America at Large: Lenny Dykstra’s tall tale fails to nail key issues

The problem with the best-selling sports book in America right now is that nobody quite knows whether to file it under fiction or non-fiction. Styling itself a ribald memoir of a baseball life lived on the edge, Lenny Dykstra’s ‘House of Nails’ so often blurs the line between truth and fantasy that each day seems to yield fresh attacks on its veracity.

Robert de Niro denies ever going on a cocaine binge with Dykstra in St Barts and making off with half his supply. Mickey Rourke claims it's not true he owes his former friend $30,000 for an unpaid hotel bill run up during another epic bender. Even if Jack Nicholson has yet to refute the revelation that he was the former center-fielder's wingman when he was looking to pick up women, the wattage of the name-dropping indicates that this is no ordinary athlete's tale.

"Tough, straight, upsetting, and strangely beautiful," writes Stephen King in the blurb on the cover. "One of the best sports autobiographies I've ever read. It comes from the heart."

During just over a decade in the major leagues, Dykstra picked up three All-Stars, won the 1986 World Series with the New York Mets and evinced a competitive spirit and hardnosed attitude that earned him the affectionate nickname "Nails". One of those who supposedly wrung every drop from his talent, this trait was somewhat devalued when it later emerged steroids greatly assisted him in doing just that from 1990 onwards. Like so much in his post-playing life, all was not what it seemed to be.

"One: I would go on to lead the Phillies to the World Series," wrote Dykstra of the impact the drugs had on his performances. "Two: I would go on to make millions of dollars and live the dream of every boy and man in America. Three: I could not have done One and Two without using steroids."

He also justifies his usage by arguing that it was the only way his body could get through a gruelling 162-game season, and in an all-too familiar contention, alleges that anybody who was any good was taking them.

Astutely enough, he doesn’t name any other actual names, preferring instead to recount even more colourful ways in which he tried to get ahead of his peers. He reckons he spent $500,000 getting private investigators to rake up muck on umpires; then deployed that knowledge to wangle favourable calls at crucial points in big games.

For a time, it appeared that Dykstra had transferred his keen eye for a competitive advantage to the real world. Having apparently made a small fortune in the car wash industry, he owned a Gulfstream II private jet, purchased Wayne Gretzky’s Los Angeles mansion for $17.5 million, and established The Players Club magazine. Ostensibly a glossy publication catering to professional athletes and the expensive tastes their affluence could afford, he saw it as a vehicle that would lead the richest young men in America to come to him for financial advice about investing their millions.

See, somehow along the way, he’d also gained a reputation for picking stocks and cleverly playing the markets. The bigger his profile got however the longer became the list of those claiming to be owed money by him for unpaid bills all over the country. Something of a magnet for expensive litigation, Dykstra ended up living out of his car, trying to conduct business from hotel lobbies and, eventually, serving two and a half years in jail for bankruptcy fraud. In prison, he lost all his teeth and befriended Lalo Martinez, head of the Mexican mafia, who gave him a John Grisham novel to read.

If nothing else, it was all fecund material for the autobiography.

Like the player he once was, Dykstra is giving the book the hard sell, embarking on quite the promotional tour. On Howard Stern’s notoriously prurient radio show, he held forth, amongst other things and at great length, about his prowess as a lover and his present employment as a gigolo for elderly women.

“I thought God put me on earth to entertain people on the baseball field,” said Dykstra. “But he actually put me on earth to get women off. I’m like Picasso.”

The salaciousness of the stories (wanna know which of his former team-mates had the largest penis! ) and the willingness to share all his own sexual peccadilloes (getting ground staff to find discrete spots in the baseball stadium where he could meet women for assignations) would be more entertaining if it wasn’t for Dykstra’s sordid criminal record. As recently as 2011, he was convicted of lewd conduct against women, forcing one who’d come to his home to interview for a job as a housekeeper to massage him at knifepoint.

While his tome has generated a steady stream of headlines and a surfeit of fawning coverage from sports journalists who should know better, some have retained a proper sense of perspective. "Lenny Dykstra crawls from a hole he joyfully dug for himself" said the New York Times while one of the Philadelphia papers dubbed him the biggest creep ever to play in that city.

Aside from the many reasons to be offended, the critics are especially angry at the fact the tell-all doesn’t tell any of the really bad stuff. For starters, he neglects to mention the litany of people, some of them his own family, who suffered greatly because of his financial chicanery. Tough as nails. Still going soft on himself.