Lenny Dykstra: Former Baseball Star Releases Explosive Tell-All Memoir
Lenny Dykstra was known to be quite a character during his 12-year career in Major League Baseball. However, with the release of his new book House of Nails: A Memoir of Life on the Edge, he has taken the concept of “tell-all” to an entirely new level.
“I wrote this book because this is the story that the American people deserve to be told,” proclaims Dykstra. “At the end of the day, why do we get up every day, what do you work so hard to achieve? You want to have fun, to get some kind of entertainment, so my book will help people get away from their miserable life.”
Dykstra discusses his life-long ambition to be anything but ordinary, according to Esquire. Based on the content of his book, it seems a safe bet that he has achieved his goal.
“You fail, or you succeed. There’s no middle,” Dykstra said as he compared baseball to life in general. “That’s why I f***ing love baseball. My whole life is about getting away from the middle. I make that clear in that book.”
Lenny Dykstra Has a Story the American People Deserve to Be Told https://t.co/1yJMRJHDXR pic.twitter.com/Rfq21tluvc
— Esquire (@esquire) June 28, 2016
Lenny Dykstra’s life has been filled with ups, downs and adventures few people have experienced. In his memoir, he details participating in drug-induced escapades with celebrities such as Mickey Rourke and Robert De Niro. He also goes into his criminal past, including a three-year sentence for grand theft auto handed down in 2012, and a conviction for sexual misconduct with women he hired for housework via Craigslist.
Some of the most revealing content in House of Nails, however, has to do with Dykstra’s sexual proclivities. The New York Post reports that Dykstra claims to have worked as a gigolo, specializing in serving clients who are elderly women. He talked openly about this on The Howard Stern Show radio program this week.
“I thought God put me on earth to entertain people on the baseball field … but He actually put me on earth to get women off,” Dykstra claimed. “I’m like Picasso.”
While Lenny Dykstra’s personal life has been highlighted by sex, drugs, and crime, he did take a little time away from those activities to play professional baseball.
Perhaps not surprisingly, even Lenny Dykstra’s baseball career wasn’t completely “on the level.” Dykstra has admitted to using steroids, beginning in 1989. In his book, he also discloses that he had a unique method of getting the benefit of the doubt from umpires — he hired private investigators to dig up dirt on MLB umpires so he could use that information as leverage against them.
“Look, the whole umpire thing,” Dykstra muses. “They control your life. I mean, I learned early on who has control of my life — it’s the umpires. So, everyone tells you to work the umpires. Most of them worked them different than I did.”
Lenny Dykstra has plenty to say about his former manager and teammates in his book, as well.
If you missed it, Ron Darling called Len Dysktra's comments about Davey Johnson in Dysktra's book "Below the belt." https://t.co/49pzpWdZc8
— Mike Puma (@NYPost_Mets) June 28, 2016
“He was a lucky manager. He was drunk every night and frequently hung over just enough the next day to not always know what was going on,” Dykstra says of his former manager with the Mets, Davey Johnson.
Dykstra goes on to state his pointed opinion of former teammate Gregg Jefferies.
“It didn’t take the players long to figure out Gregg Jefferies was a losing player, not to mention a whiny little b**ch.”
Love him or hate him, no one can deny that Lenny Dykstra is a shoot-from-the-hip, completely unfiltered source of entertainment in a world where this kind of salaciousness is devoured by the public.
[Photo by Amy Sancetta/AP Images]
