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While Lenny Dykstra awaits sentencing in L.A. Monday, Jim Baumbach of Newsday does an exhaustive profile of Nails's downhill ride.
The members of the 1986 world champion Mets walked somberly through the doors of the Christ Fellowship Church in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., one sunny day last February. Darryl Strawberry, Mookie Wilson, Howard Johnson and Wally Backman, names engraved in Mets lore, were there for the funeral of Gary Carter, the team's Hall of Fame catcher, who had died at age 57 of brain cancer.
Lenny Dykstra, who patrolled centerfield, also was among the more than 2,000 mourners.
In Game 3 of the 1986 National League Championship Series against the Astros, Dykstra hit one of the most important home runs in Mets history, a walk-off shot that drove in Backman. At 5-9, small for a professional athlete, Dykstra personified the fire and toughness on a team of fighters. He played all out, all the time. He was cocky and brash.
Many of his former Mets teammates had not seen him in years. All they knew of him were the rumors -- that Dykstra, who had lived in mansions and flown in private jets, was flat broke, sometimes sleeping in hotel lobbies. Now he was under house arrest after being charged with federal bankruptcy fraud -- stealing and selling property that no longer belonged to him -- and he needed the permission of a federal judge in Los Angeles to attend Carter's funeral.
Dykstra's appearance stunned his old teammates. No longer was he the tough guy nicknamed Nails. His once-strong body was bent over. He looked far older than his 49 years.
"His health, it looked like it was in decline," former closer Jesse Orosco said. "He was a little bit slouched over and he was talking a little different."
At times he was incoherent, Backman said. Through the mumbling, "it was hard to even understand Lenny."
Outside the church on a smoke break, Backman said Dykstra told him "that he expected to be dead within five years."
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Dykstra soon became Nails. His determination had no limits, which the police recognized during a high school Christmas break. According to his memoir, "Nails," published after the 1986 World Series, Dykstra broke into Anaheim Stadium, where the Angels play. He said security officers caught him on the warning track throwing balls to himself off the centerfield wall.
Baker remembers asking Dykstra why he broke into the stadium. "I have to make sure once I'm a pro," Dykstra told him, "that I can catch the ball against the wall."
Dykstra brought that surefire belief with him to a tryout the Mets held in 1981 for high school seniors in Southern California.
Joe McIlvaine, then the Mets' scouting director, remembers one of the scouts at the check-in table looking over Dykstra's small build and mistaking him for a batboy. Dykstra, McIlvaine remembered, responded by staring down the scouts and sternly telling them, "I'm Lenny Dykstra, and I'm the best player you're going to see here today."
McIlvaine said he was impressed by Dykstra's bravado -- and even more by his skills. He wanted to take Dykstra as high as the third round of the draft, but Mets scouts assured him there wasn't much interest in him elsewhere. So the Mets waited until the 13th round.
When it came time to negotiate his contract, McIlvaine said Dykstra demanded that he start at Class A, one level higher than everyone else.
"Some people may call it cockiness, but it was a good kind of cockiness because he 100 percent believed in his ability . . . Lenny could never fail in his own mind," McIlvaine said.
McIlvaine let Dykstra skip rookie ball. The brash kid quickly rose through the Mets' minors, breaking into the majors in 1985. At Shea Stadium, he became a fan favorite for his hustle. His uniform always was dirty.
As Wilson said: "When you live on the ledge like Lenny did -- and I say live on the ledge because he played on the edge, with a reckless abandon -- you wouldn't be surprised if he ran into a wall and broke his arms."
Dykstra etched his place in Mets history on Oct. 11, 1986, when he launched a walk-off two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth inning against the Astros to win Game 3 of the NLCS. Shea Stadium erupted, Mets jumped out of the dugout and Dykstra raced around the bases with his arms in the air. He wrote in his memoir that the home run "changed my life."
Dykstra's homer is considered one of the most important in franchise history. And it wasn't his only big hit during the Mets' postseason run that year. His home run to lead off Game 3 of the World Series in Boston provided a momentum swing for the Mets, who had lost the first two games at home. The team won its first title since 1969 in seven games.
After the Series, Dykstra bought a home in Port Washington, expecting to be a longtime Met. But it didn't work out that way. The Mets platooned him with Wilson during the next three seasons, which angered him. The Phillies traded for him in 1989, an opportunity their general manager, Lee Thomas, said he had been waiting for since watching his performance in the 1986 postseason.
"He was a red-light player," Thomas said. "The minute the TV cameras are on, he knows how to play. He's as good under pressure playing baseball as anyone I've seen."
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In 2009, Dykstra's wife of 25 years, Terri, whom he met while playing for a Mets minor-league affiliate in Jackson, Miss., filed for divorce. Efforts to reach her were unsuccessful.
Dykstra filed for bankruptcy in July 2009 to stave off a planned auction of the Gretzky home, saying in court papers he was $12.5 million in the hole, with $24.6 million in assets and $37.1 million in debt. In laying out their case against Dykstra, federal prosecutors say he "stole or destroyed" more than $400,000 worth of sports memorabilia and high-end furniture and vanities from inside the home during an 18-month period. Under Chapter 7 bankruptcy rules, those items were legally the property of the bankruptcy trustee, who would sell them to pay back creditors. Prosecutors say Dykstra sold items to pawn shops, antique stores and on eBay and Craigslist.
Keith Hernandez, the former Mets first baseman who is a broadcaster for the team-owned network, said Dykstra tried to sell him a private jet around the same time. But Hernandez said he "had heard the stories" about Dykstra and "wanted nothing to do with it."
Dykstra's spiral continued at such a rapid pace that in January 2010, he told the Ventura County Star newspaper in California that he was homeless and "fighting for my life."
"He was kind of down and out and things were changing rapidly for him," said Dan Herman, who was Dykstra's publicist in 2010-11. "One day he would have money. The next he wouldn't."
Herman said he counseled Dykstra to stick to the autograph circuit for former ballplayers, believing Dykstra could make a living off his name. But whenever Herman set up a show, he said Dykstra would always come up with a problem at the last minute. He wanted first-class plane tickets. Or more money.
"I would say 40 percent of the time he was Nails," Herman said. "It was the other 60 where he was, like, crazy."
Prosecutors, as well as friends, said Dykstra was abusing drugs and alcohol.
In April 2011, Dykstra's life took a far worse turn. He was arrested by Los Angeles Police on charges that he used false information to lease cars. Court papers say police found cocaine and Ecstasy, along with somatropin, a synthetic human growth hormone, at his L.A. residence. A day later he was indicted on federal bankruptcy fraud charges. Then, in August, he was charged with indecent exposure.
Shortly after the arrests, Dykstra visited a longtime friend's home in the Philadelphia area. John Bolaris, a meteorologist in Philadelphia, had known Dykstra for two decades. Bolaris met Dykstra in his apartment building lobby. He said Dykstra's clothes were covered with food stains, some of his teeth were missing and he had no money. "Dude," Bolaris said, "what's going on?"
Dykstra said he had taken a cab ride overnight from Virginia, where he had been watching his son Cutter play minor-league baseball. He told Bolaris he needed $1,000 to pay the driver and another $2,000 to book a cross-country flight home to California, where Dykstra said he had to report to authorities that evening. Bolaris gave him the money.
"He was a mess," Bolaris recalled. "I let him use my shower. Made him a turkey burger. Gave him some clothes I had from some golf tournament."
When it was time for Dykstra to leave, they hugged and Dykstra cried. Bolaris said Dykstra turned to him and said, "Remember when I thought a thousand dollars was ashtray money? Not anymore."
That day of the Carter funeral, Mookie Wilson stepped into the aisle of the church and gave Dykstra a big hug.
"In spite of his misfortune, he is still one of us," Wilson said. "There's not an event where we don't get together that we don't ask if anyone has spoken with Lenny, how is he doing?"
Other former Mets teammates from 1986 have distanced themselves from Dykstra. Ron Darling and Bob Ojeda declined to discuss Dykstra, Hernandez quickly ended an interview, and Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry did not return multiple messages seeking comment for this story. |
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