I was a huge Lenny Dysktra fan growing up in Jersey. Huge. Tried to bat like him: in that long, stretched, left-handed stance, even though I was right-handed. Dressed up like him for Halloween, with a cheek full of Big League Chew. Checked his awful book "Nails" out of the library several times, each time hoping my parents wouldn't realize it had more obscenities than verbs; seriously, the thing read like a season of baseball recalled by a surfer-dude version of Andrew Dice Clay.
I was even late to school one morning because I thought Dykstra was going to be interviewed on "Imus in the Morning," only to discover, to my dismay, that it was a lame bit with a Lenny impersonator.
I loved the way he played; that hard-nosed, take-no-crap style of baseball that made you believe he would outwork any player in the Majors, even if it meant breaking his face to do it. He was one of the grunts on those New York Mets teams in the 1980s that should have been a dynasty, had it not been for the L.A. Dodgers and the Mets' own imploding egos. And yeah, a little piece of me died when he and Roger McDowell were traded for Juan Samuel, who was to centerfield what Jessica Simpson is to light-hearted comedy. Naturally, Dykstra became a star with the Phillies and helped that moribund franchise to its World Series defeat against Toronto in 1993.
Okay, maybe not completely naturally. Dykstra was one of the 80-some-odd names listed in the pages of George Mitchell's witch hunt, allegedly admitting to steroid use in an interview with Major League Baseball officials. According to ESPN's interpretation of the Mitchell Report, Dykstra used steroids in order to "keep his weight up" and because they eliminated the need to work out during the offseason.
(An aside on Mitchell: I thought one of the most amazing moments of Thursday's marathon of coverage came at the end of the former Senator's press conference. One of the reporters asked him about his conflict of interest in serving as a "director" for the Boston Red Sox while persecuting dozens of MLB players, including many from the New York Yankees. Mitchell replied with an eloquent tale about being criticized as an American and a Catholic when he helped bring peace to Northern Ireland; how he has never heard those criticisms since and how he should be judged by the quality of his work. Like I said, it was an amazing moment — just when you thought the Yankees/Red Sox rivalry couldn't be blown further out of proportion, some guy relates it back to the conflict in Northern Ireland ... sheesh.)
Like many of the players in the report, Dykstra had been dogged by rumors about his steroid use for years. It may have had something to do with the fact that one year he had the frame of a 12-year-old boy, and then suddenly he looked like Kurt Angle in a ball cap. Or perhaps that his slugging percentage jumped by nearly 80 points from 1992 to 1993, a season in which he finished second in the MVP voting to (wait for it) some guy named Barry Bonds.
Now, he's listed in the New Testament of Sports Morality, the Mitchell Report. Unless he's willing to take legal action to clear his name, that name will now be forever linked in an official capacity with the greatest scandal in modern baseball history.
Never mind that Dykstra allegedly used the stuff at a time when Major League Baseball, its players' association, and its owners had their heads buried so far in the sand they could smell sulfur from the Earth's core. Never mind he never failed a drug test because there wasn't a drug test to take. I said it before, and I'll say it again: how am I supposed to be outraged about a player who took steroids when baseball wasn't outraged that he might have been taking them?
When I see a player like Dykstra go from an average of six home runs over a four-year period to 19 in a single season, my crap detector goes off. Just like it did when Todd Hundley averaged 12 home runs for four seasons before he hit 71 from 1996-97. Just like it did with McGwire and Sosa; just like it did with Bonds.
If the Mitchell Report taught us anything — besides the fact that the American appetite for tabloid voyeurism and scandalous innuendo is utterly insatiable, no matter the subject — it's that "The Steroid Era" was all encompassing. Pitchers, catchers, fielders. Black, white, Latino. Stars, scrubs, and Ricky Bones.
And Lenny Dykstra, according to the evidence. I'm not the only fan out there who scanned the list and saw the name of one of his favorite players — I'm sure yesterday was a real bitch for Fernando Vina's fan. But I wonder how many of us really give a damn about it. For many of us, the Mitchell report was a confirmation of fears or assumptions. For many of us, steroids are something we've come to terms with, both within the careers of our "heroes" and with baseball's drug culture of the last 15 years.
In the end, this report will be remembered for the names, not the recommendations for wholesale changes to baseball's drug testing policy. Because we care about the "who" — not the "why," not the "how." As I wrote in a 2005 column:
"This season, we've seen what seemed to be impossible a few years ago: Two Major League players, and dozens of minor leaguers, being publicly identified as steroid abusers and suffering suspensions for their actions. Yet none of this seems to have stoked the fires of discontent we saw during [Jose] Canseco's book fallout and Congress's hearings on baseball.
Why hasn't it? Ask Jorge Piedra and Alex Sanchez. Those were the two players who have been suspended thus far by Major League Baseball for testing positive for steroids. Most baseball fans wouldn't know these guys if they ran up to them and punched them in the nuts. They're like the really tiny fish that the small fish in the pond eat.That doesn't mean they aren't cheaters; that they aren't, in the minds of thousands of fans, sullying the reputation of baseball through their nefarious actions.
It just means they aren't famous cheaters. And judging from the reaction to their suspensions, and the reaction of fans in that recent poll, the steroid scandal in baseball is less about the sanctity of the game and much, much more about what famous people are doing to their bodies.
Who knew Barry Bonds had so much in common with Lindsey Lohan's breasts?"
Greg Wyshynski is also a weekly columnist for SportsFan Magazine. His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].
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