Sports Briefs: Strawberry Wields Forever

Darryl Strawberry seduced me.

It was 1987. I was 8 years old. I was not a baseball fan. The game had a massive and protruding Krispy Kreme Factor that was nearing golf's level. And this was when Irwin Fletcher was managing the somewhat-local Texas Rangers. No one could pull off a fake mustache disguise better than Bobby Valentine.

I liked football and basketball from the perspective that . . . I did. My classmates and I often claimed we were playing football during recess, using a wadded up spelling test as our pigskin.

And while I enjoy shooting my bad test grades into trash cans (known as Wasteketball), my parents forced me to attend basketball camp each summer as a child. I could not have been more melancholy attending those camps, unless my water bottle had been filled with castor oil.

I did enjoy watching basketball on TV, though, and had a Nerf Hoop that stayed on my closet door, until I attempted to hang from it as a teenager.

Baseball, though, seemed to require some sort of skill--and that was just to get a bat, ball, glove, batting gloves, hat and package of Big League Chew all for under $100. In fact, after surveying a field of baseball players, it was decided that participants wore more equipment than Genghis Khan.

I finally acquired all the needed equipment through trade (Sample: "I'll give you two shin guards for one elbow pad"), though I still needed teammates to play with. There was no one-on-one in baseball. Though I made countless attempts with ghost men.

So baseball had two strikes (chuckle, chuckle) against it.

But there was that name . . . Strawberry.

Whereas football and basketball could not have been more entertaining unless players wore soiled underwear on their heads, those sports were filled with not-exactly-exhilarating surnames like Jordan and Johnson. This could be why Gwyneth Paltrow named her daughter after a fruit.

Likewise, baseball had a name that made me beckon for a bowl of said name, covered in powdered sugar.