Columnist Dean Juipe: Shameful trend adds Strawberry

Dean Juipe

Monday, July 31, 2000 | 10:20 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

Maybe it's best to approach this as a pop quiz.

To wit, what do these three men have in common: O.J. Simpson, Mike Tyson, Darryl Strawberry?

And choose from among these answers: A) each is a nationally known athlete who has made millions of dollars; B) all have besmirched their reputations with legal and moral indiscretions; C) when the going is especially difficult they exploit their own children; or D) all of the above.

It's "D" of course.

When Strawberry fell back upon the very existence of his children and his need to support them while arguing for his reinstatement to baseball last week, he joined Simpson and Tyson in a trend that needn't go any further. Each man's rallying call -- "You owe it to me to let me earn a living, so that my kids can eat" -- is the extreme example of men behaving badly and twisting the facts to meet their own agendas.

If anything, in each of these cases the men had long since turned their back on their children and shunned their parental duties. Yet when it comes time to make a buck, they argue that they're not doing it for themselves but for their offspring.

Simpson, according to a California civil court jury, killed his children's mother but that hasn't prevented him from evoking their name when trying to rationalize why he should be allowed to profit from the crime. He did it again just last week while hyping a pay-per-view Internet chat that allowed him to stockpile a few weeks' worth of greens fees under the guise of obtaining some cash to meet his children's expenses.

Tyson had the grandaddy of all distorted lines two years ago when he stood, straight-faced, before the Nevada State Athletic Commission and pleaded for his boxing license so that his tykes wouldn't go hungry. Given his propensity for night life and strippers, the petition will forever come across as inexcusably shallow.

Now Strawberry has come forth, telling reporters that he needs a job in baseball because his children are scraping the bottoms of their cereal bowls. What he failed to mention -- but what was publicized for him by Sports Illustrated in this week's issue -- is that those kids could eat to their hearts' content if ol' dad wouldn't have spent a small fortune buying a membership in a swingers' club.

Pictured in S.I. with a topless woman who is also a member of the Trapeze II club in Fort Lauderdale, Strawberry looked more like a big hitter on the sex scene than an impoverished father struggling to make ends meet. The fact that a source at the club said he has been there "three or four times" and has left with a different woman on each occasion couldn't have done much for his kids' appetite, although it certainly whetted the public's.

Where were Strawberry's paternal concerns during earlier drug-related escapades that resulted in his being banned from baseball for the year? Final answer: Wrestling with his libido.

His cancer may have returned, which is unfortunate, yet Strawberry is hardly a sympathetic figure. And while it's one thing to beg for reinstatement to baseball, as he's doing, it's less than manly to cite his hungry children as his primary incentive.

Like the others, we know Strawberry too well to fall for that one.