The dad calls collect. He calls collect every two weeks, and sometimes the mom is dying to say, "We will not accept the charges. She does home fore closures for a living, and you've got to be cold to do that job. And that mom can be Fargo, North Dakota cold. Especially when it comes to the dad calling collect. From prison. She's got a lot of bones to pick with that dad, but No. Their boy turned 17 last summer, and he still won't tell anyone his first name.
It's her own fault for agreeing to name him Darryl Strawberry Jr. Cocaine had always been Darryl Sr. He was arrested for solicitation of prostitution, and when his year-old daughter, Diamond, heard about it, she asked her grandma, "Nana, what's prostitution? Which is why he spent much of ninth and 10th grade avoiding school, avoiding roll call, avoiding this question from his teachers: Is Darryl Strawberry present?
That's a hell of a name to carry around, and he kept seeing it in print. He read in the paper that his father broke probation six times. He read in the paper that his father, while in rehab, traded autographed baseballs for cigarettes. The boy had some of his dad's baseballs too, but he never would have traded them in a trillion years.
When he was little-we're talking kindergarten age-he'd traded away his dad's baseball card, then cried about it, apologized to his dad about it.
He idolized his dad back then. Played baseball every day. Wore No. But that was over now, and on his 17th birthday the other Darryl Strawberry waited for a collect call that never came. Her name is Lisa Watkins, and she divorced his butt nine years ago, deservedly so. The only problem is, she still bad-mouths him, wears him out, tells people he's no good-even tells it to their own son. But this is the I'll-get-you-back in her, and their son has had to listen to it for years.
