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
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The fiancée of Buffalo Sabres star Rasmus Dahlin received a roaring welcome home in her first appearance of the season Wednesday night, months after undergoing a lifesaving transplant after she suffered heart failure during a vacation in France.
Carolina Matovac, 25, was shown on the jumbotron during Wednesday’s game against the Boston Bruins. Fans cheered as she waved, and Dahlin, who was also shown on the screen in a split, cracked a smile at the crowd’s reaction.
Carolina Matovac and Rasmus Dahlin of the Buffalo Sabres pose on the red carpet at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Feb. 1, 2024. (Nicole Osborne/NHLI via Getty Images)
“Welcome home to Carolina Matovac, the fiancée of our captain Rasmus Dahlin,” the arena announcer said. “She is back with us, attending her first game of the season. The Sabrehood loves you, Carolina.”
In an open letter to fans in September, Dahlin shared that Matovac had been feeling ill for several days during their trip, which led to her experiencing “major heart failure.”
“Fortunately, she received CPR on multiple occasions, and up to a couple of hours at a time to keep her alive, which ultimately saved her life. Without her receiving lifesaving CPR, the result would have been unimaginable. It is hard to even think about the worst-case scenario,” he wrote at the time.
Rasmus Dahlin (of the Buffalo Sabres prepares for a faceoff during a game against the New York Rangers at KeyBank Center in Buffalo, N.Y., Oct. 9, 2025. (Bill Wippert/NHLI via Getty Images)
Matovac remained on life support for weeks before receiving the transplant in France.
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In January, Matovac revealed she was pregnant when her heart failed, adding that her unborn child was the reason she went to the hospital initially.
“You will always hold a special place in our hearts as our first baby, even though we never had the chance to meet. Our love for you is endless,” she wrote in a post on Instagram on what was supposed to be her due date.
“Though you didn’t get to experience this world, you played a vital role in ensuring that I could continue to be a part of it.”
Buffalo Sabres defenseman Rasmus Dahlin follows the puck in the first period against the Ottawa Senators at the Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on April 1, 2025. (Marc DesRosiers/Imagn Images)
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Despite taking some time to be with Matovac as she recovered in their native Sweden, Dahlin is second on the team with 65 points, and the Sabres are on the cusp of ending an NHL-record 14-season playoff drought.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Transgender women athletes will be excluded from the Olympics beginning with the 2028 Los Angeles Games after the International Olympic Committee implemented a new eligibility policy on Thursday.
Eligibility for women’s competition will be determined by a one-time, mandatory genetics test, according to the IOC. The test requires screening through saliva, a cheek swab or a blood sample.
No woman who transitioned from being born male competed at the 2024 Paris Summer Games, and it is unclear if any transgender women currently compete at an Olympic level. The new policy, however, aligns with President Trump’s executive order banning transgender athletes from participating in women’s or girls’ sporting events in the United States.
The eligibility policy approved by the IOC is not retroactive and does not apply to recreational sports programs.
The IOC said in a statement that it “protects fairness, safety and integrity in the female category.
“Eligibility for any female category event at the Olympic Games or any other IOC event, including individual and team sports, is now limited to biological females.”
Until now, individual sports federations determined whether transgender women were allowed to compete in women’s categories, with the IOC providing only recommendations. Sports that placed restrictions on transgender athletes included track and field, boxing, swimming and rugby.
The IOC Executive Board approved the new policy after 18 months of study. It mirrors the guidelines approved by the World Athletics Council in June, determining eligibility for the female category through screening for the absence or presence of the SRY gene.
The IOC policy leans on scientific research that considers the presence of the SRY gene fixed for life and represents evidence that an athlete has experienced male sex development. Athletes who screen negative for the SRY gene will be eligible to compete in women’s sports.
SRY (which stands for sex-determining region Y gene) is found on the Y chromosome. In the cell, it binds to other DNA, leading to testis formation, according to the National Library of Medicine. Even men who lack Y chromosomes still have a copy of the SRY region on one of their X chromosomes, which accounts for their maleness.
Jane Thornton, the IOC medical and scientific director, last year presented to the executive board findings that transgender athletes born with male sexual markers retained physical advantages, even those that had received treatment to reduce testosterone.
Kirsty Coventry, a former gold-medal Olympics swimmer from Zimbabwe, was elected a year ago as the first woman president of the IOC. She campaigned on the importance of protecting the women’s category.
“At the Olympic Games, even the smallest margins can be the difference between victory and defeat,” Coventry said Thursday in a statement. “So, it is absolutely clear that it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category.”
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Los Angeles Rams star Puka Nacua has been sued for alleged assault and battery by a woman who alleges he bit her on the shoulder on New Year’s Eve and made an antisemitic remark.
The lawsuit was filed this week in Los Angeles, according to TMZ. The suit also cites gender violence and negligence.
Plaintiff Madison Atiabi and her attorney, Joseph Kar, claim Nacua made an antisemitic exclamation that emotionally distressed her when they were together in Century City.
She says Nacua bit her and left teeth marks on her shoulder when they were in a van together later in the night, and she claims Nacua also bit her friend’s thumb.
Puka Nacua of the Los Angeles Rams celebrates after a touchdown during the fourth quarter against the Indianapolis Colts at SoFi Stadium on Sept. 28, 2025 in Inglewood, California. (Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)
Nacua’s attorney, Levi McCathern, has already strongly denied Nacua made any antisemitic statements. He described the bites as “horseplay.”
McCathern, said “the whole claim is nothing more than a shakedown attempt” and that the bite “left nothing more than a temporary mark,” according to TMZ.
Nacua previously apologized for performing an “antisemitic” act on a YouTube stream in December. Nacua discussed touchdown celebrations on YouTuber Adin Ross’ stream.
RAMS STAR PUKA NACUA ACCUSED OF BITING WOMAN, MAKING ANTISEMITIC REMARKS: REPORT
NFL Network reporter Jamie Erdahl interviews Los Angeles Rams wide receiver Puka Nacua after a game against the Arizona Cardinals at SoFi Stadium Dec. 28, 2024, in Inglewood, Calif. (Kirby Lee/Imagn Images)
Many, however, believed the celebration perpetuated a harmful anti-Jewish stereotype.
In the video, Ross instructed Nacua to spike the ball, flex and then rub his hands together. Ross, who is Jewish, has referred to the movement as his own “dance” or “emote.”
Nacua received pushback and issued an apology.
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Puka Nacua of the Los Angeles Rams runs downfield during the second half against the San Francisco 49ers at SoFi Stadium Oct. 2, 2025, in Inglewood, Calif. (Brooke Sutton/Getty Images)
“When I appeared the other day on a social media livestream, it was suggested to me to perform a specific movement as part of my next touchdown celebration. At the time, I had no idea this act was antisemitic in nature and perpetuated harmful stereotypes against Jewish people,” Nacua said in a “Stand Up to Jewish Hate” graphic.
“I deeply apologize to anyone who was offended by my actions as I do not stand for any form of racism, bigotry or hate of another group of people.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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