators have been dominant enough to justify their placement, off to a 10-0 start with every win by double-digits, and they have a star emerging in Walter Clayton. Averaging 23 points over the last four games, Clayton is one of the scariest volume scorers in the country because he can shoot with range and get it off quickly. During that four-game stretch, he has made 19 of 47 from 3-point range. Getting off 47 3s in four games and knocking them down at better than a 40 percent clip is an impressive feat.
A note to future opponents: Do not play a 1-3-1 zone when Clayton is in the game. Arizona State tried that twice on Saturday. This happened the first time:
And this happened the second time:
Clayton, by himself, is a zone buster.
6. Kentucky
Kentucky point guard Lamont Butler is arguably the team’s most important player because the Wildcats play faster when he’s on the floor. This is a team that thrives in transition: Kentucky scored 28 points on 14 transition opportunities against Louisville and is now scoring 1.32 points per transition opportunity, which is third-best in the country (per Synergy).
Butler is great at pitching it ahead, and he puts pressure on the defense with his speed, getting quick paint touches like this one that usually end in an easy bucket.
With Butler on the floor, Kentucky has an effective field goal percentage of 61.1 percent, per CBB Analytics. That’s higher than any eFG percentage in the history of KenPom, which dates back to 1997. In other words, Kentucky is a historically great offense with Butler on the floor.
Kansas looked like Kansas again in its win over NC State on Saturday. And if there’s a key to KU looking top-10 good compared to whatever it was against Creighton and Missouri, it’s Dajuan Harris Jr. and Zeke Mayo playing with confidence and making shots. Teams are usually willing to let Harris shoot, but the scouting report has been to try to take away Mayo. The Jayhawks need to find ways to get the South Dakota State transfer 3-point looks because in games when he has attempted five or more 3s — which has happened against NC State, Furman, Oakland, North Carolina and Howard — he has shot a solid 15 of 36 from 3 and KU has an efficiency of 123.3 in those games. That’d be the sixth-best offense in college hoops.
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13. UConn
Turns out the Huskies weren’t cooked. They now have three consecutive wins over top-40 KenPom teams (Baylor, Texas and Gonzaga), and that alone is Top 25 worthy. UConn is one of seven teams with at least three top 40 wins, joining Auburn (five wins), Marquette (four), Alabama (three), Kansas (three), Texas A&M (three) and Purdue (three).
Since the day after the Maui Invitational, UConn is the fifth-best team in college basketball, according to barttorvik.com. The schedule could also allow for the Huskies to keep climbing in the rankings over the next month-plus. They will likely be favored in their next 10 games. Credit to Dan Hurley and his players for turning things around so quickly. That Hurley swagger appears to be back.
14. Texas A&M
No one in college basketball is better during the one or two seconds that a shot is in the air than Texas A&M. The Aggies, who are the best offensive rebounding team in the country, should be the betting favorite to remain in that spot all season. Watch their effort when the shot is in the air:
Solomon Washington went about 40 feet to chase that board down, and even though the Aggies didn’t end up scoring, they took 45 seconds off that clock in that one possession, essentially icing the game. No matter where that ball bounced, the Aggies had someone in position to grab it. Whether it’s high-pointing a ball in the air or chasing down a long rebound, Buzz Williams has guys with the athleticism and desire to go get it.
Anthony Grant has had some great offensive teams at Dayton, but usually it’s the shooting that is the separator. This group is good in that category — ranking 24th in effective field goal percentage — but these Flyers take care of the basketball better than any of his previous teams. They are turning it over on only 13.1 percent of their possessions, and their aversion to turnovers helped them knock off Marquette on Saturday. Only three teams have had a turnover rate under 20 percent against the Golden Eagles this season. Dayton had the lowest (11.3), and Marquette is now 1-2 in those games.
Dropped out: Clemson, Wisconsin, Penn State.
Keeping an eye on: Memphis, Utah State, Drake, San Diego State, St. John’s, West Virginia, Missouri, Arkansas, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati.
(Photo: Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)
The Atlanta Falcons’ losing streak has finally come to an end, as Kirk Cousins & Co. picked up a much-needed win over the Las Vegas Raiders, 15-9, on Monday night.
Atlanta moves to 7-7 on the year, which is massive considering the tight NFC South race at the moment. Meanwhile, the Raiders continue to fall at 2-12.
It wasn’t the prettiest of wins, but at this point in the season, with three games remaining after this one, a victory is a victory.
Atlanta Falcons wide receiver Drake London (5) celebrates with wide receiver Darnell Mooney (1) after scoring a touchdown against the Las Vegas Raiders during the first quarter at Allegiant Stadium. (Stephen R. Sylvanie-Imagn Images)
The Falcons’ offense didn’t see the breakout performance it might have wanted, but at least Cousins threw his first touchdown for the first time in five games.
It was Drake London hauling in a 30-yard pass to get Atlanta on the board first, snapping a streak where Cousins had eight interceptions to zero touchdowns thrown.
But it was the only time the Falcons were able to find the end zone, as many drives stalled in Raiders territory leading to field goal attempts from Younghoe Koo.
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Koo was 2-of-3 on his attempts, but that would only make 13 points on offense.
On defense, the Falcons were having their way with Raiders quarterback Desmond Ridder, who was making the start against his former team in place of the injured Aidan O’Connell.
As the Falcons stopped the run game – they allowed 65 total yards all game with Sincere McCormick ruled out with an injury early on – Ridders was forced to throw and he tossed an interception while being sacked three times.
Atlanta was also able to make Alexander Mattison fumble, as they continued to make plays to flip the field.
Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Desmond Ridder (10) carries the ball against the Atlanta Falcons in the first half at Allegiant Stadium. (Kirby Lee-Imagn Images)
But this game, though a slog, ultimately came down to the final play off Ridder’s hands as Las Vegas had the ball down six needing a touchdown and extra point to win it.
Ridder threw two Hail Mary’s to the end zone, but the first one went incomplete and Falcons star safety Jessie Bates III was the recipient of the final one to secure the victory.
So, on the stat sheet, Cousins was only 11-for-17 with 112 yards. He also threw another interception to go along with his touchdown.
For the Falcons, the ground game was superior, with Bijan Robinson carrying it 22 times for 125 yards and Tyler Allgeier adding 43 yards on 12 carries.
Atlanta Falcons quarterback Kirk Cousins (18) throws the ball against the Las Vegas Raiders in the first half at Allegiant Stadium. (Kirby Lee-Imagn Images)
As for the Raiders, Jakobi Meyers was the leader in receiving yards with 59 to account for a big chunk of Ridder’s 208 yards on 23-of-38 passing. Ameer Abdullah, the lone touchdown scorer for the Raiders, also had seven catches for 58 yards.
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The UCLA women’s basketball team was in complete control with a 26-point lead against Cal Poly San Luis Obispo when the third quarter ended, but that didn’t stop Londynn Jones from showcasing her scoring skills.
On the first possession of the fourth quarter, Jones slashed her way to the hoop to score on a layup, then drained a fastbreak three-pointer on the Bruins’ next possession to give UCLA a 31-point lead. By then, any hope of a Mustangs comeback was wiped out.
The top-ranked Bruins wrapped up their home non-conference schedule in familiar fashion Monday, dominating in a 69-37 victory.
UCLA (11-0) was without its best player — junior center Lauren Betts was held out because of a minor lower body injury — and her absence was felt early. The Bruins shot an abysmal 12.5% from the field in the second quarter as Cal Poly (4-6) cut the Bruins’ lead to nine points.
UCLA’s Timea Gardiner, left, and Kendall Dudley squeeze out Cal Poly guard Ashley Hiraki for a loose ball Monday.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
UCLA guard Kiki Rice, right, is called for an offensive foul on Cal Poly guard Ashley Hiraki in the second half Monday.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
But the Bruins’ depth helped them overcome the absence of Betts, who is averaging a double-double and is the Big Ten’s third-leading scorer. Janiah Barker finished with 12 points and 13 rebounds, Timea Gardiner had 11 points and six rebounds and Jones and Angela Dugalić each finished with 12 points.
The road will get tougher for the Bruins. They face Creighton at Chase Center in San Francisco on Friday before returning to Pauley Pavilion to play Nebraska on Dec. 29.
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