Trump grants clemency to baseball icon
President Donald Trump has granted a pardon to baseball icon Darryl Strawberry for his 1995 tax fraud plea, according to a White House official who disclosed the information to the New York Post on Friday, November 7.
The White House official remarked, “President Trump has bestowed a pardon upon Darryl Strawberry, a distinguished athlete who clinched three World Series titles and was an eight-time MLB All-Star.” The statement further detailed, “Mr. Strawberry was incarcerated and compensated for his taxes after admitting to a single count of tax evasion.
Decades after his playing career, Darryl Strawberry embraced Christianity and has been clean for ten years. He plunged into ministry and founded a rehabilitation facility that persists to this day.”
In the aftermath of his tax evasion guilty plea, the former outfielder, now 63, served a three-year probationary period and six months of home confinement. Moreover, he returned $350,000 in back taxes and financial penalties. In 1985, just a year before the New York Mets achieved their most recent World Series triumph, Strawberry penned a six-year, $7.1 million contract extension with the club and put aside $700,000 as an interest-generating annuity, which was liquidated by the IRS following the resolution of his case.
Alongside his World Series win with the Mets, Strawberry secured three additional championships with the New York Yankees and plied his trade for the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants, but his career was marked by legal infractions. Following his dismissal from the Giants in February 1995 due to cocaine detection, he was once more cast out by the Yankees in 2000 after testing positive for the same substance, effectively retiring post the latter outcome.
Further adding to his legal troubles, Strawberry was apprehended in April 1999 for making advances towards an undercover law enforcement officer and being in possession of cocaine. He pleaded no contest and was sentenced to a 21-month probationary period along with community service. These long years of struggle included the violation of regulations at a treatment center where he was serving his probation in March 2002, which brought upon an 11-month prison term in April 2003 — these incidents were not included in the recent pardon granted to him.