Why is Darryl Strawberry wearing Kentucky gear?

Darryl Strawberry is one of the best baseball players of all time as an eight-time MLB All-Star and three-time World Series champion with 1,000 career RBI and 335 homers suiting up for the Mets, Dodgers, Giants and Yankees. He’s also apparently a Kentucky fan, representing the Wildcats on one of the nation’s most popular sports podcasts. Why? We really don’t know.

In an hour-plus appearance on All The Smoke with Matt Barnes & Stephen Jackson, a show with 1.2 million subscribers on YouTube, Strawberry wore a black polo with a blue UK logo while talking about his historic career.

Just two former pro hoopers and a 17-year baseball vet talking shop, repping the Wildcats.

It’s fascinating because there is no evidence of a formal University of Kentucky affiliation with the 63-year-old from Los Angeles, California who signed a letter of intent with Oklahoma State — but never played as the No. 1 overall pick in the 1980 MLB Draft. He’s been to Lexington on several occasions for speaking engagements and community events, including as recently as July 2025, and was also named a Kentucky Colonel, the most honorable award in the state, back in 2017. There, he was given a key to the city of Owensboro.

Maybe that was enough for the two-time Silver Slugger Award winner and former NL Rookie of the Year to start bleeding blue? We have no idea, but hey, we’re not complaining about Straw supporting the Kentucky Wildcats.

Strawberry talked about his baseball career, one that saw him achieve so much as is, but also leave plenty on the table as he dealt with substance abuse and other personal issues, limiting him from ever reaching his true Hall of Fame potential in the sport. He also fought cancer and bounced back from a heart attack, opening up on how faith got him through his biggest hardships professionally and in his own private life.

Oh, and basketball. He talked about that, too — a must if you’re gonna rock a Kentucky polo, right?

The Mets legend talked about giving up basketball in high school after it became clear that baseball was going to get him paid the big bucks, coaches and scouts steering him in the right direction despite his love for hoops.

“My game was more like a power forward, great defense and always going to the hoop. I really had this X-factor on me, because a lot of guys in high school, they like to talk trash,” Strawberry said. “… I did (realize I’d be much better at baseball than basketball). I realized that from my coach, my baseball coach. My junior year, we played in Dodger Stadium for the championship. … I come back in 1980 and I’m playing basketball, my baseball coach, I wonder why he’s always at all my basketball games.

He was always cringing that I might go up and dunk on somebody and get hurt. I didn’t know it, but he said all of these scouts had been calling him, programs and schools had been calling him, telling him, ‘He’s the next Willie McCovey.’ … We won the city championship and went to state, lost at state in Oakland, came back, one day of practice, first day was baseball season. My first day there was packed with like 50 scouts. …

“By the time the season was over, they said, ‘You’re probably going to be one of the first two or three picks of the draft.'”

The rest was history, but could you have imagined the Straw Man suiting up for the Wildcats under Joe B. Hall? Or, maybe even better, Keith Madison as a baseball superstar?

Oh, what could have been.