Former New York Mets/New York Yankees eight-time All-Star Darryl Strawberry will appear as a guest in a Trump campaign live webcast Thursday night titled “Faith in America: Black Voices for Trump.”
Strawberry, whose drug addiction eventually led him to becoming a believing Christian, which he credited for his recovery, has been a fan of President Trump for years. He said in September 2017, “President Trump, he’s a great man to me. He was always gracious to me. I really love him, his family. I was on his show. He’s always been kind to me. I’ve known him quite well and every time I’ve seen him and been around him he’s always been so gracious with me and I’m always grateful for that.”
In 2017, Strawberry appeared on Fox & Friends to promote his new book, “Don’t Give Up On Me,” where he lauded President Trump.
Asked about President Trump’s proclamation that the opioid crisis was a “national emergency,” Strawberry replied, “I feel great. I wish I could get on his team and really help and be a part of educating people because we’ve got to get back to educating people … He’s right. It’s a crisis, and we need to get out there and we need to just really educate everybody. The stigma of addiction and drugs are real and people need help and we just need to get back to doing that.”
Host Brian Kilmeade noted that Strawberry pushed addicts to reconnect with God, prompting Strawberry to reply, “Yes. I push them into finding God. It’s faith in Jesus that my life changed forever. We need to get back to faith and get faith and get faith programs to educate them and that part of the brokenness that’s going on inside. And that’s the reason we wrote this book; our tea, our team is a great team … people help people, and if we don’t get back to what this is really all about is being real people, not color, but just helping people, people are going to continue to die.”
Strawberry dismissed the idea that opioid victims were an urban problem, saying, “These are suburban kids that are coming to treatment, that are lost; that are looking for answers. Me and my wife and everyone else, we try to lead them into faith so they can find out “What’s wrong with me.”
Strawberry, who had 335 career home runs with 1000 RBIs in his career, was suspended three times by MLB for substance abuse; he was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1998; surgeons removed a tumor and 24 inches of his colon. He later underwent chemotherapy. In 2000, a CT scan found cancer in his lymph nodes; he had surgery to remove a tumor near his left kidney.
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