He convinced me that his discolored public image was the natural result of America's associating him with his colorful '86 teammates, and its psychological linking of him with that other black, drug-using Met, Doc Gooden.

By 1991, nine members of the 1986 Mets had been either arrested for alcohol abuse or battery, or failed a baseball drug test. David Cone, who joined the Mets in 1987, has been elevated to the status of civic hero and all-around swell guy within the short memories of New York fans, but was pubic enemy number one with the Amazin's. He survived an accusation of exposing himself to three women during a game in 1989, as well as an unsubstantiated rape charge in 1991.

Strawberry, it appeared to me, was a victim of "just another one of those Mets" syndrome. What he is actually a victim of is overreaction to everything he does, good or bad.

When Strawberry joined the 1996 Yankees, a team well entrenched on the "white" side of the journalistic dichotomy, his story became one of redemption. Hercules rises and Hercules falls, but in the end an ordinary man with really big muscles is redeemed.

Any editor with a heart simply cannot resist the Darryl saga. As a role-player on the 1996 and 1998 Yankees, he seemed a man humbled both by his own mistakes and by media villainization. By the time the 1999 season began, most of us had forgotten that Strawberry had ever transgressed.

Watching the slugger repeat from his hospital bed that he was a changed man, we could not help but believe him. If only Strawberry were a real actor, and not just a puppet (I hear cocaine is once again chic among the Hollywood set).

We believed in his redemption because it fit the story we were spun. In the role of fall guy, Strawberry gave a performance that would make Lee Majors proud.

With the public thus fooled, and with his image on the media's A-list, Strawberry could have rent his strings and made himself whole again. He was finally in a position to define himself--the special magic of media spin doctors does not work on an honest and upright man.

Instead, he used our trust as a cloak, and crept back into the shadows. The press built up a straw hero, but instead of becoming real for the first time in his baseball life, Strawberry simply blew away.