Freezing my ass off @ first (pre-season) Mets game at Citi Field.
Published a few pieces about baseball recently, something I hadn’t done in a while. In this past week’s Time Out, I compare and contrast a pair of new books by Daryl Strawberry and his fellow ‘86 Mets alumnus, Ron Darling. Also wrote this piece a few weeks ago in which I recommend a handful of obscure New York parks where you just might be able to get on a baseball diamond on a nice day without a permit.
Gotta interrupt the Philly love for a minute (more Philly rap interviews to come next week). Hearing about Darryl Strawberry’s upcoming tell-all book about the ‘86 Mets’ seven-month-long stripper orgy and coke bender championship season the other day reminded me that I need to represent my hometown a little more in the first week of this young blog. Especially after what happened between us this past football and baseball season; even the wack ass Sixers have taken all three of their games with the (albeit much wacker) Knicks this year. F Philly. Nah, it’s all love, but, really, the thought of this book is making me nostalgic for the best year of the ’80s.
Naturally, I felt compelled to dig up the greatest sports artifact of the last half-century: Darryl Strawberry’s post-1986-World-Series joint with UTFO, Whistle and Richie Rich, “Chocolate Strawberry.” Remember this? I don’t either. I didn’t even hear about it until about 2000, when one of my college-era roommates brought a copy home from a vinyl excursion. Which is amazing, cause if I didn’t know about this, who did? ‘86 was the year I caught the hip-hop bug, thanks to the holytrinity of Rick Rubin. And I was still young enough where likely “Chocolate Strawberry” inspiration, “The Super Bowl Shuffle,” which I remember vividly from the year before, amused me in a non-ironic way.
More importantly, though, the Mets, who were the baseball equivalent of the “Showtime” Lakers and had more colorful personalities than all of the current MLB rosters combined, were the biggest thing in my seven-year-old life. If you’ve ever dealt with me on a personal level, you may be aware that my lifelong nickname is also the name of the pitcher who recorded the last out in Game 7 of the ‘86 Series. Just like every other seven-year-old kid in the Tri-State, though, my idol then was Darryl Strawberry. (Wild how all three of the larger-than-life NY sports heroes of this time—Darryl, Lawrence Taylor and Mike Tyson—were a disgraced wifebeater/alcoholic, crackhead and wifebeater/rapist, respectively, by the time I reached puberty. No wonder steroid scandals bore me.)
Basically, StraweSome Records (amazingly there was a second release on this label that did not feature the Chocolate Strawberry) dropped the ball, ’cause this record should have been a part of my childhood.
Play this clip for “Chocolate Strawberry” audio.
BTW, what a random ending: “So give me your beef, homeboy I’m cookin’/ I can get loose so don’t you try/ I graduated from Crenshaw High. You can even ask Eric Boogie E.” Is he referring to Eazy-E?
