Throughout sports history, we have seen so many different talents come into sports and shock the world with how good they are, but sometimes their talent is short-lived, leaving the fans to wonder what could’ve been. 

In baseball, there have been many players who over their careers haven’t reached their full potential. One name that pops up is outfielder Darryl Strawberry of the New York Mets. Coming up in the Mets farm system in the early 1980s, there was a buzz about him and how he was the potential future of baseball.

He was a five-tool player coming out of Los Angeles, California. He won Rookie of the Year in 1983 and was an All-Star for eight years from 1985-1991. He won two Silver Sluggers and finished top 10 in MVP voting four times through that stretch. 

Sadly, his career wasn’t as amazing as people thought it would’ve been, as he had an issue with drug abuse and was in and out of rehab throughout the 1990s. It was a shame to see such a young star corrupted by the world around him.

When it comes to basketball and the 1990s, many many young talents came into the league and brought new/exciting moves and ways to score. One of the many young and exciting talents was Stephon Marbury. Coney Island’s Finest was ahead of the game when drafted in 1996 and was on the All-Rookie team. 

As time went on, Marbury continued to be a great talent but couldn’t ever mesh well with a team as he bounced around the NBA a little before playing ball overseas in China. When Netflix made a documentary about him in 2019, he talked about how he couldn’t handle the pressure in the NBA, and how it eventually made him severely depressed leading up to his leaving the league in 2009.  

In football, most of the time you can tell who will have a successful career and who won’t. Sometimes you don’t know how long your career will be or how long you can stay consistent in your sport. Ricky Williams was a Heisman-winning running back at the University of Texas Austin. He was the fifth overall draft pick in the first round of the 1999 NFL draft. He was moderately successful picking up four 1000-yard seasons within his first five years in the NFL. 

Unfortunately, he couldn’t keep his success and follow the newly implemented drug rules in the NFL, as he failed drug tests multiple times for using marijuana. It’s sad, but it cost him his career, and was never the same running back ever again.  

We all strive for success and want to achieve amazing things, but we don’t know how long we´ll be able to sustain this success. We just have to make sure to do our thing and work hard to stay consistently good at what we do and learn to recognize when it’s over.