SARASOTA – It was left to Darryl Strawberry, Davey Johnson’s “prodigal son,” to recall at the ex-Met manager’s memorial service yesterday how it took a “great person” with a special temperament and utmost confidence to lead the raucous party animal Mets to the 1986 world championship.
Standing at the podium before a small gathering of Johnson’s family and friends at the Sarasota Seventh-Day Adventist Church that included his former ’86 Met teammates Rafael Santana and Dave Magadan, Strawberry, who had his own periodic stormy clashes with Johnson during their ‘80s tenure together at Shea Stadium, expressed thanks now for having had Davey a part of his life.
Those were heady, wild and crazy times, but as Darryl said emphatically: “Davey was the only one who could’ve handled us. He was not just a good man. He was a great man, confident in his own ability and that confidence rubbed off on us.”
Remembering how in ’86 spring training Johnson touched off a media firestorm by declaring the Mets, who had finished second with 98 wins to the Cardinals in NL East in 1985, were not only going to win in ’86 but they were going to “dominate.”
“The media thought he was crazy,” Strawberry said, “but he said that because he knew what kind of team he had.”
Strawberry, who is now an ordained minister as well as a drug counselor, was chosen by Johnson’s widow, Susan, to be the featured speaker at the service, a request he eagerly accepted even though it required him to fly in early in the morning from New York where he had been a participant in the Mets’ Oldtimers Day festivities on Saturday.
“That’s why I’m here,” Strawberry said. “I came here to celebrate Davey.”
Johnson, who died September 5 at age 82, was fired by the Mets 42 games into the 1990 season and that winter Strawberry departed as a free agent to the Dodgers. Both of them went through a lot in the years after — Strawberry with his drug abuse and income tax evasion that landed him a stint in prison, and Johnson in four subsequent successful managerial tenures that all nevertheless ended badly — but they gradually formed a special bond.
A couple of months ago Strawberry visited Johnson in Sarasota for what he knew was the last time. “We had a lot of laughs, but I knew Davy was hurting,” Strawberry said, “At one point I said to him: ‘Can you believe I’m a preacher?’ and Davey said: ‘Actually no.’ But then he said, ‘I’m so proud of what you’ve become.’”
Before Strawberry talked, Johnson’s widow Susan sought to tell the throng about the other side of Davey Johnson most people never knew. To her, from the day they met, he was always ‘David’ and their time at home together seldom involved baseball talk. “He never brought the games home with him,” she said. “With David it was all about family — and real estate. He just loved buying real estate.”
And, she added, Johnson genuinely cared about people – all people who came in his midst. Strawberry said he never heard Johnson say a bad word about anyone, and Susan recounted an incident a few years ago when Johnson had been in an accident with his brand new Ford Explorer SUV. He called Susan and told her he’d been hit by another car in a parking lot.
“Are you all right?” she said.
“I’m fine,” Johnson said, “the car’s drivable but the guy who hit me could hardly speak English and didn’t have any insurance. He was also an illegal immigrant.”
“So what did you do?” Susan asked.
According to her, Davey said he reached into his wallet and handed the guy a twenty dollar bill and told him get the hell out of there as fast he could.
As he concluded his eulogy, Strawberry said: “Baseball is missing the boat not putting Davey in the Hall Fame. Everywhere he went he made teams better. Especially the Mets. But now he’s got the greatest gift of all — to be led to the Lord. And I want to thank the Lord for giving us this great man.”
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