Union Square Station
Malone
4/4

Get Off Him

Leave Darryl Strawberry alone.

Yes, leave him alone. Stop prosecuting him for possession of drugs. Stop forcing him into rehabilitation programs. Stop making him wear an electronic collar on his leg. Leave the poor bastard alone.

He did nothing that students, Wall Street traders, lawyers, accountants, and slobs of all kinds are doing, semi-openly in clubs and bars or in their cars or dormitories, or on street corners, each and every day while Strawberry has been dragged like a dog tied to the bumper of a car through the media and the courts for the awful crime of being human.

So what if he's an addict? So far, it has cost him his career, his fortune, his health, his reputation, and it will probably cost him his family and maybe his life. That's about enough consequences for his decisions, don't you think? Does he have to be treated like the bleeding Unabomber as well?

If Jeb Bush, the Governor of Florida, has a lick of common sense and a dash of mercy, he'll stop this farce and commute Strawberry's sentence, set him free from house arrest, probation, and the sadistic court proceedings he'll be forced to grovel before one more time. Bush can do it on the humanitarian grounds that Strawberry has cancer, and on the purely human grounds that at this stage of his life Strawberry should be free to do what he wants.

And Strawberry, who is obviously as troubled as he is being purposely humiliated, can get on with his life such as it has become. If he's smart, he'll stay away from drugs, or at least stay away from cops, hopefully both, and try to manage his cancer treatments and his compulsions according to his own best lights.

Yes, I know that at this point in this country it's like pissing into the wind to hold out hope that common sense will prevail in a matter like this, to even suggest that the police, the prosecutors, and the courts be invited to get the hell out of a life into which they've moved in and settled down, but let's not go another day thinking that what has been done to Strawberry is justice. It's not.

Darryl has always been something of a wild reed. He landed on the New York Sport's scene back in the early 1980's with the most sweeping and powerful baseball swing ever seen on a rookie. He ran like a thoroughbred. He swaggered. And he rode along on the same party scene that swept up celebrities, secretaries, doctors, and, yes, cops alike. He was no more swept away by drugs than Mickey Mantle and Billy Martin were by booze. But you can bet that Mickey was given more free passes in a year for whatever messes he got himself into than Darryl would see in a lifetime.

When Strawberry walked out of his rehabilitation center the other day it wasn't only drugs he was looking for. He was looking for his own life back. He was looking to run wild for ten minutes without someone shoving chemotherapy into his veins while someone else studied his urine while someone else stared up his ass.

If there's anyone out there who doesn't understand that, well, he or she doesn't know where they left the wild part of their own lives.

For those who think it's important to "make an example" of a broken down ballplayer with cancer, let me assure them that the only example on parade in this case is legal overkill and legalized sadism. Darryl Strawberry's life should be his own, not the proprietary concern of social workers, judges, hand-wringing sports writers, self-righteous fans, or dyspeptic judges.

Leave Darryl Strawberry alone. Get off him.

© Union Square Journal 2001

Previously by Malone...

They Ran the White House Like a Chop Shop (02/28/01)

Hannibal: The Silence of the Critics (01/16/01)

Reagan's Two Terrible Mistakes (02/06/01)

The Return of the Hero (01/19/01)

The Hero of Chappaquiddick (01/11/01)

Real Millennium Strange (01/03/01)

Smoke 'em if you got 'em (12/21/00)

Union Square Station (12/11/00)

Union Square Station (12/3 back to 11/24/00)