The Judges Darryl May Dread

Darryl Strawberry, the well-known taxpayer, who seemed to have escaped it after cheating the government out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes, got his punishment the other day.

He was sentenced to right field in Yankee Stadium.

Beats what the tax judge sentenced him to--his home and swimming pool on a golf course in Rancho Mirage.

Of course, Darryl will serve his time in the Bronx for an estimated $850,000 for the rest of this year. And $1.8 million next year if all goes well.

That’s pretty heady stuff for a guy who has batted .205 in his last three years, hit 14 home runs and has driven in an average of 18 runs a year.

But, he still has to get out there in baseball’s version of Alcatraz, right field in Yankee Stadium. Solitary confinement. Maximum insecurity.

You see, Babe Ruth loused up right field for everybody when he played there. He averaged more than 40 homers a year, batted .340 something and drove in a couple of thousand runs.

No one has been able to satisfy Yankee fans there since. Not George Selkirk, whose nickname if you can believe it, was “Twinkle Toes!” (Honest. I’m not making that up, but you wouldn’t think the Yankees would try to replace a “Sultan of Swat” with a “Twinkle Toes.”) Not even the great Tommy Henrich (whose nickname was “Old Reliable”), nor Charlie Keller (whose nickname was “King Kong”) could catch the fancy. Not even Roger Maris, who hit 61 home runs out there one year. Yankee fans kind of hooted them all out of town.

Poor Darryl! First, baseball gives him a 60-day suspension for his second positive cocaine test. Then, some heartless judge in New York rules he’ll have to pay for tax evasion by going to Palm Springs for the winter and wearing an ankle bracelet so they can check and be sure he doesn’t try to slip off to the Yukon or Siberia instead, I guess.

Now, of course, tax evasion does not rank with some of your most heinous crimes, it doesn’t even rank high with some of the other ones Darryl may have committed. Most of us would do it annually if all we had to do to atone for it was go live in Rancho Mirage.

But if nobody paid his taxes, where would all the entitlements come from--and what would there be to underwrite all those gaudy ballparks and training facilities taxpayers keep throwing up for ballplayers to get rich in?

You can see it’s a serious problem, non-payment of taxes. The government had a fit when Leona Helmsley tried it. They make most of us pay an estimated tax, I guess in case we get fired or hit by a truck before it actually comes due.

There are two standards of law in this country--one for people who can hit the curveball and the other for the rest of us. It’s a good thing ballplayers aren’t in the majority of taxpayers, otherwise the trains would stop running. So would the free clinics. Who would pay President Clinton’s salary?

Of course, what we are overlooking is something else at work here. That is the noble intentions of Yankee owner George Steinbrenner, his desire to perform a public service. George wants to help society as a whole, not only the Yankees.

George is in the forefront of drug rehabilitation for guys who can hit or throw the curveball. He has a pitcher who survived seven cocaine-abuse episodes. George got him forgiven so he could take the mound for the Yankees. George is big on the forgiveness of guys with 95-m.p.h. fastballs.

George also understands long-term suspensions from baseball. George has been there, done that.

His rehabbed, forgiven pitcher rewarded him with a year in which he had 15 saves and an earned-run average of 1.80. But George doesn’t care about that. It’s the saved human being he’s interested in.

He doesn’t care what Strawberry hits. It’s Darryl’s welfare, not the team’s, he cares about.

Darryl has somewhat the same point of view. Darryl was ready to contend the Giants improperly released him after his cocaine violation and suspension last year and wanted $1.8 million in arbitration. That’s a lot of money for an addict, even a recovering one. The Giants countered with $750,000. That’s a lot of money for anyone.

But it’s nice to see that what’s at work here is the restoration of a human being, hang the expense.

Of course, for $850,000, George could rehabilitate a lot of young men. If they could hit the curve or fill the seats.

But, like the commercial, George measures success one recovery at a time.

Meanwhile, Darryl starts serving his sentence next week. The guess here is that parole board in the right field seats may make him yearn for that user-friendly judge again. Maybe he can stop paying his taxes again--and this time get sentenced to Maui.