Strawberry making the most of his second chapter in life

This story was excerpted from Anthony DiComo’s Mets Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. -- Hours after Darryl Strawberry returned home following a dental procedure last Dec. 19, his wife, Tracy, entered their bedroom to try to wake him. Strawberry was unresponsive. When Tracy tried to lift him, Strawberry’s body was heavy, limp. She called 911.

Paramedics initially treated it as an overdose. They called Strawberry’s dentist, who told them what they had used to sedate the Mets Hall of Famer during surgery. That medication had affected Strawberry’s heart, which was already under stress following a March 2024 heart attack that nearly killed him. But the call saved his life. For a day and a half, Strawberry laid in a hospital bed while doctors administered two bags of a Narcan drip to reverse the medication’s effects.

“It’s just a part of our journey,” Strawberry said in a telephone interview earlier this week. “I don’t know why I had to have a heart attack. I don’t know why I had my last experience after having my teeth done. … It’s just life, man. That’s real.”

Since retiring from baseball, Strawberry has become a minister who preaches at churches and in maximum security prisons. He has visited inmates on death row. He has been a public speaker who tries to aid communities ravaged by the same sort of drug addiction that once consumed him in his youth.

He has had, in effect, two chapters of life, the second of which he will detail in an upcoming book, “Another Life: Discovering the Healing Power of Purpose on My Long Journey from Player to Preacher,” with co-author Jerome Preisler. The book is due out in August.

When Strawberry’s publisher approached him with the idea of writing another book, he said he had no interest due to his busy travel schedule. He eventually reconsidered under one condition: that the book would not be about baseball.

“Everybody always knows my sports history, and everybody already knows the trials and the tribulations,” Strawberry said, referring to his drug and legal problems in the 1990s and early 2000s. “But they don’t know exactly what I do. They just hear about what I do. I said, ‘If you can find me a writer that can actually write differently and come and connect with me, and he can travel with me, and I can show him instead of talking about it -- where I go and what I do -- he’ll get it.’ And that’s truly what happened.”

The book also focuses on Strawberry’s medical troubles, including his 2024 heart attack and his near-death scare last December. On both occasions, Strawberry credits Tracy for saving his life. He also credits her for his sobriety since their wedding in 2006. At age 63, he is grateful for each day he’s alive.

While baseball is a much smaller part of Strawberry’s life at this point, he will report to Mets camp on Sunday for his annual stint as a guest instructor. After that, he’ll head right back on the road to preach and connect with communities once again.

“When I was a baseball player, my job was to come to Spring Training, get ready for the season and go out and have a good season,” Strawberry said. “My job every year now is … to go help people.”