Cindy and I were blessed a week ago when we attended the annual Fellowship of Athletes (FCA) banquet in Gainesville. The guest speaker was Darryl Strawberry, who I believe was the most inspirational Christian speaker I have ever heard in my life! For those who may not know what made Darryl famous, it was his professional baseball career. In the 1980 free-agent draft, the NY Mets selected Darryl Strawberry as their first pick. Strawberry had a successful professional baseball career from 1983–1999, playing most notably for the Mets. He played for four World Champion teams, one with the New York Mets, and three with the New York Yankees. He also played in nine All-Star games, five of which were in consecutive years. It would seem that Darryl had a dream baseball career by almost any baseball standard!
However, according to the ESPN Classic Summary of Strawberry Career, What he didn’t achieve in baseball was more the story of Darryl Strawberry’s career than what he actually accomplished. His 335 home runs and 1,000 RBI seem impressive until one considers how many more he might have recorded had he avoided drugs and alcohol. Although Darryl never made the professional baseball Hall of Fame, he was elected to the NY Mets Hall of Fame in 2010. The Mets retired his number 18 jersey in recognition of his accomplishments with the team.
Darryl’s life growing up was a mess mainly because he had a father who was never there for him in any fatherly manner. That led Darryl to mistreat women, alcohol, and drugs throughout his teenage years and over his entire baseball career. However, Darryl had two strong advocates in his life that made all the difference eventually for him. The first was his mother, who it turned out prayed every day for Darryl to find God. Darryl never knew this until after his mother had died, and Darryl’s sister showed him his mother’s daily diary.
Darryl’s life then also began to change for the better when he met the woman who would become his third wife, Tracy Boulware, in 2003. Darryl gave her all the credit for continuing to hound him to become a better person and to give his life to God. According to the Sarasota Herald-Journal article published in 2015 about Darryl and Tracy, One thing that struck me about her: She was kind and compassionate. She never talked about my baseball career. Everybody else wanted to talk about my baseball life and how great I was. She thought it was just foolish. She thought, ‘This man is dying, and people want to talk about him as a baseball player’… She started saying we needed to get our life right and get in church. She was reading the Bible every morning and studying… I realized right there there’s something really wrong with my life, and I needed to do something about it.
Darryl and Tracy married in 2006 and have both been Godly preachers and Christian leaders ever since.
During his 35-minute presentation to the FCA audience, he described his life as mainly one of drugs and alcohol and missed opportunities to be a better father and husband. Then he met Tracy and he eventually became the man she, and Darryl’s mother, knew he could be.
Darryl told us that he travels about 270 days a year preaching God’s word. In the 2015 article published about them, Darryl said God said, ‘You’re going to preach,’ and I said, “I can’t preach.” He said, ‘The Holy Spirit is going to preach. He’s going to teach you.’
I took two main messages from Darryl’s presentation – (1) never give up on a human soul, keep praying for them to find God, and (2) praise God constantly for all He has done for each of us!