PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. (AP) -Darryl Strawberry understands what Alex Rodriguez is going through.
On his first day at spring training this year as an instructor with the New York Mets, Strawberry said he would have been tempted to use performance-enhancing drugs in his playing days.
“In our nature, we are competitive creatures, and we have a tremendous drive and high tolerance,” Strawberry said Tuesday. “I’m not saying that was the right thing to do, but people ask me, if I was faced with it, what would I have done? If that was going on in the era of the ’80s, it probably would have been in my system, too.”
Strawberry hit 335 homers and had 1,000 RBIs during a 17-year career started with the Mets in 1983 and ended with the Yankees in 1999 – in the midst of the steroids era.
“It was late in the game,” he said. “If you would have caught me when I was 24, 25, in the middle of my career – I was naive, stupid, just like Alex said.”
e during baseball’s anonymous 2003 survey. Strawberry hasn’t spoken directly with Rodriguez, but has passed on messages of encouragement through Yankees contacts.
“It’s unfortunate, but that’s what happens when you play in New York,” Strawberry said. “A lot of times everyone is going to pick on the biggest player, and he is the biggest player in the game. He is a great player, regardless of what people say.”
Strawberry thinks Rodriguez now has an opportunity to help teach young players to learn from his mistake.
At spring training with the Mets through March 10, Strawberry hopes the team will learn from its second straight September collapse. He compared the situation to that of the 1986 Mets, who won the World Series following a pair of second-place finishes.
“We came out the gates playing well from Day 1,” Strawberry said. “We knew we had a special team, that we were in a position to win, and we just needed to go out and put it all together as a group. That’s the most important thing. This group they have here is putting it together as a group.”
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