An eight-time MLB All-Star and three-time World Series champion, perhaps the only thing Darryl Strawberry is more well-known for than his storied baseball career is his trouble-making party boy persona off the field.
But since retiring in 2000, he’s turned his life around, becoming a much more positive influence in baseball, yet his old life still followed him.
Following his retirement, he had mounting financial issues that came from his addictive lifestyle and the high prices that came with rehab facilities, leading to tax issues.
But now, his old friend Donald Trump has wiped the slate clean.
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“President Trump has approved a pardon for Darryl Strawberry, three-time World Series champion and eight-time MLB All-Star,” the White House said. “Mr. Strawberry served time and paid back taxes after pleading guilty to one count of tax evasion. Following his career, Mr. Strawberry found faith in Christianity and has been sober for over a decade – he has become active in ministry and started a recovery center which still operates today.”
It helps close a chapter in Strawberry’s life that he’s been battling since the 1990s, which includes several MLB suspensions.
The first came in February 1995 — when he was fresh off getting charged for tax evasion— testing positive for cocaine during the offseason, leading to a 60-day suspension and an agreement that he’d enter a rehab center.
Then, in 2000, when he was trying to make a comeback with the New York Yankees, he tested positive for cocaine again, which basically ended his career.
Strawberry thanked the president on Instagram, saying the pardon closed “this part of my life, allowing me to be truly free and clean from all of my past.”
He recounts the moment he found out in a personal call from the president earlier in the week.
Of the phone call, he says, “I answered, and to my amazement, the lady on the line said, ‘Darryl Strawberry, you have a call from the President of the United States, Donald Trump.’ I put it on speakerphone with my wife nearby, and President Trump spoke warmly about my baseball days in NYC, praising me as one the greatest player of the ‘80s and celebrating the Mets. Then, he told me he was granting me a full pardon from my past.”
Trump’s connection to Strawberry is nothing new, as the former MLB player was a contestant on
The Celebrity Apprentice.
Strawberry adds that “This has nothing to do with politics — it’s about a Man, President Trump, caring deeply for a friend.”
Despite his negating the politics, see social media’s reaction to the pardon below.
