In the depths of despair, one of modern baseball’s most feared hitters and long-tormented souls found Jesus Christ.
Now, having devoted his life’s second act to spreading God’s word, the one-time MLB superstar did not allow a sudden medical emergency to prevent him from glorifying God.
After surviving a heart attack on Monday, former New York Mets outfielder Darryl Strawberry expressed gratitude from his hospital bed.
On the social media platform Instagram, Strawberry posted a photo with two women, including wife, Tracy, at his hospital bedside. The women each held one of his hands, touching their foreheads to his, while Strawberry smiled.
“Praising God for His amazing grace and loving mercy in saving my life this evening from a heart attack,” the outfielder-turned-Christian-minister wrote.
Then, after thanking hospital staff, Strawberry, who turned 62 on Tuesday, reiterated his faith in the ultimate source of healing.
“Your prayers are so absolutely appreciated as I continue to recover, in Jesus Name!” he added.
Finally, Strawberry concluded with the appropriate hashtag #savedbyHisgrace.
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Those who doubt redemption through Jesus Christ have never read or heard Strawberry’s story.
In a 2015 interview with southwest Florida’s Sarasota Herald-Tribune, the former outfielder described a depth of despair that would defy belief from those who have never experienced it.
After years of substance abuse and numerous legal troubles that resulted in jail time, Strawberry told a judge in November 2000 that he had “no desire to live anymore.”
Then, at a 2003 Narcotics Anonymous convention in Florida, Strawberry met Tracy, a former drug user herself and twice-divorced.
Though they began dating, they continued to struggle in various ways. At one point, in fact, Strawberry and Tracy lived in her parents’ basement in Missouri.
One day, she decided that things had to change. And she knew how.
“She started saying we needed to get our life right and get in church. She was reading the Bible every morning and studying, and she just woke up one morning and she said, ‘We’re not having sex anymore,'” Strawberry recalled.
That “defining moment” set the troubled former outfielder on a journey toward God.
In 20o6, Darryl and Tracy married. Five years later, they founded Strawberry Ministries.
Today, according to their website, “Finding Your Way,” Darryl “travels the country speaking and bringing a message of hope and restoration in Christ.”
Readers and baseball fans of a certain age will remember Strawberry as a transcendent talent from the 1980s.
The former outfielder starred for the Mets from 1983 to 1990 before moving on to other teams.
He hit 335 home runs in a career that lasted until 1999.
But that number tells only part of the story. From 1991 to 1999, Strawberry languished as an oft-injured player for the Los Angeles Dodgers, San Francisco Giants and New York Yankees.
Contemporary accounts of his career emphasized poor effort and unrealized potential.
“He can be the most exciting player in the game when he feels like it,” former catcher and teammate Mackey Sasser once said, according to ESPN. “The situation is whether or not he feels like it.”
And things grew worse over time. Of his 335 home runs, only 55 came in the eight seasons he played from 1992 onward.
In other words, he was on a pace in his early years to be among the game’s elite long-ball hitters. A healthy and motivated Strawberry might even have challenged Babe Ruth’s then-record 714 career home runs.
Anecdotally, as a teenager in 1989 I visited Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, then home to MLB’s Expos, now the Washington Nationals. And I vividly recall the feeling of awe I experienced when a stadium employee pointed out the exact spot where one of Strawberry’s titanic home runs had hit the stadium roof On Opening Day of the previous season, April 4, 1988.
Readers may view that mammoth home run below.
But those are only athletic exploits. Today, Strawberry does something far more important when he talks to people about Jesus.
In fact, as he told the Herald-Tribune in 2015, the former outfielder appreciated Tracy the moment he met her precisely because she did not treat him like a baseball star.
“One thing that struck me about her: She was kind and compassionate. She never talked about my baseball career. Everybody else wanted to talk about my baseball and how great I was. She thought it was just foolish. She thought, ‘This man is dying, and people want to talk about him as a baseball player,'” Strawberry recalled.
But he did not die of drugs and despair. Nor did he die of Monday’s heart attack.
And he knows exactly why: #savedbyHisgrace.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
