Straw!

I feel compelled to share an important, if personal, baseball experience that is wholly unrelated to the so-far dominant theme of this blog, baseball player attractiveness. While we use this forum to rank players based on hair, off-field hobbies (horror movies, spaghetti, being a douche), and, occasionally, skill, I would like to instead consider a time when such rational criteria for analyzing rosters were unknown to me.

In the earliest years of my baseball revelry, I somehow, resorting only to baseball cards and TV recaps, selected a suitable favorite, the NY Mets' promising young slugger, Darryl Strawberry. Returning home to Long Island one summer (1990?) from a trip to visit family in central Pennsylvania, my famished family stopped for dinner at a TGI Fridays in Queens. There was excitement around restaurant, which turned out to be in response to the presence of Mr. Strawberry, dining there post-game. I happened to have a number of baseball cards in our car, as I no doubt entertained myself on long trips by alphabatizing, collating, and gazing at them. My father helped me retrieve a 1989 Topps All-Star Darryl Strawberry card, along with an old ball point pen, from the car and escorted me to a table where the star sat eating his steak (I think) with a friend. I was unable to speak, and stood awkwardly with my poofy hair and large teeth as Darryl autographed the card. The inadequate pen was only able to scratch "Darryl" in the front. He grunted in disappointment, which seemed to accentuate the fact that we were inconveniencing him, though on the whole he did not come off as impolite. The brown cardboard backing provided a more ideal surface, where he had a more successful experience with the pen. I also recall Strawberry having a small band-aid on his cheekbone. When we got home the evening news showed a highlight of Strawberry making an important catch and sporting the same band-aid, as if confirming the authenticity of my new autographed memorbilia.