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, “sucking season.”
The sucking season was, at the time, the most challenging in Strawberry's life. It was the season in which he first faced failure on the baseball diamond. It was the season in which he first heard racist insults from the stands. It was the season in which he came very close to leaving baseball and hanging up his jersey forever.
And so, when Strawberry's No. 18 is retired June 1 at Citi Field, it's only fitting that among his guests of honor will be the two people who pushed him through the down season: manager Gene Dusan and teammate Lloyd McClendon.
“Everyone looks at success, but I look at the people who had a big impact on me,” Strawberry said. “There would be no way I would be on the field with my number retired if it wasn't for people like them who helped me get through the most challenging and difficult times at a young age.”
The first month of Strawberry's first full season in professional baseball had not gone well. Failing on the field for the first time is difficult enough for any player. Strawberry had several additional spotlights on him.
The previous 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 city in southern Virginia. So when he had trouble on the field, he heard it from the Carolina League crowd. Home games, away games, any game: Strawberry heard the worst.
“They called me all kinds of names and said negative things,” Strawberry said. “You're talking about the deep south. I thought, '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 did not fully embrace us black people,” McClendon said. “They used to pass the hat to anyone who hit a home run. We hit home runs and got nothing.”
In early May, Strawberry wanted to take his bat to the stands, he said. Instead, he took his bat home.
“I just left,” he said. “I went AWOL.”
“He was gone for a couple of days,” Dusan said. “It was worrying that he left. I felt like I would come back. “I knew he would come back.”
Instead of chasing Strawberry, Dusan gave him space. He didn't even tell the higher-ups in the Mets front office.
“If I did that today, I would get fired,” he chuckled. “Things were different in the early '80s.”
Two days later, Strawberry returned to the park, thanks in large part to his relationships with Dusan and McClendon. Strawberry and McClendon had bonded the previous year in rookie baseball in Kingsport, Tennessee, when they roomed and supported each other during their first summer in the South.
“I guess we had to protect each other,” McClendon said.
Lloyd McClendon, pictured in 2019 as Tigers coach, was an important figure in Darryl Strawberry's early professional years. (Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire via Associated Press)
And McClendon hadn't been there at the start of the 1981 season in Lynchburg because of a broken hand he suffered in spring training. But when Strawberry left the team, that rehab period became much shorter for McClendon.
“When I saw him in the park, I was happy,” Strawberry said, “to see a face and someone of color like me.”
Dusan made sure the two moved back in together, even though McClendon had married.
“You have to take care of him,” McClendon recalled Dusan saying, “because he's not going to make it if you don't.”
“I don't know if he was old enough to be a mentor at the time,” said McClendon, who was 22 that season, “but he certainly was a friend and a voice I could talk to. Whatever little wisdom he had, I tried to pass it on.”
And Dusan's tough, loving approach as a manager was what Strawberry needed at the time. The day Strawberry returned to the club, Dusan was not exactly happy.
“I'm glad you're back. I'm glad you're healthy,” he told the player. “We have to go to work.”
From that day on, Dusan recalled, Strawberry became the best player he had ever coached.
“He was there every day to hit more,” Dusan said. “Once he put in the effort, he was the man.”
There was a reason Strawberry was always there to give him more hits.
“Let me put it this way: In a good way, Gene was a pain in the ass for Darryl and me,” McClendon said. “When we were on tour, he would wake us up at 8 every morning and we would go to the stadium. 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 some adversity early,” Strawberry said. “I became part of his family. He was very personal to me.”
How much is he part of the family? Strawberry helped take care of Dusan's children.
“Geno kept me going, kept me focused on not looking up and interacting with the people that were there (in the stands),” Strawberry said. “That helped me a lot because I really didn't want to play anymore, not even for a minute.”
“He taught us a lot, not just about baseball, but about life in general and how to do 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. He was great.”
For Strawberry, sucking season remains an important part of its story. That first experience of adversity helped him overcome the many subsequent challenging periods he endured, both self-inflicted and not. It was a learning moment, he said, that came every time his children wanted to give up something during a difficult time.
In 1982, playing for Dusan in Double-A Jackson, Mississippi, Strawberry broke out with 34 home runs, 45 stolen bases and an OPS over 1.000. Two years after the poor season, Strawberry was the National League Rookie of the Year.
“I made the right decision to fight the odds and start believing,” Strawberry said. “I will be forever grateful for that and for real people. These are real people. These are not people who sugarcoat everything about you. But the people who showed me how to win.”
“It's hard to believe,” Dusan said of seeing the teenager who managed to get his number retired. “I appreciate how you feel about me. I'm proud of him.”
(Photo of Darryl Strawberry batting for the
