TAMPA, Fla. – Baseball was the easy part for eight-time All-Star Darryl Strawberry, the former Yankee slugger who is in a Tampa hospital in the fight of his life to beat drugs, cancer and possibly prison.

"Drinking and drugging, that was the big deep hole," Strawberry says in an interview airing Sunday on "60 Minutes." "Women, you know, not one, not two, but you know, women, women, women and I just couldn't get myself away from it. I was addicted to it.

"I was addicted to the women. I was addicted to the drinking. I was addicted to the drugs."

In the CBS show, Strawberry, 39, talks about his battles with cocaine and colon cancer and his latest flight from court-ordered drug rehabilitation.

Interviews with Strawberry in early April following his four-day cocaine binge and six weeks ago when he seemed to be winning his drug tug-of-war, as well as many of the pictures in Morley Safer's report, were provided by a documentary film crew which has been following the former baseball star since December.

In late March, Strawberry walked away from a Tampa rehabilitation center where he was serving house arrest. He had been drug free for five months.

Now he is expected to go before a judge May 4, accused of violating terms of his sentence for a 1999 drug and prostitution solicitation arrest for the fourth time.

Prosecutors want him to go to prison. His attorney, Joe Ficarrotta, hopes he will be sent to a secure facility for drug treatment and mental health help.

After Strawberry took off this last time, former teammate Dwight Gooden and friends Ron Dock and Ray Negron searched drug areas of Tampa looking for their friend. No luck.

Two days later, Dock and Negron got a call from a desperate Strawberry 135 miles away in Daytona Beach.

They raced across the state to get him and brought him back to Tampa's St. Joseph's Hospital, where he is being treated for depression, cancer and addiction.

"We picked him up on the highway," said Dock. "That was the saddest sight for me. I thought a couple of times in the car we may lose him. ... he cried, I cried."

Said Negron: "The first thing that came out of his mouth was, 'I messed up, I really messed up this time.' In essence it was a feeling like no hope, there was no hope."

Dock said Strawberry disliked undergoing chemotherapy and said it was killing him.

"When he took off, I personally lost all faith," Dock said. "I thought he died."