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Former New York Mets star Darryl Strawberry expressed his gratitude toward President Donald Trump on Sunday during a church sermon in Oklahoma.
Trump pardoned Strawberry earlier this month for past tax evasion and drug charges. Strawberry was welcomed into a Tulsa church by Jackson Lahmeyer, the founder of Pastors for Trump. He received cheers from the congregation of more than 400 when he mentioned the pardon.
“God just completely set me free when he gave me a pardon from President Donald J. Trump,” he said. “Other presidents had opportunities, but they didn’t do it.”
Strawberry was the No. 1 overall pick of the 1980 MLB Draft. He made his debut at the age of 21 in 1983 and played for New York until 1990. He spent time with the Los Angeles Dodgers, San Francisco Giants and New York Yankees.
He won three World Series titles, hit 335 home runs and batted .259 with a .862 OPS.
Strawberry battled legal, health and personal problems throughout his career. He served 11 months in a Florida prison for a 2002 probation violation.
The 63-year-old credited his Christian faith for helping him turn his life around and allowing him to remain sober for more than two decades.
“All glory to God because he found me in a pit and put me in a pulpit,” Strawberry said.
The devil “should have killed me when he had a chance,” he joked.
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Strawberry said he was surprised to hear from Trump on Nov. 6 when the president revealed he was going to pardon the former MLB star. The two had gotten acquainted during “Celebrity Apprentice” in 2010.
“We just talked about my baseball career in the 1980s and what kind of player I was,” Strawberry told The Associated Press. “He was just telling me how great of a player I was … and he just kind of joked around that he couldn’t hit a baseball. I said, ’Well, the way you hit a golf ball, you can hit a baseball.’”
He said the two talked about his guilty plea in 1999 to tax evasion for failure to report $350,000 in income from autographs, personal appearances and memorabilia sales.
“He told me, ‘You know you did some very bad things,’” Strawberry said. “But he said, ’Today, the way your life is and what you’re doing, your faith and helping people and being sober, I’m giving you a full pardon. You’re going to be clean. I’m wiping everything out.’”
Strawberry and Doc Gooden have notoriously been tied together due to their immense talent while playing for the Mets while battling drug and alcohol abuse. Strawberry was able to turn his life around much earlier than Gooden, but Gooden appears to have stayed on the right track in recent years. The two appeared together in last year’s National League Championship Series between the Mets and Los Angeles Dodgers and were the subjects of ESPN’s 30 for 30, “Doc and Darryl.”
Both of their numbers were retired by the Mets last season.
Fox News’ Ryan Morik and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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