'Right choice' Strawberry lived up to billing

This story was excerpted from Anthony DiComo’s Mets Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

NEW YORK -- Heading into the 1980 MLB Draft, the consensus No. 1 overall pick was Darryl Strawberry. The only prospect with a reasonable chance to unseat him was Billy Beane.

“Thank goodness they made the right choice,” Beane said last week, laughing.

Looking back, the decision might seem obvious. Strawberry, who will have his number retired in a ceremony Saturday at Citi Field, is the Mets’ all-time home run king, a prodigious slugger who hit 252 balls over the fence in eight seasons in Flushing, won the 1983 National League Rookie of the Year Award and the 1986 World Series, and made seven All-Star teams with the franchise. Beane, despite going on to have a decorated career as a front-office executive and minority owner of the A’s, never became a standout player himself.

Back in June 1980, however, things were not so clear. Strawberry, of course, was the popular choice to go No. 1 overall based on his generational career at Crenshaw High School in inner city Los Angeles, as well as an April Sports Illustrated article that referred to him as “a black Ted Williams.” (Fun fact: The cover story of that edition was on a young Cardinals star named Keith Hernandez.)

But Beane was a decorated athlete in his own right from suburban San Diego, which at the time was a hotbed of baseball talent. The primary reason Draft experts discounted his chances to go No. 1 was because John Elway was among those helping recruit him to play quarterback at Stanford.

Ahead of the Draft, Beane cut a deal with the Mets that would allow him to sign with the organization while still attending college. (Due to some administrative confusion, he wound up going to UC San Diego instead of Stanford.) But rather than take Beane first overall, the Mets spent that pick on Strawberry and took Beane with their second selection at No. 23. One pick later, they selected catcher John Gibbons, who returned to Queens this season as bench coach.

“I signed in three days,” Gibbons said. “Beane and Strawberry held out for like a month.”

Once Strawberry did sign, Gibbons recalled him showing up to Rookie ball in Kingsport, Tenn., trailed by dozens of journalists. Beane didn’t meet him until that autumn, at Instructional ball. The two became closer the following two summers, when they played full seasons together at Class A Lynchburg and Double-A Jackson.

Shortly after meeting Strawberry, Beane recalls watching in awe as his new teammate posted him up during a pickup basketball game, drop-stepped and dunked over him -- a feat that the athletic Beane could not have imagined anyone doing to him in high school.

“It would have been a natural thing for us to be different and competitive with each other, but he was clearly a better player than not only myself but everyone,” Beane said. “And he was really a good guy. I actually felt a lot of understanding. … I remember thinking, ‘Thank God I wasn’t No. 1, given what this young man has to go through.’ There was a ton of pressure on him. Emotionally, watching him, he kept it inside.”

Ultimately, the Mets developed three baseball lifers in that 1980 Draft. There was Gibbons, who became a longtime manager and coach in the big leagues. There was Beane, whose front-office tenure in Oakland sparked the “Moneyball” revolution. And there was of course Strawberry, the most decorated player of them all, who will receive one of his greatest honors this weekend at Citi Field.

“Darryl was a generational talent,” Beane said. “He really was. He was the best athlete I think I’ve ever seen in my life.”