Mets legend Darryl Strawberry reflects on his life and career ahead of Saturday’s retirement ceremony for his No. 18 at Citi Field. As told to The Post’s Mike Puma.
My life was near rock bottom as I entered a correctional facility in Gainesville, Fla., in the spring of 2002 to begin serving a sentence for violating probation on cocaine possession charges.
I was in an empty state of mind. It wasn’t like I didn’t have great success playing Major League Baseball. I had success, and how do you fall so far? It’s the pitfalls of life that take a person out. I am just grateful this pitfall stopped me instead of taking me completely out, because I could have easily been out of the whole picture — and I mean death.
When you are in addiction and broken, a lot of folks don’t return from those places. I look at myself, and that time spent incarcerated was part of the journey to slow down my process so I wouldn’t die.
My focus back then was becoming the person that I knew my mother raised me to be. I was raised right but made wrong choices, and I always say: You can pick your sins, but you can’t pick your consequences.
Consequences are real, and that’s for all of us. It doesn’t mean you roll over and die because you have got consequences, but it means you have to pay a price for things, and return and straighten out things in your life and become a different person.