Speaker 1: And now an exclusive interview with David Bassey for Dodger.
Speaker 2: Talking from New York Dodgers Mets tomorrow night, Kershaw Day
Speaker 2: at City Fields, and our coverage begins at three o'clock
Speaker 2: with first pitch at four to ten. I wanted to
Speaker 2: reshare a great conversation I had with two LA Baseball legends.
Speaker 2: It was done in twenty twenty during the baseball shutdown
Speaker 2: due to the pandemic. Here was the great Darryl Strawberry
Speaker 2: and Eric Davis together again, right here on a five
Speaker 2: seventy LA Sports See.
Speaker 3: How you doing all right? Every day? What's up? D
Speaker 3: old timer? What do you do baby? How you coming along?
Speaker 3: You say, we're good? Were good?
Speaker 4: We old timers now, so we call each other old timers.
Speaker 4: So it's good to be with you, David. Yeah, it's
Speaker 4: really good to be with you on the phone with
Speaker 4: my best friend growing up in California and playing a
Speaker 4: little lad together, Eric, the great Davis man.
Speaker 5: Man, it is so great to hear your guys voice.
Speaker 5: And I know Los Angeles was really excited when we
Speaker 5: put this together. When you guys come back to LA,
Speaker 5: do you still feel the same love that you had
Speaker 5: when you grew up here.
Speaker 3: It'll never leave, David, because that's kind of DNA. Even
Speaker 3: though we started somewhere. He started in New York. I
Speaker 3: started in Cincinnati, and then we went places, and he
Speaker 3: came to LA, and then I ended up coming to LA,
Speaker 3: and we went to other places. LA will always be home,
Speaker 3: and so the jubilation of recitement we get when we
Speaker 3: go is just as anticified when we see the La
Speaker 3: Dodger fans and the Laker fans and the rams enerators.
Speaker 3: Was there when we were there. You know, we had
Speaker 3: a whole lot, but it was extraordinary and that'll be
Speaker 3: part of what we do for the rest our life.
Speaker 4: Hey, Darryl, Yeah, it is remarkable, you know to sit
Speaker 4: back and think, you know, coming up and growing up
Speaker 4: in California and being a Laker fan and Dodger fan,
Speaker 4: myself and Erica, and you know, having our careers, you know,
Speaker 4: shout off somewhere else and then you know, have an
Speaker 4: opportunity to come back home and play, and like Gerrek said,
Speaker 4: it will always be homes.
Speaker 3: I mean La. I mean he grew up.
Speaker 4: On the free mind. I grew up in Prenshaw And
Speaker 4: there's so many great baseball players that come out of
Speaker 4: southern California and all of us got a chance to
Speaker 4: see each other and play against each other, and it's
Speaker 4: but there's nothing like home. There's nothing like Harvard Park.
Speaker 4: There's nothing like your program or who we were being
Speaker 4: eric and what we built around there for so many
Speaker 4: years in our old neighborhood when we became professional athletes.
Speaker 5: You guys put together a documentary a few years back
Speaker 5: about Harvard Park down there in South Central and even
Speaker 5: me and the San Fernando Valley used to hear about
Speaker 5: how you guys would be working out down there right
Speaker 5: for spring training. What did that park mean to not
Speaker 5: only you two guys to reconnect every off season, but
Speaker 5: what did it mean to the community for you guys
Speaker 5: to be there every off season?
Speaker 3: Well, it started for me, it was uh and it
Speaker 3: was great that I was able to hear it down
Speaker 3: in the San Fernando Velly. That means we have some
Speaker 3: good marketing people.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: It was about the spread of news, but it was
Speaker 3: something that we really really took pride in because like
Speaker 3: the conversation me and Shaw would have and and it
Speaker 3: really consummated itself from the history of so many black
Speaker 3: baseball players from South Central Inner City and in our era,
Speaker 3: we heard about them and we didn't see them. And
Speaker 3: you know, some of them went on to do great
Speaker 3: things and they moved away and the so forth. But
Speaker 3: we wanted to make sure that our voices and our
Speaker 3: face was seen in the same areas that we grew
Speaker 3: up in. And by us starting Harvard Park where we did,
Speaker 3: it did two things. It created a culture gap because
Speaker 3: there's so many players coming from so many places in
Speaker 3: South Central and it reminded us of where we came
Speaker 3: from to always keep pushing, to keep wanting more and
Speaker 3: to keep doing better, and to keep letting the kids
Speaker 3: around that area see us to know that dreams do
Speaker 3: come true. So it was remarkable. It was something that
Speaker 3: we did from the bottom of my heart. That number one,
Speaker 3: it had ever been done before that, and it has
Speaker 3: never been done prior to that. So having a good
Speaker 3: twelve to fifteen year run. And if you haven't seen
Speaker 3: the documentary, then you've missed something real special. But watch
Speaker 3: the documentary and watch how many different baseball executives and
Speaker 3: players and managers house came from. Just that was part
Speaker 3: of Povard Park. So for me, just being able to
Speaker 3: resonate everything around that for our community really gave us
Speaker 3: the worth all to want to be there, to let
Speaker 3: them know that we still care.
Speaker 5: Darryl, for you, how much did Harvard Park mean to you?
Speaker 5: And to be able to go back and you get
Speaker 5: to La with the Dodgers a year before Eric did.
Speaker 5: Did that all of it bring it full circle?
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, of course it brought it full circle. But
Speaker 4: Harbor Park was always Barbara Park for us, you know,
Speaker 4: because there was a community of us growing up in
Speaker 4: and we will always want to go back and be
Speaker 4: a part of that. We want to be a part
Speaker 4: of people. I think that was the most important thing
Speaker 4: for me and Eric. You know, yeah we were million
Speaker 4: dollar ball players, but here we were working out in
Speaker 4: the ghetto with trash cans. So we were making a statement.
Speaker 4: Everybody was wondering, Yeah, everybody's wondering why these guys are
Speaker 4: not up at U c l A or USC were Like,
Speaker 4: we didn't grow up in Westwood, Yeah wherever U s
Speaker 4: LA is and we didn't grow up. And see, we
Speaker 4: didn't grow up and you know, we didn't go to
Speaker 4: those schools. He went to Fremont, I went to Crenshaw
Speaker 4: and we played on parks like these, and the reminder
Speaker 4: for us going back there was to make people understand
Speaker 4: that these parks like this breed major League Baseball players
Speaker 4: like myself, Ic Davis, Chris Brown, you can go on
Speaker 4: along the list, Eddie and Ozzie and all the different
Speaker 4: guys that come from southern California played in some of
Speaker 4: the same places we played in out in Compton, you know,
Speaker 4: we played out there, But Harvard Park was very special
Speaker 4: to us because it was a neighborhood full of trouble,
Speaker 4: full of crime, and we were the only guys that
Speaker 4: were and they had games in that area, and we
Speaker 4: were like the only guys nobody would ever touch think
Speaker 4: about touching coming in that neighborhood. They would walk around
Speaker 4: what we were doing there, and they thought it was
Speaker 4: just amazing that we would be a part of a
Speaker 4: community like this that we know so much about it
Speaker 4: and know the trouble that was there. But at the
Speaker 4: same time, we realized that this is home for us,
Speaker 4: and we need to let young people and young athletes
Speaker 4: see that, you know, you can come out of here
Speaker 4: and be very successful.
Speaker 5: Eric Davis and Darryl Strawberry are joining us on Dodger talk.
Speaker 5: And the one thing that I said about you two
Speaker 5: guys before you came on, not only were you really
Speaker 5: great baseball players, you're great people. Number one and number
Speaker 5: two you made everything you did cool, from the high
Speaker 5: top shoes that you wore to working out at Harvard
Speaker 5: Park is do you feel like some of the swag
Speaker 5: in the style is missing from baseball these days the
Speaker 5: way you guys used to do it. And like I
Speaker 5: mentioned Harvard Park, you guys made it cool to want
Speaker 5: to be there.
Speaker 6: Oh David, let me just add some real quick man.
Speaker 6: Swag is not something you give yourself, Okay. This generation
Speaker 6: creates their own swag. That's why you have so many
Speaker 6: people that are branding themselves. Swag is something that someone
Speaker 6: else gives you.
Speaker 3: Okay. If they saw dyl Strawberry, they was like, there
Speaker 3: he is, watched, They went to watch, they went to
Speaker 3: sit down. His name was ringing. When we were ten
Speaker 3: years old. That swag. When you went to Crenshaw to
Speaker 3: watch the the basketball team play, you was trying to
Speaker 3: figure out where was he? There? He is right there.
Speaker 3: That's your swag. When other people talk about you in
Speaker 3: that light, that's your swag. Now you have guys now
Speaker 3: that give themselves nicknames and doctor themselves up. They did
Speaker 3: on Instagram. They show they do a lot of different
Speaker 3: things to create the attention, but their game don't highlight
Speaker 3: their swag. Swag is something that somebody else gives you.
Speaker 3: So what you saw was the natural essence of we
Speaker 3: was all about. Uh. Style and charisma is something that
Speaker 3: we was all about from a kid, and it wasn't
Speaker 3: something that transcended or turned into once we got to
Speaker 3: the major leagues. And so by us liking the things
Speaker 3: that we were doing and entertaining the people from a
Speaker 3: young age, that created our swag. And then that just
Speaker 3: materialized over time because the better you performed, the better
Speaker 3: swag you got, you know what I'm saying. So him
Speaker 3: being an ultimate and me being an ultimate, we was
Speaker 3: driven by that. Swag just consumed us. And that's when
Speaker 3: people really know about you, is about how you performed,
Speaker 3: not what you say on Instagram or Facebook or whatever.
Speaker 5: Daryl, you're on Instagram, you see all that. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 5: sure you agree with Eric.
Speaker 4: Well yeah, yeah, but I understand that. And there it's
Speaker 4: clearly clear about that. You know, the swag, swagen is
Speaker 4: what you know. It's not something that we label ourselves
Speaker 4: to be. Is it what people make you out of
Speaker 4: because of they watch you and they see you, and
Speaker 4: and we didn't really have we had a different style
Speaker 4: about us.
Speaker 3: Us.
Speaker 4: Wag was like you know, from the ghetto. You know,
Speaker 4: we was we wasn't nobody gave us a spoon and
Speaker 4: gave us anything. We had to work for it. We
Speaker 4: had to work hard. We come from some very difficult
Speaker 4: times and situations, and you know, we had to build
Speaker 4: who we were. We had to we had to fight
Speaker 4: our way through neighborhoods and you know, the gangs and
Speaker 4: everything that was around us to play ball and stuff
Speaker 4: like that. So you know, we we developed, We developed
Speaker 4: who we were by stepping on the field and performing.
Speaker 4: I mean, it just clearly showed that. You know, when
Speaker 4: we played Little league together and you know, and Eric
Speaker 4: was a short stop batting the leadoff and I was
Speaker 4: hitting third, Chris Brown was hitting for you imagine a
Speaker 4: lineup like that with guys in there, and you got
Speaker 4: to face those type of hitters like that. And then
Speaker 4: we get to the big leagues and we take it
Speaker 4: to a whole other level. You know, it takes the
Speaker 4: game to a whole another levels as a player that
Speaker 4: you know, hits o thirty home runs, still eighty bags,
Speaker 4: you know, doing things like that, doing things that players
Speaker 4: was not doing in the air and the time that
Speaker 4: we came up with, players today are not even doing
Speaker 4: that the kind of players we were back in the day.
Speaker 4: So you know, that's what really gave us, you know,
Speaker 4: brought the attention of who we were because we were different.
Speaker 4: You know, we come from a different place and we
Speaker 4: played the game a different way.
Speaker 5: How much did you guys take from where you came
Speaker 5: onto the into the minor leagues and onto the major
Speaker 5: league stage. Do you feel like everything you guys went
Speaker 5: through off the field helped you be better players on
Speaker 5: the field when you got to this type of situations
Speaker 5: where there were a lot of attention and pressure gets
Speaker 5: a little bit higher, did you feel like all the
Speaker 5: pressure of trying to survive was bigger than anything you
Speaker 5: were going to face in the big leagues.
Speaker 3: The pressure and how to survive is South Central was
Speaker 3: way harder than trying to make it to the major leagues. Yeah,
Speaker 3: just going to school, the towsand tribulations, I mean, uh,
Speaker 3: having a fight to have your letterm and jacket or
Speaker 3: your or your Walla Bees, or your biscuits, or or
Speaker 3: someone trying to take you another codes or your bomber
Speaker 3: jacket going here and there. I was more afraid of
Speaker 3: my mama than I was anybody on the street. And
Speaker 3: if I came home and I didn't have my bomber jacket,
Speaker 3: I was going to deal with my mama. And so
Speaker 3: right on the street was second nature to me and
Speaker 3: the girl. The same way Ruby was that tough the
Speaker 3: rocks for all of his siblings and stuff. So knowing
Speaker 3: that going to play a game that that that you
Speaker 3: grew up playing on on on dirt with glass and
Speaker 3: different things of that nature. See, they give the guys
Speaker 3: from Latin America that create about where they came from
Speaker 3: and out they played. We did it the same way
Speaker 3: in the parking recreations. That's why Straw was so intimate
Speaker 3: about us playing at Harvard Park, Ross Schnyder, Jackie Robinson
Speaker 3: all dirt in fields. We didn't have the grass and
Speaker 3: fields and all those types of things and stuff. So
Speaker 3: when you got to the point to where I'm gonna
Speaker 3: tell you a story, actually we had a County Mac
Speaker 3: team and like eighteen of our guys off our County
Speaker 3: mac team to got drafted right, and we won the
Speaker 3: Pacific Regionals at Compton and we went up to Seattle, Washington, right,
Speaker 3: and so they put us on. After we landed, they
Speaker 3: took us to the field and we just started laughing
Speaker 3: because the guys was like, y'all laughing. We y'all laughing.
Speaker 3: We got were playing here, and they was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: the most home runs in the tournament was seven. We
Speaker 3: hit six the first night and we broke the record
Speaker 3: because we were used to playing in open spaces when
Speaker 3: guys to play all the way back to the swimming
Speaker 3: pool or something. So when you saw a nice beautiful field,
Speaker 3: they was gonna get it.
Speaker 4: And they got it.
Speaker 3: So knowing all of that and then taking that into
Speaker 3: the minor leagues, it wasn't if for us it was wooded.
Speaker 5: Yeah, was that the same experience for you?
Speaker 3: David Strong hit the ball in that ballpark that they
Speaker 3: still looking for they ain't found it almost, so you know,
Speaker 3: it was so it.
Speaker 4: Was so incredible. I mean, it was so incredible for
Speaker 4: us to grow up, you know actually where we grew
Speaker 4: up in South Central and become you know, major league
Speaker 4: baseball players. I think, like Eric was saying, most people
Speaker 4: don't know. The challenges were more difficult for us, you know,
Speaker 4: walking to school and being challenged by people from different
Speaker 4: neighborhoods and things like that that we had to deal with.
Speaker 4: Putting putting the uniform on was easy for us, you know,
Speaker 4: because think about it, we both played basketball a place
Speaker 4: for free mind. I played for Crenshaw. We played basketball.
Speaker 4: Then we go crossover and we go into baseball, and
Speaker 4: we get into baseball, and playing baseball was just really
Speaker 4: easy for us, you know. But we were so determined.
Speaker 4: Me and Eric was different than everybody else because we
Speaker 4: saw guys get drafted before us, and we saw how
Speaker 4: they were when they responded when they came back, and
Speaker 4: we just used to say to ourselves, they have not
Speaker 4: seen nothing until we get into the league, because we're
Speaker 4: going to be totally different, different type of players because
Speaker 4: they didn't have Most people didn't have the ability that
Speaker 4: me and Eric had.
Speaker 1: We had such a high level five two s ability
Speaker 1: to play the game and i Q for the i
Speaker 1: Q was so high for the game and understanding the
Speaker 1: game the way it should be played at such a
Speaker 1: different level.
Speaker 4: And I think most people never really recognized that. They
Speaker 4: didn't recognize us until we actually entered into the big
Speaker 4: leagues and realized and started playing the way we started
Speaker 4: to play. And they was like, wow, I never seen
Speaker 4: anything like this. Would you know these two guys play
Speaker 4: at such a high level?
Speaker 3: He did.
Speaker 5: I could say this flat out. I mean, I'm not
Speaker 5: as old as you guys, but I watched you guys play,
Speaker 5: and I would say that you two guys were two
Speaker 5: of the best players I ever seen play baseball. But
Speaker 5: all I hear about is how good you guys were
Speaker 5: at basketball. So did you guys ever go head to head?
Speaker 5: Fremont Crenshaw? Did you guys ever play guard each other?
Speaker 5: I thought maybe d might want to switch. I thought
Speaker 5: maybe you might want to switch.
Speaker 3: You want nothing I can do with him on the
Speaker 3: I was going to stay outside and and uh and
Speaker 3: was a quarterback at I got recruited play football and
Speaker 3: they didn't even know I played basketball or baseball. So
Speaker 3: the ability to be multi talented has left a whole
Speaker 3: lot of our black athletes because of it's such a
Speaker 3: high profile sports now that they're putting all their marbles
Speaker 3: into basketball or all their marbles into football. We could
Speaker 3: our marbles into sports and then let our talents take
Speaker 3: us where we wanted to go, but it gave us options.
Speaker 3: Straw could have went to any school he wanted to.
Speaker 3: I could have went to almost any school that I
Speaker 3: wanted to, And so the options of being multi talented
Speaker 3: helped us. In baseball, I was able to jump over
Speaker 3: the fence because I could dump backwards. It was so
Speaker 3: many different barrels that I took from the basketball court
Speaker 3: onto the baseball field, and Sear did the same time.
Speaker 3: I mean, he can run, jump, throw all the different
Speaker 3: outcreaks of them. Being a quarterback was why his mom
Speaker 3: was so small. So you have to all to diversify
Speaker 3: and put things kind of around you to allow each
Speaker 3: sport to give you soultic and and knowing all the
Speaker 3: great athletes that came from South Centralinia, the ball was
Speaker 3: said even for baseball at the at UH, the purns
Speaker 3: or Ellis Valentine and the guys in Artis Johnson and
Speaker 3: wanted to chair. There was so many different players that
Speaker 3: you saw even from front with chet Lemon and Danny
Speaker 3: Pallard and Barbie Tulla. You had UH the Dorsey and
Speaker 3: many in Washington and Jefferson, so you had West, So
Speaker 3: you had so much talent where you had to measure
Speaker 3: up where you was gonna get set there, so you
Speaker 3: had to cover a place. So that was the competition
Speaker 3: at such a little at lower level for us Warner,
Speaker 3: and those things were so competitive that when we got
Speaker 3: to play against guys our age, because we always played
Speaker 3: against guys older than us, and so so when we
Speaker 3: got to play his guys our age, they was in
Speaker 3: trouble the right, right, That's so true because you make
Speaker 3: that so clear. Because we grew up around so many
Speaker 3: different players and our coach, Earl Brown, who coached us
Speaker 3: in the Summer League, all he talked about is all
Speaker 3: these other players, Oh, you guys not better than Eddie
Speaker 3: and Ozzie, you know, And he just he just built
Speaker 3: us up inside to be better than guys like that
Speaker 3: because they came through the same place playing out the accounpident.
Speaker 3: Eddie and Ozzie they did this and they did that.
Speaker 3: We used to say nothing, yeah, willis so many chill
Speaker 3: There were so many.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there was so many of my head of us
Speaker 4: and you know, and he kept always you know, putting
Speaker 4: it in our ears and me and Ed was like,
Speaker 4: well we only to stamp on this because when we
Speaker 4: when we get out of here and we get to
Speaker 4: the major League, it's gonna be a different ball game
Speaker 4: because they ain't gonna be a dude kind of things
Speaker 4: that we're gonna do. Like he said, you know we
Speaker 4: could jump, you can get over he going over the watch.
Speaker 4: See I would have had forty home runs. But everyone
Speaker 4: I knew this war. I mean if he had to
Speaker 4: go over the wall and stay stadium and take one
Speaker 4: of my home runs and then the other day, then
Speaker 4: the next day he throws me out at third base
Speaker 4: trying to go from first to third. You know, it's like, oh,
Speaker 4: you're supposed joy right that David Star was hard hitted.
Speaker 4: I told him to pull the ball like before he
Speaker 4: get going over on the bus outside of the little stadium.
Speaker 3: So I told him he was to be disrespectful by
Speaker 3: tagging up on me. Disrespectful. Wanted to when we was kids,
Speaker 3: but we was in the Apple. It was naturally televised
Speaker 3: fifty five IM and then he took me to dinner
Speaker 3: and we had a good time after the game. So
Speaker 3: in between the lines, our competitor jus.
Speaker 5: Was just that, Yeah, that's the one thing I wondered about.
Speaker 5: You guys did you did you know Straw got his
Speaker 5: World Series before you did he d Was there any
Speaker 5: of that kind of trash talking between you guys, No, no.
Speaker 3: Never, no never. It was always the best. It was
Speaker 3: a lot of after the best. Yeah, I'm gonna tell
Speaker 3: you how humble dryl was and still is. As I
Speaker 3: might add, is that even when he went Rookie of
Speaker 3: the Year, we went to the Laker games, and we
Speaker 3: would always go to Laker games and everybody was telling
Speaker 3: Daryl congratulations and was hanging around him. But all he
Speaker 3: could say was wait till my partner comes. Nothing. That's
Speaker 3: how he was. Didn't good became. And that's how humble
Speaker 3: he was was that he was always saying, y'all think
Speaker 3: I'm good, wait till he comes. And so no matter
Speaker 3: where the situation we were, he always looked out for
Speaker 3: everybody that was around us, so they became turn I
Speaker 3: did the same. I look all the guys to bring
Speaker 3: and the guys. And that's how our program was was.
Speaker 3: It wasn't just about man Daryl. It was about every
Speaker 3: one of us who came behind her. And that was
Speaker 3: one of the reasons why we started the program, was
Speaker 3: to give so many different guys the opportunity to see
Speaker 3: how it also when they made it, then they would
Speaker 3: do the same thing and the team would be going
Speaker 3: and going and going. So Strong was really the leader
Speaker 3: of that because they made it to the major league first,
Speaker 3: and he showed us the way and he helped us
Speaker 3: get there by how how hard he work. And it's
Speaker 3: it's something that needs to be clarified. It's because when
Speaker 3: you have black athletes who are challenged, they think we
Speaker 3: don't work hard because we're so conscious. But if you
Speaker 3: would have watched the weights and the and the running
Speaker 3: and the things that we did every day, then you
Speaker 3: would have saw that. But he lied in that. He
Speaker 3: was the first one of us. I can remember that
Speaker 3: started lifting weights and stuff when he had a personal
Speaker 3: trainer first, and I'm like, what you doing with that? No, God,
Speaker 3: we got to keep grunting. Okay. Then because she lied that.
Speaker 3: That's the kind of individual he was. That's why he
Speaker 3: was so successful.
Speaker 4: Well that's too, I thanks he but that we were
Speaker 4: all like that together because we were like brothers. We
Speaker 4: were like the family. And the thing about it, David,
Speaker 4: is we cared about all our younger players coming underneath us,
Speaker 4: you know, like the Royce Clayton. You know, he come
Speaker 4: from underneath us, you know, learning out there with us,
Speaker 4: and we taught him to have the mentality to be
Speaker 4: strong and learn how to go through the adversities of sports.
Speaker 4: Is going to be there and you're gonna have to
Speaker 4: learn to deal with it. So it was just it
Speaker 4: came from all of us, you know, it came from
Speaker 4: It really came from me and Eve because we were
Speaker 4: like the cornerstone and everything around there. When when it
Speaker 4: came to the program, because the program was about Harvard
Speaker 4: Park and it was a out where we come out
Speaker 4: of and where we never leave. And I think that's
Speaker 4: what really made us great because we never forgot where
Speaker 4: we came from. And there was no egos. You know,
Speaker 4: it was all about It wasn't about being selfish. It
Speaker 4: was about us lifting each other up and encouraging each
Speaker 4: each other. And like Eric Sin, I wonder rookie here,
Speaker 4: but I was like, you guys, wait, my boy is coming.
Speaker 4: He is bad. You guys have never seen anything like
Speaker 4: this here. I'm telling you you just waiting until you
Speaker 4: see it. And once they got a chance to see it,
Speaker 4: they realized, like, wow, these are like true guys that
Speaker 4: come out of South Central that really built their own
Speaker 4: legacy the way they wanted to build it. Now, some
Speaker 4: way somebody else should have said it should have been
Speaker 4: just the way we decided that it was going to be,
Speaker 4: and we was going to help all these younger players,
Speaker 4: like I said that were around us, because all the
Speaker 4: young players at the program, people need to go watch
Speaker 4: Harbor Park, they need.
Speaker 3: To go see that it's and just how how much
Speaker 3: Girl and myself connect the two guys coming from South Central.
Speaker 3: We weren't put on an average pedestal. Girl was supposed
Speaker 3: to be the next Ted Williams, one of the greatest
Speaker 3: players that not one of the top three players of
Speaker 3: all time, and I was supposed to be the next
Speaker 3: one of the players has carried that type of baggage
Speaker 3: as eighteen to nineteen year old. We had to live
Speaker 3: with that and to move through the minor leagues and
Speaker 3: to move through the major league. I can't recall a
Speaker 3: player up of my era, in Shaw's era that was
Speaker 3: dealt with that kind of pressure as it can. And
Speaker 3: did we get there. No, But it wasn't because of
Speaker 3: the talent and the way we played. It was because
Speaker 3: of injury and the way I played, and the way
Speaker 3: Daryl played, how he got hurt, we would have had
Speaker 3: so much fun and winning here in La He hurt
Speaker 3: his back, I had triple surgery. But if you go
Speaker 3: back and look at our records on the game that
Speaker 3: we played together, we were we were tearing people up
Speaker 3: spots the way of changing the nerve behind something on
Speaker 3: the afternoon.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: People ask me all the time, they say, would you
Speaker 3: change something, And I'm like no, because of the way
Speaker 3: that I went about it, the people that I went through,
Speaker 3: what I went through with, and I wasn't to change
Speaker 3: how I played. I would have changed the people that
Speaker 3: I played with, wouldn't have changed our friendship. I would
Speaker 3: have changed how we run. I wouldn't have placed all
Speaker 3: the bad things we went through, and I wouldn't changed
Speaker 3: men the good things because everything that we went through
Speaker 3: is the reason that we're the people that we are
Speaker 3: today at fifty eight years old. So me, that story
Speaker 3: is still going on. There's still more chesters. Look at
Speaker 3: what he's doing now. And it's ironic that we both
Speaker 3: now don't live in California and we go back because
Speaker 3: of how the chapters in our lives have taken us
Speaker 3: other places. To do things with people that we never
Speaker 3: thought that we would do, not just in baseball, but
Speaker 3: away from baseball. That's what I'm thought of it. Girls
Speaker 3: kind of the same thing. I'm sorry, Jeryl, go ahead,
Speaker 3: no I am.
Speaker 4: I'm really proud of me and Erica. And when I
Speaker 4: look back and I reflect back on what it was like,
Speaker 4: how we were growing up and who we were in
Speaker 4: LA and we came out. We came out of California
Speaker 4: with more hype than any any player I think in
Speaker 4: the history of baseball, being like Eric said, me being
Speaker 4: Ted Williams the next Ted Williams and him being Willie Mays.
Speaker 4: And I don't think anybody really understands what that's like,
Speaker 4: you know, to be able to carry that and have
Speaker 4: to have that on us. And the way we played
Speaker 4: in the game, and we played the win all the time.
Speaker 4: It was lights out, you know. And we wasn't just
Speaker 4: a one demential player, you know, we were We were
Speaker 4: players where you know, we hit home runs, we steal bases,
Speaker 4: we played the field, we run scored and we I mean,
Speaker 4: we did it all. And that took a grind on
Speaker 4: who we were physically, and then the body starts to
Speaker 4: break down, you start having the injuries, like their said,
Speaker 4: and you know, and of course you know, I come
Speaker 4: through the troubles of my life with the addiction part too,
Speaker 4: so that played another part of slowing me down even more.
Speaker 4: And it's a real reality. But like he like he
Speaker 4: was saying, who had made us today? When we look
Speaker 4: back at we were and when we see each other,
Speaker 4: we laughed because we had such a good time of
Speaker 4: being who we were in California growing up there. Exactly,
Speaker 4: We'll never forget that. We'll never forget that what that's
Speaker 4: really like and what what it was like growing up there,
Speaker 4: because when you look at all the people that come
Speaker 4: through southern California and all the players. You know, I
Speaker 4: remember the players we played blanket ship them and I
Speaker 4: think that we beat them in the playoffs and they
Speaker 4: were supposed to be hot stuff. Yeah bull Yeah, we
Speaker 4: beat them. We beat them out of competent and stuff.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: It was just you know, it was us, you know,
Speaker 4: us with me Eric and Chris Brown. And Chris Brown
Speaker 4: was a part of us too in those days, you know,
Speaker 4: when we were growing up. But me and Eric uh
Speaker 4: put ourselves in a position and I remember sitting there
Speaker 4: kind of you know, at the stadium, and Eric was
Speaker 4: drafted and and I was number one. I was still
Speaker 4: holding out. He said, Man, dog, I gotta go. I
Speaker 4: gotta get going. Man up in the side. You know,
Speaker 4: I didn't have much to hold out.
Speaker 3: I didn't have any record. He didn't know.
Speaker 4: Taking but he knew what the thing about it was
Speaker 4: what makes me so proud of ericas he knew where
Speaker 4: he was going. See like those players, I knew where
Speaker 4: I was going. He knew where he was going. We
Speaker 4: knew that we wasn't gonna fall shore. We knew that
Speaker 4: one day we would be on the show, and it
Speaker 4: was just a matter of time.
Speaker 2: That is a bucket list childhood dream. Talking to Eric
Speaker 2: Davis and Darryl Strawberry. Ronnie will podcast that interview again.
Speaker 2: It was from twenty twenty, but worth sharing again. Thanks
Speaker 2: to Hori a cast you, thanks to the straw and
Speaker 2: Ed for their help, and thank you to Ronnie Fossio.
Speaker 2: We will be back with you tomorrow at three o'clock
Speaker 2: for a pregame first pitch at four to ten between
Speaker 2: the Dodgers and Mets. Kershaw Day right here on AM
Speaker 2: five to seventy LA Sports. Thanks again, Ronnie Fossio and
Speaker 2: thanks to you for listening. We'll talk to you tomorrow.
Speaker 3: See ya,