I knew when I used to heckle Lenny Dykstra with friends at Dodger Stadium, usually chanting “Lenn-nny” in a chorus of retarded sounding voices, that Dykstra could easily have charged the stands and snapped us all in two without breaking a sweat. Now, thanks to the New Yorker’s Ben McGrath, I know he could hire Pete Incaviglia to do it without breaking a sweat. Not only that, when his magazine The Player’s Club debuts, an army of Dykstras will soon be walking the streets, since, as Dykstra says, œWe™re creating a life style!
(Dykstra, pictured, lays down some etiquette to a St. Regis waiter.)
Dykstra ordered a Coke and French fries with ketchup: œAnd I™m actually going to have that as my meal”might be the oddest order of the day. (Healthy living was never his specialty.) When the Coke arrived, he sent it back, believing it to be Diet. After the fries were delivered, he made a show of extracting a œYou™re welcome from the waiter, who had since moved on to another table. œI pay a thousand bucks a night”actually, three thousand bucks a night”and people are discourteous, he said, shaking his head. œThere™s some point in life when you have to grow up.
Dykstra last played in the majors in 1996, at age thirty-three. Improbably, he has since become a successful day trader, and he let me know that he owns both a Maybach (œthe best car) and a Gulfstream (œthe best jet). The occasion for our lunch, however, was a new venture: Dykstra is launching a magazine, intended specifically for pro athletes, called The Players Club. An unfortunate number of his former teammates have ended up broke, or divorced, or worse. The week before we met, the ex-Yankee Jim Leyritz, himself twice divorced and underemployed, had hit a woman while driving home from a bar. He never grew up.
œYou™ve got the ten per cent who are going to find their way no matter what, Dykstra said of the athlete population. œAnd you get the ten per cent that are fuckheads no matter what”we™ll paste an ˜L™ to ™em. The rest need guidance, and Dykstra, who will write a regular column called œThe Game of Life, is prepared to give it. œThis will be the world™s best magazine, he said.
I have to subscribe mostly just to get Keith Hernandez’s dining advice.
I was going to write about this article, but waited on it too long. There’s no way something this amazing could stay under wraps that long. Now, the question that matters to me most: who’s the ex-Phillies teammate who calls Dykstra, drunk, from the Borgata Atlantic City, prompting Dykstra’s wife to ask “how did he get our number?”
I’m going to guess 1) Darren Daulton and 2) Darren Daulton.
I’m lifelong Mets fan. I remember exactly where I was when Lenny hit that homer against the Astros to keep them alive in the NLCS and World Series for that matter. I’m a Puerto Rican raised by an Irishman so that means I’ve squandered most of my money. I do however have a degree from the University of Michigan and work for a reputable financial services company pre-qualifying hedge fund investors. No MBA..No law degree and debt on every piece of paper that gets mailed to me. I saw that piece on Lenny on HBO and know exactly how he felt after his broker screwed him and now have that same obsession with understanding the game. It’s raw, real and goes round and round and I’m dying to have Mr. Dykstra shoot me an e-mail or give an old fan a call because I want my life back and working for a living doesn’t provide for much. You have to actively engage the market to make money and spend money to make money. What does he think about those things and where does a Jameson drinkin’ Mets fan start? Lucas 718 809-7425