Cover of Straw: Finding My Way  The Internal Revenue Service has drafted both Darryl Strawberry’s book publisher, HarperCollins, and his first World Championship team, the New York Mets, in its continuing campaign to collect his tax debts. A lawsuit filed last week in federal court in Manhattan by Strawberry’s current and third wife, Tracy Strawberry, claims the IRS wrongly grabbed around $50,000 that HarpersCollins Publishers, a division of News Corp., owed Straw Marketing, LLC for Darryl Strawberry’s 2009 autobiography, Straw, Finding My Way.  Strawberry, 49, has been plagued by tax troubles for decades. In 1994 he was indicted for failing to report hundreds of thousands of income from autograph and baseball memorabilia shows and other personal appearances in 1986 through 1990. The next year he pleaded guilty to a single tax charge and was sentenced to six months home confinement and three years probation. A Notice of Levy the IRS sent to Harper Collins last August indicates that as of June 30th, 2010, Strawberry still owed $405,522 in back taxes, penalties and interest for 1989 and 1990. A separate notice of federal tax lien filed in a Florida court case involving the Mets, shows that as of July 2011, he also owed $53,817 in unpaid taxes from 2003 and 2004.  Back in 1991, when Forbes started tracking the highest paid athletes, Strawberry was the #1 baseball player, making $3.8 million a year. In his autobiography, Strawberry says that sometimes, riding home in a limo from an appearance gig where’ he’d pulled in $10,000 or $15,000, “Doc (Dwight Gooden) and I would roll down the windows and toss $100 bills out, just to see them fly away. It was free money, what did we care.” He also says he relied on the promoters and accountants to to take care of stuff like taxes, while he was busy being a celebrity. The book discusses his history of drug and financial problems and describes how in 2006 he rediscovered God and became a “changed man” with the help of Tracy, also a recovered drug addict and motivational speaker.  According to documents included in Tracy Strawberry’s suit, the contract for Strawberry’s book was technically between HarperCollins and Straw Marketing, which she is president of. But Darryl Strawberry also provided a letter to the publisher agreeing to deliver the book as promised and to accept the payment to Straw Marketing as “sufficient consideration” for his own work. Not surprisingly, despite that fancy contract footwork, the IRS deemed Tracy Strawberry and Straw Marketing to be “nominees” for Darryl Strawberry—meaning, they were fronts receiving the money on his behalf. Tracy Strawberry’s suit claims Darryl Strawberry had no claim to the funds and the money should be returned to Straw Marketing. It also asks for legal costs, other economic damages and an order blocking future levies on money due Straw Marketing under the HarperCollins contract.  From the documents, it appears Straw Marketing collected more than $100,000 for the book before the IRS collection hounds caught the scent. The contract with HarperCollins provided for payments of $45,000 on execution of the agreement in April 2008, another $40,000 when the final manuscript was accepted and $35,000 upon the hardcover publication of the book. The book was published in April 2009 and the IRS “Notice of Levy” wasn’t sent to the publisher until May 2009. An attorney for Tracy Strawberry, Matthew Jacober, of Lathrop & Gage in Clayton, Mo., indicated by email that he and his client would have no further comment on the case. Erin Crum, a spokeswoman for HarperCollins, said the publisher would have no comment.  In his book, Strawberry writes that he and Tracy befriended a financial consultant they met at a Little League event and that the man “helped us negotiate with the IRS and deal with my other bills.” He adds: “We went before judges, divulged everything about our current financial status, and they rendered their decisions on what would be realistic payment schedules where I could begin to reduce those bills a little at a time.”  One way or the other, the IRS seems likely to get all its money—eventually. In November 2004, after being served with an IRS levy, the New York Mets began sending the IRS almost all of the $8,892 in monthly deferred compensation Strawberry is owed under the Uniform Player’s Contract, to cover both his back taxes and current income tax withholding.  Last year, a Florida federal bankruptcy trustee sued the Mets, the IRS and Darryl Strawberry demanding that the team pay part of Strawberry’s monthly check to his second wife, Charisse Ann Strawberry, who filed for personal bankruptcy in 2010. The suit says that as part of Charisse and Darryl’s 2006 divorce decree, a Qualified Domestic Relations Order was issued directing the Mets to send $2,439 of Darryl’s monthly check to Charisse for 328 months, until she’d collected a total of $800,000 of his deferred pay pot and asserts that if Charisse had gotten the payments she wouldn’t have ended up in bankruptcy.  In response to that suit, the Mets started sending the checks to the Tallahassee bankruptcy court and filed a countersuit asking the judge to decide who should get what and to shield the team from liability and award it attorney fees for its trouble in the matter. Sterling Mets, L.P., which owns the Mets, noted in it its countersuit that in addition to the trustee and the IRS, Charisse Ann Strawberry and the State of Missouri also were also claiming an interest in Darryl’s payments. (The Missouri claim relates to Strawberry’s past-due child support payments.) The Mets noted in the countersuit that the IRS had sent the team a letter in November 2006 noting that the levy preceded the QDRO and asserting that no other creditors could get their money until Darryl’s tax debts were satisfied.  On Dec. 30, 2011, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Lewis Killian Jr. ruled the IRS is entitled to the full $8,891, minus what’s known as the “exempt amount” –$791.67 that goes to Darryl Strawberry each month for living expenses, under the IRS’ collection rules. According to documents in that case, at that rate, Darryl’s 1989 and 1990 bills should be paid off around September 2016—at which point, presumably, Charisse and Missouri will start getting their cut.  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HarperCollins made payments for Strawberry's autobiography to a corporation that the IRS asserts was a front for the retired slugger.