Sports Briefs: Strawberry Wields Forever

It was 1987. I was 8 years old. I was not a baseball fan. The game had a massive and protruding Krispy Kreme Factor that was nearing golf's level. And this was when Irwin Fletcher was managing the somewhat-local Texas Rangers. No one could pull off a fake mustache disguise better than Bobby Valentine.

I liked football and basketball from the perspective that . . . I did. My classmates and I often claimed we were playing football during recess, using a wadded up spelling test as our pigskin.

And while I enjoy shooting my bad test grades into trash cans (known as Wasteketball), my parents forced me to attend basketball camp each summer as a child. I could not have been more melancholy attending those camps, unless my water bottle had been filled with castor oil.

I did enjoy watching basketball on TV, though, and had a Nerf Hoop that stayed on my closet door, until I attempted to hang from it as a teenager.

Baseball, though, seemed to require some sort of skill--and that was just to get a bat, ball, glove, batting gloves, hat and package of Big League Chew all for under $100. In fact, after surveying a field of baseball players, it was decided that participants wore more equipment than Genghis Khan.

I finally acquired all the needed equipment through trade (Sample: "I'll give you two shin guards for one elbow pad"), though I still needed teammates to play with. There was no one-on-one in baseball. Though I made countless attempts with ghost men.

So baseball had two strikes (chuckle, chuckle) against it.

But there was that name . . . Strawberry.

Whereas football and basketball could not have been more entertaining unless players wore soiled underwear on their heads, those sports were filled with not-exactly-exhilarating surnames like Jordan and Johnson. This could be why Gwyneth Paltrow named her daughter after a fruit.

Likewise, baseball had a name that made me beckon for a bowl of said name, covered in powdered sugar.

Though I only collected Starting Lineup figures of NFL and NBA players, I often picked up the packages of MLB players, just seeing what I refused to purchase. I read Strawberry's name on the back of one of the packages and that he played for the New York Mets.

The Mets (before incorporating black into their ensemble) had the coolest uniforms and logo in beisbol.

And on one shopping trip to Target (when I was out of school sick, no less), I allowed my mom to purchase a 1989 Starting Lineup figure of Strawberry figure for me.

This was the precursor to me following the Mets, buying figures of Dwight Gooden, Gregg Jefferies and hundreds of others, becoming a baseball fan, ditching the Mets and following the Rangers and ultimately eating Pop-Tarts injected with steroids, in order for me to look like Barry Bonds. This resulted in me growing a second head.

If Darryl's last name was Blueberry instead of Strawberry, I most likely would either be looking forward to participating as an athlete in Season 15 of "Pros vs. Joes" or being stuffed and displayed in a Ripley's Believe It Or Not for having sprouted nine heads out of my torso.

Fortunately, though, I was able to disguise my second head with Coach Valentine's discarded mustache.