AUGUST – 1990: Darryl Strawberry #18 of the New York Mets prepares to pitch during a season opener in August 1990. (Photo by Bernstein Associates/Getty Images)
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President Donald Trump has pardoned former baseball star Darryl Strawberry, who pleaded guilty to tax evasion nearly three decades ago.
Strawberry and Baseball
Darryl Eugene Strawberry, who spent 17 years in Major League Baseball, was an eight-time All-Star and one of only five Major League Baseball (MLB) players to hit two grand slams in the same season. He is commonly recognized as a New York Met, spending nearly half of his career with the team, from 1983 to 1990.
Strawberry made his professional debut after the Mets took him as the No. 1 pick in the 1980 free agent draft when he was just 18 years old. As is customary, he spent the next 2½ years in the minors before moving up to the majors—the Mets offered him a $200,000 signing bonus to skip college. It paid off for the Mets and Strawberry – he was voted National League Rookie of the Year in 1983 after collecting 108 hits, 26 home runs, 74 RBI and 19 stolen bases. Three years later, he returned in a Game 7 victory over Boston to bring the World Series championship to New York.
Although the season was a career smash for Strawberry, it marked a difficult time in his personal life. He regularly abused drugs and drank heavily, even at the club. (MLB did not require random drug testing at that point.)
His first wife, Lisa, filed for divorce the following year, accusing him of domestic violence. That same year, he led the National League with 39 homers. As long as he was producing, those around him had little incentive to interfere. Law enforcement did. In January 1990, Strawberry was arrested in Los Angeles for domestic violence (he had moved to California after signing with the Dodgers). The charges were eventually dropped after Strawberry checked into rehab for alcohol abuse (stayed less than a week).
Income tax and financial problems
A longer stay at the Betty Ford Clinic followed in 1993, but by then, Strawberry’s personal life had begun to unravel. On December 9, 1994, Strawberry was indicted on one count of income tax conspiracy and two counts of tax evasion for failing to pay $146,000 in income taxes from 1986 to 1990 by failing to report money made at card shows and other appearances. (Pete Rose was hit with similar charges in 1990.)
On February 10, 1995, Strawberry pleaded guilty to one count of tax evasion and was ordered to repay $350,000 to the IRS. He served just six months of house arrest and two years of probation.
(Strawberry’s agent, Eric Goldschmidt, who was also charged, chose to go to trial and was found not guilty. Meade Chasky, Strawberry’s former card agent, was granted immunity in exchange for testifying against Strawberry.)
Strawberry’s legal and financial woes continued. He tested positive for drugs several times, was accused of not making child support payments and was sued by his lawyer for not paying his bills. He was also arrested for solicitation of sex and possession of cocaine. He was suspended by MLB, but still faced no jail time, sentenced to 21 months of probation and community service.
After enduring cancer treatments in 1999, Strawberry would spend the next three years in and out of drug treatment centers. By the time he officially retired, Strawberry had been suspended three times by MLB for substance abuse.
An eight-time All Star, he retired with four World Series rings. In his 2009 autobiography, Strawberry noted, “I made some good choices and I made some really bad ones.” The book made some money for Strawberry, which turned out to be a good thing. In 2010, the IRS was still trying to collect from Strawberry and sent a notice of levy to his publisher, claiming he still owed $405,522 in back taxes, penalties and interest for 1989 and 1990. In 2011, a separate notice of federal tax lien filed in a Florida court also said he $3 in unpaid taxes from 2003 and 2004.
In was a long way from Strawberry’s baseball prime. In 1991, when Forbes began tracking the highest-paid athletes, Strawberry was the #1 player in baseball, earning $3.8 million a year. In his autobiography, he wrote that, sometimes, while riding home in a limousine from a gig, “Doc (Dwight Gooden) and I would roll down the windows and throw out $100 bills, just to watch them fly away. It was free money, what did we care.”
Life after baseball
Although his career officially ended in 2000, Strawberry’s number 18 was retired by the New York Mets in 2024. At the ceremony, Strawberry said, “I don’t regret what happened to me because it made me the person I am today,” he told the crowd. “I’m grateful for every challenge I’ve had to face and every circumstance I’ve had to go through, because it’s just kept me going to try to be a better person.”
Since leaving baseball, Strawberry has become an ordained minister. He is now a preacher with his own church. He has also opened several treatment centers in his name and shared his story on several platforms, including CrisisNextDoor.gov, an initiative launched by the first Trump administration in 2018 to combat the opioid epidemic.
It wasn’t Strawberry’s first interaction with Trump. In 2010, Strawberry appeared on NBC’s The Apprentice – Trump fired him at the end of the third episode.
Strawberry’s sorry
Strawberry was announced his apology on Instagram, including a photo of himself and Trump. He wrote, “Thank you President @realdonaldtrump for fully apologizing and finalizing this part of my life, allowing me to be truly free and clear of my entire past.”
Snapshot from Darryl Strawberry’s Instagram dated 07/11/2025
Kelly Phillips Erb
Strawberry said he is “overwhelmed with gratitude – thanking God for freeing me from my past, for helping me to be a better man, husband and father.”
Thanks Trump
Strawberry’s pardon is one of about 1,600 granted by Trump in 2025.
(About 1,500 of those pardons are linked to convictions for the January 6, 2021 riot on Capitol Hill, and last week, Trump signed a proclamation granting pardons preempting future federal prosecutions of 77 people, including Rudy Giuliani, related to the plot to overthrow the US presidential election20.
In just over nine months since Trump returned to office, about 10,000 people have applied for pardons or commutations.
During his two terms, Trump granted clemency to some people convicted of white-collar crimes. In 2025, Strawberry joined six others who were pardoned after committing tax crimes. Among them are Julie Chrisley, who was convicted of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, bank fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States to obstruct and obstruct tax laws, tax evasion and obstruction of justice, and her husband Todd Chrisley, who was convicted of conspiracy to commit bank fraud. to obstruct and prevent tax law and tax evasion.
Also pardoned was Marian Morgan, who along with her husband John, stole about $28 million from 87 victims, according to prosecutors. He was convicted of conspiracy to defraud the United States, bank fraud, transfer of funds by fraud, money laundering and making false statements on income tax returns.
Trump also pardoned former U.S. Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY), who was convicted of aiding and abetting the preparation of false and fraudulent tax returns. Venture capitalist and political fundraiser Imaad Shah Zuberi, who was sentenced to 12 years for concealing his work as a foreign agent while lobbying high-ranking US government officials, avoided paying millions of dollars in taxes, made illegal campaign contributions and obstructed a federal investigation into the source of donations to a presidential inauguration committee. and former Arkansas State Senator Jeremy Hutchinson, who was convicted of accepting multiple bribes and tax fraud.
You can see the full list here.
Clemency v. Commutation v. Sorry
The legal terms – clemency, commutation and grace – are sometimes thrown around as if they are the same thing, but they are not.
A pardon is an act of executive power that results in the complete forgiveness of a crime. The result is a release from guilt, meaning that the condemnation disappears. Any associated penalties that may apply to the crime — such as the inability to hold public office or vote — are also removed. In this way, a pardon more or less restores you to the state you were in before the condemnation. This means, for example, that you do not need to disclose that you have ever been convicted on future job applications.
Article II of the Constitution gives the President the “Power to grant suspensions and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.” (Notably, the power applies only to federal offenses and does not include state crimes.)
A replacement is not as powerful. A commutation shortens or eliminates punishment for a crime, but does not erase the conviction—the guilt tag still applies.
Leniency is used to describe both pardons and exchanges. It is a general phrase for mercy or relief from punishment.
