Darryl Strawberry and Eric Davis (5-22-25)

David Vassegh has a three way phone interview with former MLB all-stars Darryl Strawberry and Eric Davis.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And now an exclusive interview with David Bassey for Dodger.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Talking from New York Dodgers Mets tomorrow night, Kershaw Day
at City Fields, and our coverage begins at three o'clock
with first pitch at four to ten. I wanted to
reshare a great conversation I had with two LA Baseball legends.
It was done in twenty twenty during the baseball shutdown

(00:26):
due to the pandemic. Here was the great Darryl Strawberry
and Eric Davis together again, right here on a five
seventy LA Sports See.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
How you doing all right? Every day? What's up? D
old timer? What do you do baby? How you coming along?
You say, we're good? Were good?

Speaker 4 (00:46):
We old timers now, so we call each other old timers.
So it's good to be with you, David. Yeah, it's
really good to be with you on the phone with
my best friend growing up in California and playing a
little lad together, Eric, the great Davis man.

Speaker 5 (01:00):
Man, it is so great to hear your guys voice.
And I know Los Angeles was really excited when we
put this together. When you guys come back to LA,
do you still feel the same love that you had
when you grew up here.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
It'll never leave, David, because that's kind of DNA. Even
though we started somewhere. He started in New York. I
started in Cincinnati, and then we went places, and he
came to LA, and then I ended up coming to LA,
and we went to other places. LA will always be home,

(01:34):
and so the jubilation of recitement we get when we
go is just as anticified when we see the La
Dodger fans and the Laker fans and the rams enerators.
Was there when we were there. You know, we had
a whole lot, but it was extraordinary and that'll be
part of what we do for the rest our life.

Speaker 4 (01:57):
Hey, Darryl, Yeah, it is remarkable, you know to sit
back and think, you know, coming up and growing up
in California and being a Laker fan and Dodger fan,
myself and Erica, and you know, having our careers, you know,
shout off somewhere else and then you know, have an
opportunity to come back home and play, and like Gerrek said,

(02:20):
it will always be homes.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
I mean La. I mean he grew up.

Speaker 4 (02:25):
On the free mind. I grew up in Prenshaw And
there's so many great baseball players that come out of
southern California and all of us got a chance to
see each other and play against each other, and it's
but there's nothing like home. There's nothing like Harvard Park.
There's nothing like your program or who we were being
eric and what we built around there for so many
years in our old neighborhood when we became professional athletes.

Speaker 5 (02:49):
You guys put together a documentary a few years back
about Harvard Park down there in South Central and even
me and the San Fernando Valley used to hear about
how you guys would be working out down there right
for spring training. What did that park mean to not
only you two guys to reconnect every off season, but
what did it mean to the community for you guys

(03:10):
to be there every off season?

Speaker 3 (03:13):
Well, it started for me, it was uh and it
was great that I was able to hear it down
in the San Fernando Velly. That means we have some
good marketing people.

Speaker 4 (03:22):
You know.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
It was about the spread of news, but it was
something that we really really took pride in because like
the conversation me and Shaw would have and and it
really consummated itself from the history of so many black
baseball players from South Central Inner City and in our era,

(03:46):
we heard about them and we didn't see them. And
you know, some of them went on to do great
things and they moved away and the so forth. But
we wanted to make sure that our voices and our
face was seen in the same areas that we grew
up in. And by us starting Harvard Park where we did,

(04:09):
it did two things. It created a culture gap because
there's so many players coming from so many places in
South Central and it reminded us of where we came
from to always keep pushing, to keep wanting more and
to keep doing better, and to keep letting the kids
around that area see us to know that dreams do

(04:30):
come true. So it was remarkable. It was something that
we did from the bottom of my heart. That number one,
it had ever been done before that, and it has
never been done prior to that. So having a good
twelve to fifteen year run. And if you haven't seen
the documentary, then you've missed something real special. But watch

(04:52):
the documentary and watch how many different baseball executives and
players and managers house came from. Just that was part
of Povard Park. So for me, just being able to
resonate everything around that for our community really gave us
the worth all to want to be there, to let

(05:13):
them know that we still care.

Speaker 5 (05:15):
Darryl, for you, how much did Harvard Park mean to you?
And to be able to go back and you get
to La with the Dodgers a year before Eric did.
Did that all of it bring it full circle?

Speaker 4 (05:27):
Well, yeah, of course it brought it full circle. But
Harbor Park was always Barbara Park for us, you know,
because there was a community of us growing up in
and we will always want to go back and be
a part of that. We want to be a part
of people. I think that was the most important thing
for me and Eric. You know, yeah we were million

(05:48):
dollar ball players, but here we were working out in
the ghetto with trash cans. So we were making a statement.
Everybody was wondering, Yeah, everybody's wondering why these guys are
not up at U c l A or USC were Like,
we didn't grow up in Westwood, Yeah wherever U s
LA is and we didn't grow up. And see, we

(06:09):
didn't grow up and you know, we didn't go to
those schools. He went to Fremont, I went to Crenshaw
and we played on parks like these, and the reminder
for us going back there was to make people understand
that these parks like this breed major League Baseball players
like myself, Ic Davis, Chris Brown, you can go on
along the list, Eddie and Ozzie and all the different

(06:31):
guys that come from southern California played in some of
the same places we played in out in Compton, you know,
we played out there, But Harvard Park was very special
to us because it was a neighborhood full of trouble,
full of crime, and we were the only guys that
were and they had games in that area, and we
were like the only guys nobody would ever touch think

(06:51):
about touching coming in that neighborhood. They would walk around
what we were doing there, and they thought it was
just amazing that we would be a part of a
community like this that we know so much about it
and know the trouble that was there. But at the
same time, we realized that this is home for us,

(07:11):
and we need to let young people and young athletes
see that, you know, you can come out of here
and be very successful.

Speaker 5 (07:20):
Eric Davis and Darryl Strawberry are joining us on Dodger talk.
And the one thing that I said about you two
guys before you came on, not only were you really
great baseball players, you're great people. Number one and number
two you made everything you did cool, from the high
top shoes that you wore to working out at Harvard
Park is do you feel like some of the swag

(07:43):
in the style is missing from baseball these days the
way you guys used to do it. And like I
mentioned Harvard Park, you guys made it cool to want
to be there.

Speaker 6 (07:53):
Oh David, let me just add some real quick man.
Swag is not something you give yourself, Okay. This generation
creates their own swag. That's why you have so many
people that are branding themselves. Swag is something that someone
else gives you.

Speaker 3 (08:11):
Okay. If they saw dyl Strawberry, they was like, there
he is, watched, They went to watch, they went to
sit down. His name was ringing. When we were ten
years old. That swag. When you went to Crenshaw to
watch the the basketball team play, you was trying to

(08:31):
figure out where was he? There? He is right there.
That's your swag. When other people talk about you in
that light, that's your swag. Now you have guys now
that give themselves nicknames and doctor themselves up. They did
on Instagram. They show they do a lot of different
things to create the attention, but their game don't highlight

(08:52):
their swag. Swag is something that somebody else gives you.
So what you saw was the natural essence of we
was all about. Uh. Style and charisma is something that
we was all about from a kid, and it wasn't
something that transcended or turned into once we got to

(09:12):
the major leagues. And so by us liking the things
that we were doing and entertaining the people from a
young age, that created our swag. And then that just
materialized over time because the better you performed, the better
swag you got, you know what I'm saying. So him

(09:32):
being an ultimate and me being an ultimate, we was
driven by that. Swag just consumed us. And that's when
people really know about you, is about how you performed,
not what you say on Instagram or Facebook or whatever.

Speaker 5 (09:48):
Daryl, you're on Instagram, you see all that. Yeah, I'm
sure you agree with Eric.

Speaker 4 (09:52):
Well yeah, yeah, but I understand that. And there it's
clearly clear about that. You know, the swag, swagen is
what you know. It's not something that we label ourselves
to be. Is it what people make you out of
because of they watch you and they see you, and
and we didn't really have we had a different style
about us.

Speaker 3 (10:11):
Us.

Speaker 4 (10:11):
Wag was like you know, from the ghetto. You know,
we was we wasn't nobody gave us a spoon and
gave us anything. We had to work for it. We
had to work hard. We come from some very difficult
times and situations, and you know, we had to build
who we were. We had to we had to fight
our way through neighborhoods and you know, the gangs and
everything that was around us to play ball and stuff

(10:33):
like that. So you know, we we developed, We developed
who we were by stepping on the field and performing.
I mean, it just clearly showed that. You know, when
we played Little league together and you know, and Eric
was a short stop batting the leadoff and I was
hitting third, Chris Brown was hitting for you imagine a
lineup like that with guys in there, and you got

(10:54):
to face those type of hitters like that. And then
we get to the big leagues and we take it
to a whole other level. You know, it takes the
game to a whole another levels as a player that
you know, hits o thirty home runs, still eighty bags,
you know, doing things like that, doing things that players
was not doing in the air and the time that
we came up with, players today are not even doing
that the kind of players we were back in the day.

(11:15):
So you know, that's what really gave us, you know,
brought the attention of who we were because we were different.
You know, we come from a different place and we
played the game a different way.

Speaker 5 (11:29):
How much did you guys take from where you came
onto the into the minor leagues and onto the major
league stage. Do you feel like everything you guys went
through off the field helped you be better players on
the field when you got to this type of situations
where there were a lot of attention and pressure gets
a little bit higher, did you feel like all the

(11:49):
pressure of trying to survive was bigger than anything you
were going to face in the big leagues.

Speaker 3 (11:57):
The pressure and how to survive is South Central was
way harder than trying to make it to the major leagues. Yeah,
just going to school, the towsand tribulations, I mean, uh,
having a fight to have your letterm and jacket or
your or your Walla Bees, or your biscuits, or or
someone trying to take you another codes or your bomber

(12:20):
jacket going here and there. I was more afraid of
my mama than I was anybody on the street. And
if I came home and I didn't have my bomber jacket,
I was going to deal with my mama. And so
right on the street was second nature to me and
the girl. The same way Ruby was that tough the
rocks for all of his siblings and stuff. So knowing

(12:42):
that going to play a game that that that you
grew up playing on on on dirt with glass and
different things of that nature. See, they give the guys
from Latin America that create about where they came from
and out they played. We did it the same way
in the parking recreations. That's why Straw was so intimate

(13:03):
about us playing at Harvard Park, Ross Schnyder, Jackie Robinson
all dirt in fields. We didn't have the grass and
fields and all those types of things and stuff. So
when you got to the point to where I'm gonna
tell you a story, actually we had a County Mac
team and like eighteen of our guys off our County

(13:23):
mac team to got drafted right, and we won the
Pacific Regionals at Compton and we went up to Seattle, Washington, right,
and so they put us on. After we landed, they
took us to the field and we just started laughing
because the guys was like, y'all laughing. We y'all laughing.

(13:45):
We got were playing here, and they was like, yeah,
the most home runs in the tournament was seven. We
hit six the first night and we broke the record
because we were used to playing in open spaces when
guys to play all the way back to the swimming
pool or something. So when you saw a nice beautiful field,

(14:08):
they was gonna get it.

Speaker 4 (14:11):
And they got it.

Speaker 3 (14:12):
So knowing all of that and then taking that into
the minor leagues, it wasn't if for us it was wooded.

Speaker 5 (14:19):
Yeah, was that the same experience for you?

Speaker 3 (14:23):
David Strong hit the ball in that ballpark that they
still looking for they ain't found it almost, so you know,
it was so it.

Speaker 4 (14:34):
Was so incredible. I mean, it was so incredible for
us to grow up, you know actually where we grew
up in South Central and become you know, major league
baseball players. I think, like Eric was saying, most people
don't know. The challenges were more difficult for us, you know,
walking to school and being challenged by people from different
neighborhoods and things like that that we had to deal with.

(14:54):
Putting putting the uniform on was easy for us, you know,
because think about it, we both played basketball a place
for free mind. I played for Crenshaw. We played basketball.
Then we go crossover and we go into baseball, and
we get into baseball, and playing baseball was just really
easy for us, you know. But we were so determined.
Me and Eric was different than everybody else because we
saw guys get drafted before us, and we saw how

(15:16):
they were when they responded when they came back, and
we just used to say to ourselves, they have not
seen nothing until we get into the league, because we're
going to be totally different, different type of players because
they didn't have Most people didn't have the ability that
me and Eric had.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
We had such a high level five two s ability
to play the game and i Q for the i
Q was so high for the game and understanding the
game the way it should be played at such a
different level.

Speaker 4 (15:44):
And I think most people never really recognized that. They
didn't recognize us until we actually entered into the big
leagues and realized and started playing the way we started
to play. And they was like, wow, I never seen
anything like this. Would you know these two guys play
at such a high level?

Speaker 3 (16:00):
He did.

Speaker 5 (16:01):
I could say this flat out. I mean, I'm not
as old as you guys, but I watched you guys play,
and I would say that you two guys were two
of the best players I ever seen play baseball. But
all I hear about is how good you guys were
at basketball. So did you guys ever go head to head?
Fremont Crenshaw? Did you guys ever play guard each other?

(16:30):
I thought maybe d might want to switch. I thought
maybe you might want to switch.

Speaker 3 (16:37):
You want nothing I can do with him on the
I was going to stay outside and and uh and
was a quarterback at I got recruited play football and
they didn't even know I played basketball or baseball. So

(17:01):
the ability to be multi talented has left a whole
lot of our black athletes because of it's such a
high profile sports now that they're putting all their marbles
into basketball or all their marbles into football. We could
our marbles into sports and then let our talents take

(17:25):
us where we wanted to go, but it gave us options.
Straw could have went to any school he wanted to.
I could have went to almost any school that I
wanted to, And so the options of being multi talented
helped us. In baseball, I was able to jump over
the fence because I could dump backwards. It was so
many different barrels that I took from the basketball court

(17:48):
onto the baseball field, and Sear did the same time.
I mean, he can run, jump, throw all the different
outcreaks of them. Being a quarterback was why his mom
was so small. So you have to all to diversify
and put things kind of around you to allow each
sport to give you soultic and and knowing all the
great athletes that came from South Centralinia, the ball was

(18:11):
said even for baseball at the at UH, the purns
or Ellis Valentine and the guys in Artis Johnson and
wanted to chair. There was so many different players that
you saw even from front with chet Lemon and Danny
Pallard and Barbie Tulla. You had UH the Dorsey and
many in Washington and Jefferson, so you had West, So

(18:34):
you had so much talent where you had to measure
up where you was gonna get set there, so you
had to cover a place. So that was the competition
at such a little at lower level for us Warner,
and those things were so competitive that when we got

(18:55):
to play against guys our age, because we always played
against guys older than us, and so so when we
got to play his guys our age, they was in
trouble the right, right, That's so true because you make
that so clear. Because we grew up around so many
different players and our coach, Earl Brown, who coached us
in the Summer League, all he talked about is all

(19:17):
these other players, Oh, you guys not better than Eddie
and Ozzie, you know, And he just he just built
us up inside to be better than guys like that
because they came through the same place playing out the accounpident.
Eddie and Ozzie they did this and they did that.
We used to say nothing, yeah, willis so many chill

(19:43):
There were so many.

Speaker 4 (19:44):
Yeah, there was so many of my head of us
and you know, and he kept always you know, putting
it in our ears and me and Ed was like,
well we only to stamp on this because when we
when we get out of here and we get to
the major League, it's gonna be a different ball game
because they ain't gonna be a dude kind of things
that we're gonna do. Like he said, you know we
could jump, you can get over he going over the watch.

(20:05):
See I would have had forty home runs. But everyone
I knew this war. I mean if he had to
go over the wall and stay stadium and take one
of my home runs and then the other day, then
the next day he throws me out at third base
trying to go from first to third. You know, it's like, oh,
you're supposed joy right that David Star was hard hitted.
I told him to pull the ball like before he

(20:28):
get going over on the bus outside of the little stadium.

Speaker 3 (20:31):
So I told him he was to be disrespectful by
tagging up on me. Disrespectful. Wanted to when we was kids,
but we was in the Apple. It was naturally televised
fifty five IM and then he took me to dinner
and we had a good time after the game. So

(20:53):
in between the lines, our competitor jus.

Speaker 5 (20:56):
Was just that, Yeah, that's the one thing I wondered about.
You guys did you did you know Straw got his
World Series before you did he d Was there any
of that kind of trash talking between you guys, No, no.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
Never, no never. It was always the best. It was
a lot of after the best. Yeah, I'm gonna tell
you how humble dryl was and still is. As I
might add, is that even when he went Rookie of
the Year, we went to the Laker games, and we
would always go to Laker games and everybody was telling

(21:31):
Daryl congratulations and was hanging around him. But all he
could say was wait till my partner comes. Nothing. That's
how he was. Didn't good became. And that's how humble
he was was that he was always saying, y'all think
I'm good, wait till he comes. And so no matter

(21:52):
where the situation we were, he always looked out for
everybody that was around us, so they became turn I
did the same. I look all the guys to bring
and the guys. And that's how our program was was.
It wasn't just about man Daryl. It was about every
one of us who came behind her. And that was

(22:12):
one of the reasons why we started the program, was
to give so many different guys the opportunity to see
how it also when they made it, then they would
do the same thing and the team would be going
and going and going. So Strong was really the leader
of that because they made it to the major league first,

(22:32):
and he showed us the way and he helped us
get there by how how hard he work. And it's
it's something that needs to be clarified. It's because when
you have black athletes who are challenged, they think we
don't work hard because we're so conscious. But if you
would have watched the weights and the and the running

(22:55):
and the things that we did every day, then you
would have saw that. But he lied in that. He
was the first one of us. I can remember that
started lifting weights and stuff when he had a personal
trainer first, and I'm like, what you doing with that? No, God,
we got to keep grunting. Okay. Then because she lied that.
That's the kind of individual he was. That's why he

(23:17):
was so successful.

Speaker 4 (23:19):
Well that's too, I thanks he but that we were
all like that together because we were like brothers. We
were like the family. And the thing about it, David,
is we cared about all our younger players coming underneath us,
you know, like the Royce Clayton. You know, he come
from underneath us, you know, learning out there with us,
and we taught him to have the mentality to be

(23:40):
strong and learn how to go through the adversities of sports.
Is going to be there and you're gonna have to
learn to deal with it. So it was just it
came from all of us, you know, it came from
It really came from me and Eve because we were
like the cornerstone and everything around there. When when it
came to the program, because the program was about Harvard
Park and it was a out where we come out

(24:01):
of and where we never leave. And I think that's
what really made us great because we never forgot where
we came from. And there was no egos. You know,
it was all about It wasn't about being selfish. It
was about us lifting each other up and encouraging each
each other. And like Eric Sin, I wonder rookie here,
but I was like, you guys, wait, my boy is coming.

(24:23):
He is bad. You guys have never seen anything like
this here. I'm telling you you just waiting until you
see it. And once they got a chance to see it,
they realized, like, wow, these are like true guys that
come out of South Central that really built their own
legacy the way they wanted to build it. Now, some
way somebody else should have said it should have been

(24:45):
just the way we decided that it was going to be,
and we was going to help all these younger players,
like I said that were around us, because all the
young players at the program, people need to go watch
Harbor Park, they need.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
To go see that it's and just how how much
Girl and myself connect the two guys coming from South Central.
We weren't put on an average pedestal. Girl was supposed

(25:19):
to be the next Ted Williams, one of the greatest
players that not one of the top three players of
all time, and I was supposed to be the next
one of the players has carried that type of baggage
as eighteen to nineteen year old. We had to live
with that and to move through the minor leagues and

(25:43):
to move through the major league. I can't recall a
player up of my era, in Shaw's era that was
dealt with that kind of pressure as it can. And
did we get there. No, But it wasn't because of
the talent and the way we played. It was because

(26:05):
of injury and the way I played, and the way
Daryl played, how he got hurt, we would have had
so much fun and winning here in La He hurt
his back, I had triple surgery. But if you go

(26:26):
back and look at our records on the game that
we played together, we were we were tearing people up
spots the way of changing the nerve behind something on
the afternoon.

Speaker 4 (26:43):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (26:44):
People ask me all the time, they say, would you
change something, And I'm like no, because of the way
that I went about it, the people that I went through,
what I went through with, and I wasn't to change
how I played. I would have changed the people that
I played with, wouldn't have changed our friendship. I would
have changed how we run. I wouldn't have placed all

(27:05):
the bad things we went through, and I wouldn't changed
men the good things because everything that we went through
is the reason that we're the people that we are
today at fifty eight years old. So me, that story
is still going on. There's still more chesters. Look at
what he's doing now. And it's ironic that we both

(27:27):
now don't live in California and we go back because
of how the chapters in our lives have taken us
other places. To do things with people that we never
thought that we would do, not just in baseball, but
away from baseball. That's what I'm thought of it. Girls
kind of the same thing. I'm sorry, Jeryl, go ahead,

(27:49):
no I am.

Speaker 4 (27:50):
I'm really proud of me and Erica. And when I
look back and I reflect back on what it was like,
how we were growing up and who we were in
LA and we came out. We came out of California
with more hype than any any player I think in
the history of baseball, being like Eric said, me being
Ted Williams the next Ted Williams and him being Willie Mays.

(28:12):
And I don't think anybody really understands what that's like,
you know, to be able to carry that and have
to have that on us. And the way we played
in the game, and we played the win all the time.
It was lights out, you know. And we wasn't just
a one demential player, you know, we were We were
players where you know, we hit home runs, we steal bases,
we played the field, we run scored and we I mean,

(28:35):
we did it all. And that took a grind on
who we were physically, and then the body starts to
break down, you start having the injuries, like their said,
and you know, and of course you know, I come
through the troubles of my life with the addiction part too,
so that played another part of slowing me down even more.
And it's a real reality. But like he like he

(28:56):
was saying, who had made us today? When we look
back at we were and when we see each other,
we laughed because we had such a good time of
being who we were in California growing up there. Exactly,
We'll never forget that. We'll never forget that what that's
really like and what what it was like growing up there,
because when you look at all the people that come

(29:17):
through southern California and all the players. You know, I
remember the players we played blanket ship them and I
think that we beat them in the playoffs and they
were supposed to be hot stuff. Yeah bull Yeah, we
beat them. We beat them out of competent and stuff.

Speaker 3 (29:30):
You know.

Speaker 4 (29:31):
It was just you know, it was us, you know,
us with me Eric and Chris Brown. And Chris Brown
was a part of us too in those days, you know,
when we were growing up. But me and Eric uh
put ourselves in a position and I remember sitting there
kind of you know, at the stadium, and Eric was
drafted and and I was number one. I was still
holding out. He said, Man, dog, I gotta go. I
gotta get going. Man up in the side. You know,

(29:58):
I didn't have much to hold out.

Speaker 3 (30:01):
I didn't have any record. He didn't know.

Speaker 4 (30:04):
Taking but he knew what the thing about it was
what makes me so proud of ericas he knew where
he was going. See like those players, I knew where
I was going. He knew where he was going. We
knew that we wasn't gonna fall shore. We knew that
one day we would be on the show, and it
was just a matter of time.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
That is a bucket list childhood dream. Talking to Eric
Davis and Darryl Strawberry. Ronnie will podcast that interview again.
It was from twenty twenty, but worth sharing again. Thanks
to Hori a cast you, thanks to the straw and
Ed for their help, and thank you to Ronnie Fossio.
We will be back with you tomorrow at three o'clock

(30:41):
for a pregame first pitch at four to ten between
the Dodgers and Mets. Kershaw Day right here on AM
five to seventy LA Sports. Thanks again, Ronnie Fossio and
thanks to you for listening. We'll talk to you tomorrow.

Speaker 3 (30:53):
See ya,