A larger-than-life New York outfield slugger, fresh off a tremendous season, weighed massive free-agent offers from his incumbent team, which helped launch his stardom, and his hometown club in California.
That’s where Darryl Strawberry and Aaron Judge diverged. Strawberry went home to the West Coast, while Judge elected to stay with the Yankees.
“I’m glad [Judge] made the right decision,” Strawberry said Sunday at a “Pinstripe Pride” event at American Dream in East Rutherford, N.J., where Yankees icons signed autographs.Strawberry apparently made the wrong one. Following his seventh-straight All-Star season with the Mets, in which he drilled 37 home runs with 108 RBIs in 1990, the former No. 1 pick hit the open market as the prize of free agency.
Strawberry, a Los Angeles native, left Queens for the Dodgers on a five-year, $22.25 million contract that was the second-richest contract in MLB history at the time. The Mets reportedly offered him four years and $15.5 million.
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nypost.com]