Mar 27 2008 07:37 AM
If yesterday was funny quotes day, today is Lenny Dykstra day.
From today's New York Times:
March 27, 2008
Dykstra, Like His Father, Is Reckless in Good Way
By ALAN SCHWARZ
Cutter Dykstra, who moved to the outfield last week, is a possible first-round draft pick. 
Lenny Dykstra with the Mets in 1989.
Scouts praise Cutter Dykstra’s fiery
makeup and envision him as a top-of-
the order hitter like his father
THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — The royal blue and orange leadoff hitter with “DYKSTRA” over his No. 4 rapped a grounder through the left-side hole, recklessly rounded first and then broke for second, safe by a inch and jumping up covered in dirt.
It was 1986 but for two small details. One, no tobacco juice dripped down the kid’s chin. And Lenny Dykstra was sitting under a tree down the right-field line, buried in his laptop.
Cutter Dykstra, 18, is one of the nation’s finest high school baseball prospects and a possible first-round pick in the June draft. While many major league sons feel confined by their father’s legacy, the younger Dykstra revels in it. He is a brad off the old Nails.
“I love having that name on my jersey,” said Cutter, a .444 hitter this spring for the Westlake High Warriors. “I want people to come to watch me play — put pressure on the other team, steal bases and crash into walls. I want people to say, ‘Wow, he plays the game just like his dad did.’ ”
Cutter Dykstra, merely one inch taller than his 5-foot-10 father, carries the same speedy, hard-nosed hyperactivity to the game. (And the recognizable Dykstra, well, posterior.) Scouts adore his fiery makeup and envision him as a top-of-the-order hitter similar to his father, who played 12 major league seasons from 1985 through 1996 for the Mets and the Philadelphia Phillies — including the Mets’ 1986 World Series champions — and made three All-Star teams as a self-made pest.
Cutter wants to be seen as blue-collar as well, which can be tough when your dad is worth more than $20 million and you just moved into Wayne Gretzky’s old hilltop mansion. Lenny Dykstra made his fortune after baseball in car washes and financial trading, and he has just started a luxury magazine, The Players Club, aimed at current professional athletes in need of financial advice. Scouts at Cutter’s games sidle up to Lenny not to talk about Cutter or the ’86 Mets, but “to ask for stock tips,” one said with a chuckle.
But they consider Cutter’s talent seriously. He has excellent speed, enticing gap power and a mature eye toward working counts. The primary concern is where he can fit defensively. He played shortstop until last Saturday, when he moved to center. Scouts do not seem quite convinced of his promise in the outfield.
“Cutter’s makeup is off the charts, and his bat will get him to the big leagues,” one scout said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss prospective draft picks. “But there aren’t many short, right-handed hitters playing center field in the majors. He’ll have to really work on his jumps and arm to be an everyday player.”
If Cutter takes to it, scouts will be even more taken with him. He could move into the first round, sign for his own first million and start his own rise to the majors.
That was not as predestined as it now looks. Wary of putting undue pressure on his middle son — whom he named after a character in a television movie, not a fastball — Lenny encouraged Cutter to focus on golf as he grew up in Southern California. He hit 260-yard drives before he decided to embrace the family trade in high school.
“I wanted him to come to the game because he loved it, not because it’s what I did,” Lenny Dykstra said. “Baseball was his choice — it wasn’t my choice.”
When he was Cutter’s age, Lenny Dykstra was picked in the 13th round of the draft because of his uninspiring size and had to overcome doubts throughout his career. Cutter will be spared such scrutiny because his surname immediately connotes a don’t-doubt-me attitude that his father apparently retains. Told that Cutter is probably better than he was at this stage, Lenny bristled and said, quite seriously, “I hit .550 and didn’t strike out once my senior year.”
The two have some differences. Cutter’s mother, Terri, said her son was “not a pigpen away from baseball, like Lenny.”
“He’s more refined,” she added. And facially, Cutter resembles the current Met David Wright more than his dad. But behind his brilliant blue eyes, Cutter is all Dykstra.
“Everything is baseball to me,” he said. “Even when I’m in school, if I’m taking too many notes, I worry about my eyes and my arm.”
Westlake’s coach, Zach Miller, said: “He wants to beat the game. It’s unusual to see a 17-, 18-year-old that focused.”
After every game, Cutter supplements his physical gifts by breaking down his mental approach to every at-bat and situation with his father. Becoming a major league star — one even brighter than his father was — is his unabashed dream.
A more literal dream came a few nights ago, he said. His first major league at-bat was being televised. The uniform he was wearing? The Mets.
“They split the screen and showed me side-by-side right next to my dad when he was a rookie,” he said. “I had a big wad of tobacco in my mouth, too.”
