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The Players Club
Good evening. This is Dead Legends. The baseball newsletter that slides into your inbox like Charlie Hustle.
Let's dive in.
Today's story is about a prolific outfielder who lost his entire big league fortune and completely ruined his legacy.
Lenny Dykstra was known for being a hardass; both on and off the field.
Fans in New York and Philly loved him and his playing style earned him the nickname "Nails."
He's a three-time All Star, World Series champion, and Silver Slugger winner.
But he was always getting into trouble.
In '91, Dykstra attended John Kruk's bachelor party and left around 1am, still drunk.
He ended up crashing his SL 500 Mercedes into a tree, and both himself and teammate Darren Daulton were hurt pretty badly.
His blood alcohol level was a .179.
He also got in several fights throughout his career.
Dykstra also claims that he was one of the "fore fathers" of the steroid era.
He's one of those guys that was made to play baseball, but honestly, Lenny wasn't someone you'd pick to be successful in business after his playing career.
He didn't speak eloquently or present himself to be the brightest crayon in the box, but to everyone' surprise "Nails" had one of the most lucrative post-playing careers of any athlete out there, at least initially.
After retiring in '96, Dykstra started a successful chain of car washes; then eventually sold the business in '03 for millions.
He became a successful stock trader and started becoming known in the financial sector.
Dykstra was bullish on options trading and even received praise from people like CNBC's Jim Cramer.
In '07, Lenny bought this INSANE mansion from Wayne Gretzky.
By the time '08 rolled around, his net worth was reported to be $58 million.
Dykstra decided to parlay his success into an upscale magazine for professional athletes called The Players Club.
The magazine actually looked legit.
High-profile athletes like Tiger Woods, Derek Jeter, and Danica Patrick graced the first few covers.
Pretty quickly though, everything fell apart.
The company morphed into a weird hodgepodge that offered financial advisory services and private jet charters in tandem with their monthly publication.
It ended up being a total failure and wiped out all of Dykstra's wealth, paving the way for his downfall.
Even worse, stories started coming out about what the work environment was like at Lenny's company, and it wasn't pretty.
He was paying his employees late, refused to pay printers for the magazine, and was generally cheap and shady throughout the whole ordeal.
Employees who complained about not getting their checks on time, or quit because of it, were openly labeled as "losers" and "not gamers."
Dykstra even went as far as asking for an employee's credit cards to book private jets, with the promise of paying him back "plus some."
GQ did a whole story with one of his former employees Kevin Coughlin, who let the cat all the way out of the bag.
In '09, Dykstra filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, listing 50K in assets against $10-50 million in liabilities.
Then he filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy as well; meaning that both he and his business were completely broke at this point.
The palace he'd bought from Wayne Gretzky was foreclosed on, and Lenny left it in complete shambles.
After that, Dykstra really fell into a downward spiral.
There's so many incidents, it's easier to just list them:
Dec 2010: Dykstra accused of hiring an escort, then writing her a bad check.
Jan 2011: Housekeeper accuses Lenny of sexual assault.
April 2011: Arrested for grand theft auto, then charged with embezzling the NEXT DAY; completely unrelated charges.
June 2011: Charged with 25 misdemeanor and felony counts of grand theft auto, identity theft, filing false financial statements, and drug possession (Cocaine, Ecstasy, and HGH).
August 2011: Charged with indecent exposure.
July 2012: Sentenced to 6.5 months in federal prison.
May 2018: Charged with making terroristic threats and drug possession.
It takes real effort to screw up this badly.
Lenny was good at baseball, but he was much better at ruining his reputation.
His current net worth is negative $25 million.
FREE SHOT FRIDAYS
Hope everyone is having an epic start to their weekend.
We can't promise we'll have free stuff on every Friday, but today we got the hookup!
Our good friends at Dugout Mugs, are giving away Knob Shots again - all you gotta do is cover the shipping.
These are made out of REAL bat knobs, and all 30 MLB teams are available.
STRANGE NAMES
If you're just joining us, we play this game every day where we try to find the weirdest names throughout baseball history.
Why?
Don't ask us, it's just something we like to do.
If you've been rocking with us for awhile now, you know what time it is.
Today's winner is:
Sleeper's government name was actually Thomas Jefferson.
Yeah, this guy.
The first pro team he played on was called the Lowell Ladies Men of the New England League.
He played in the big leagues for the Buffalo Bisons, St. Louis Browns, Louisville Eclipse, and the St. Louis Maroons - and his stats are absolutely atrocious.
Over four seasons he hit .184, with 63 hits, and 15 RBI's - yikes.
THE DEAD LEGENDS ARCHIVE
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