House of Nails

by Lenny Dykstra

  Perlozzo had me and Dwight “Doc” Gooden on the same team. In 1983, I was the Carolina League MVP, where I led the league in batting (.358), runs scored (132), and walks and had a record-setting 105 stolen bases, shattering all the Carolina League records. Doc was an eighteen-year-old phenom pitcher, and he dominated hitters unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my life. Doc struck out 300 batters in 191 innings. Nobody in the minors was close to him. The opposing team wanted no part of him. They were scared to even get in the batter’s box.

  After the 1983 season I said to Doc, “You’re going to the show next year.”

  “What’s the show?” he asked.

  “You’re going to the big leagues, dude. You’re going to be pitching in the big leagues next year.”

  When you’re playing in the minors, you have to take an entirely different approach to the game than when you play in the big leagues. At the major league level, the most important thing is winning. That means you have to play the game off the scoreboard, as the scoreboard dictates what a player should and shouldn’t do. For example, if your team is losing by two runs in the bottom of the ninth inning, the hitter must take a strike no matter what. Why? It’s real simple: a player can’t hit a two-run home run with nobody on base. Furthermore, as I mentioned earlier, even if you are one of the best players in the league, you are still about a 70 percent underdog if you put the ball in play. The majority of players today fail miserably at this, as they are too selfish. Just to be clear, there are some players who still play the game right, but they are few and far between. The little things turn into big things if you play the game right over the course of a 162-game season.

  I will give you another example. If you are playing blackjack at a casino for real money, there are certain rules a player should follow if he wants to put himself in the best possible position to succeed, or win, over the long run. As with baseball, the odds are still against you even if you play right. With that said, if a player uses the probability theory each and every at-bat—which means he understands that over a 162-game schedule, the percentages prove what the outcome will most likely be based on all the possible counts—that player would put himself in the best possible position to succeed.

  How do you think I led the National League in hits two separate seasons? It wasn’t because I was the best hitter, not even close. It was because I finally figured out the approach, or game plan, that would give me the best results. This way of thinking actually made the game much simpler for me. The less you have to think about, the better.

  In order to make this work, a player has to believe and trust that what he is doing is right, and not deviate from it. Much easier said than done, trust me.

  In the minor leagues you play to put up numbers, period. The general managers don’t give a fuck whether a minor league team wins or loses. It’s all about your numbers.

  There has never been a meeting where the GM says, “We’re going to call this guy up to the big leagues—forget that he’s only hitting .220, because he has constantly moved the runner over from second.” Sorry, wrong answer.

  In 1984 I was promoted to Jackson, Mississippi, which was the Double A team for the Mets. I had never experienced heat and humidity like I did when I arrived in Mississippi.

  If you’re a minor league player showing up in a new city, the first thing you do is find a place to live. So I went into the local bank to cash my whopping $300 paycheck. When I walked into this little bank, I saw Terri. Besides having the look I was attracted to, when she started talking, I literally got blood flow. I wanted to fuck her in the safe. I swear to God I did. I was trying to be cool, flirting with her, but all she did was give me some courtesy laughs and basically blew me off.

  I said to my roommate, Mark Carreon, as we were walking out of the bank, “Dude, that chick was fucking hot!”

  He responded by saying, “Come on, man, they’re a dime a dozen.”

  I immediately fired back, “No, dude, you’re wrong. There is something special about that one, and I am not stopping until she goes out with me.”

  I went back to the bank the next day, cut in front of the people waiting in line, and said, “Would you like to go out with me?”

  She replied, “I’m working, I can’t talk to you right now, plus I don’t even know you.”

  Blown off for the second time.

  I finally had to play on my strength. I told her that I played for the Jackson Mets and asked her if she wanted tickets to the game. She answered, “Sure, that sounds fun.” As I was walking out the door, I told her the tickets would be waiting for her at will call.

  But she didn’t show up. Later I found out that she’d been warned about us ballplayers and she even doubted that I played for the Jackson Mets. Finally, one day she asked her bank manager, a big baseball fan, if he’d ever heard of me. Her boss went on to gush about the last game he’d seen me play. Apparently he was a big fan. He was the one who told her she should go out with me.

  After that, Terri and I started seeing each other frequently; there was something about her that set her apart from the rest. I had been with plenty of girls, but I’d never let them get close to me. The last thing I needed was to deal with a girl and all the drama that usually goes along with one, especially when the only thing that mattered to me was making it to the big leagues.

  The fact that I had never been in a real relationship that was important to me put me in an awkward situation: I didn’t really know how to act or what to expect. It was all new to me.

  I can honestly say, before Terri, I was strictly in the “pipe-cleaning business.”

  We were getting closer and closer as the season was winding down. She was very supportive and had a real clue about how baseball worked. Terri grew up around sports. She’d been a track star in high school and had watched her older brother, Keith, play baseball since she was a young girl.

  I saw a lot of players’ careers go straight downhill after picking the wrong partner. It takes a special woman to put her partner first and support him through all the ups and downs that define baseball.

  Needless to say, Terri was my first and only real keeper. I knew she was wired differently. At the end of the season, I promised her that if I ever made it to the big leagues, I would marry her.

  4

  BREAKING INTO THE BIGS

  Lenny was so perfectly designed, emotionally, to play the game of baseball. He was able to instantly forget any failure and draw strength from every success. He had no concept of failure.

  —BILLY BEANE, FROM MONEYBALL

  In 1985, my life was about to change in a big way. The man who would help make that happen was Bob Schaefer. He was my manager when I broke camp with the Mets’ Triple A team, the Tidewater Tides. Schaef, as everyone called him, loved the way I played. He quickly recognized that I was a winning player. If you looked up the definition of what a true professional baseball coach is, there would be a picture of Bob Schaefer right next to it. He has been in professional baseball for thirty-seven years and is still sharp as a tack. Simply put, baseball is his business.

  On May 2, we were playing a game in Tidewater and I hit a triple. As I came into third base, Schaef asked, “Why did you dog it? You should have had an inside-the-park homer.”

  I responded by saying, “I ran hard all the way.”

  Schaef just turned around and walked back to the third base coach’s box. After the game, as we were shaking hands on the field, Schaef told me, “I need to see you in my office.” I was hitting around .300, playing great defense; I didn’t know what I did wrong.

  I knocked on Schaef’s office door, and with his sharp New England accent, he said, “Sit down,” his expression serious. “I’ve got to talk to you about something.”

  What’s going on? I thought.

  “See that sport coat over there?”

  “What about it?” was all I could say.

  Schaef then told me to put it on and asked, “Does it fit?”

  I was confused. “I gu
ess, why?”

  Grinning now, Schaef responded, “Good, because you’re going to need it. The shit you wear around here isn’t going to work in the big leagues, which is where you are going tomorrow.”

  I turned white as a sheet. “Really?”

  “Yes, really. Tomorrow night, in Cincinnati, you’ll be playing center field and leading off for the New York Mets against the Reds’ Mario Soto.”

  After I started breathing again, Schaef went on to tell me that I would only be in the big leagues for two weeks, because that’s when Mookie Wilson was scheduled to come off the disabled list.

  When Mookie got hurt again, Davey Johnson, the manager, wanted to call up Terry Blocker, one of the high draft picks, but Schaefer told them, “You’re calling up the wrong guy. If you want a guy to lead off and play center field, there’s nobody better than Dykstra. You have to call up Dykstra. He catches all the balls out there, and he hits. Trust me. You have to take Dykstra. He’s the guy.”

  Schaef would tell me later that Davey still wanted Blocker, so he called the GM, Frank Cashen, and the assistant GM, Joe McIlvaine, and told them, “I know Davey disagrees with me, but if my job is to help him win up there, then Lenny is the guy, trust me.”

  They told Schaef to stay by the phone, that they would call him right back. They called Schaef back fifteen minutes later and said, “Send Lenny.”

  Schaef then called me into his office and told me that I was going to the big leagues.

  “Just play your ass off,” he said. “Get on base and play the same way you have your whole life: balls out.”

  I did.

  The rest is history.

  Wearing the sport coat Schaef gave me, I arrived in Cincinnati around eleven A.M. I got in a cab and told the driver to take me to the stadium. Even though the game wasn’t until 7:35 P.M., I wanted to see the field.

  To get to the visiting team’s clubhouse at a major league stadium, you have to get through stadium security. I arrived about noon, and I told the guard, “My name is Lenny Dykstra, and I just got called up to play center field for the New York Mets.” To say he was skeptical was an understatement. How could he not be? I was a twenty-two-year-old kid who looked like I was still in high school.

  After I showed him my driver’s license, he made me wait in the cab for what seemed like an eternity. After several phone calls, he finally let me in. I was minutes away from walking into a major league clubhouse where I was going to lead off and play center field for the New York Mets. Everything I had worked my whole life for was about to become a reality.

  It was only 12:15 P.M., so I was the first player to arrive at the clubhouse. I walked right through and ran straight down the runway and walked onto the field. It stopped me in my tracks. I was completely awestruck at the sheer size of the ballpark. All this just for a baseball game?

  I kept saying to myself, I finally made it to the big leagues. I felt almost light-headed as I soaked it all in—Cincinnati’s stadium was all AstroTurf. I had never seen so much green. Sixty thousand empty seats gleamed in the sunlight. It was like being a gladiator entering your first battle inside the Colosseum of Rome.

  I didn’t know any of the Mets players or coaching staff. Davey Johnson was my manager, but he didn’t say anything more to me than “Good luck.” I didn’t take it personally. Davey didn’t have more than two words to say to most people—until he started drinking, which was a nightly event.

  I walked back up the runway and entered the clubhouse. I will never forget seeing my nameplate on my locker. It read: DYKSTRA #4.

  I was officially a New York Met. I took the field along with my new teammates, without any advice or instruction. I was on my own. But I didn’t care, because if I knew anything, it was that I could play the game of baseball. God had put me on this earth to be there. Every time I stepped on the field to play, it was as if I owned it. I’m serious. When I was out there, I felt like I had a fifteen-inch cock. I was home.

  As thousands of fans began flooding into the park, I thought to myself, Watch me. Just sit back and enjoy the show.

  I had been called up to be the Mets’ center fielder because Mookie Wilson was injured. Mookie is one of the greatest names ever. He was a great guy, by the way, though he had terrible breath. I’m talking death fumes. But Mookie was a good dude. We got along really well even though the Mets platooned the hell out of us and we were essentially competing with each other.

  As it was getting closer to game time, I had a feeling of nervous excitement that is hard to explain.

  Then it happened: the PA announcer said over the loudspeaker, “Leading off for the New York Mets, number four, center fielder Lenny Dykstra.” The fans in Cincinnati didn’t have a clue who I was. How could they? I stepped into the batter’s box, heard the umpire yell, “Play ball,” and Mario Soto threw what would be my first pitch. I didn’t know it at the time, but this would be the first of thousands and thousands of pitches I would see over my career.

  What I was feeling and thinking during my first at-bat in the major leagues was unusual, especially considering that, on a baseball field, I wasn’t afraid of anyone or anything. But this was baffling. It was almost like I mind-fucked myself into thinking that the big-league players were going to be so different, so much more advanced, so much better, I vapor-locked and struck out.

  I trudged back to the dugout and attempted to calm myself down. Relax, Lenny. It’s still baseball, man. Just because the stadium is bigger and there are more people in the stands doesn’t change the fact that it’s the same fucking game you have dominated your whole fucking life. Wake the fuck up and play the game.

  It was just like in Hoosiers when Gene Hackman shows the Hickory boys that the court in the state championship is the same size as their court back home.

  You either know how to play or you don’t. The pitcher still has to throw it over the plate, and you still have to get to first, then to second, then to third, and then home, which is what leads to this thing called a run. Then, after nine innings, the team with the most runs wins!

  In my next at-bat, Soto threw me a mediocre fastball. He didn’t have shit and I knew it. The only thing he had on the ball was his fucking hand, as he was at the end of his career. The next pitch was a hanging changeup that I fucking smoked! I wrapped it around the right field foul pole. My first big-league hit—a home run. Game on!

  I was twenty-two years old playing in the show for the New York Mets, living the dream.

  When the 1985 season ended, we finished in second place behind the Cardinals.

  There were other big changes happening in my life around the same time. When the Mets called me up to the big leagues, I told Terri that I wanted her and Gavin, her two-year-old son, to move to New York and live with me, but she was reluctant. Crying, she confessed she was afraid that if we were not married and she uprooted Gavin and gave up her job that I might change my mind, leaving their lives completely disrupted. So I called her mom. Afterward, she told Terri, “I think you should go with Lenny. He said he loves you and he fully intends to marry you.” That sealed the deal for us. Of course, New York was a long way from Mississippi, if you know what I mean. But I have to give Terri credit: she made the transition without any problems at all.

  I was pretty consumed with baseball, but as time passed, she made sure to remind me that I made a promise and she wanted to be married. She was from the South, she said, and marriage was important to her.

  Finally, on a morning I was scheduled to play golf with my good friend Bert Brodsky, a very wealthy businessman from Port Washington, Long Island, where we were living, she asked me again, “When are we going to get married?”

  I lost my patience.

  “Hold on,” I said.

  I then called Bert. He was the smartest person I had ever met, and is now worth close to a billion dollars.

  “Bert,” I said, “before we play golf, I have to get married. Can you be my best man? Can you set up a marriage?”

  “Give me thir
ty minutes,” he said.

  A half hour later Terri, Bert Brodsky, and I headed to city hall and the official who married us said all the right words, Terri and I answered, “I do,” and we kissed. After the ceremony was over I hugged her and said, “I’ll see you later tonight. I’m going to play golf with Bert.”

  And, like that, I was officially married.

  5

  CHASING THE PENNANT, 1986 NLCS: NEW YORK METS VS. HOUSTON ASTROS

  That’s what every young kid thinks about when they first put on a uniform—is to play in the Major Leagues and then, ultimately, play in a World Series. To me, that was the ultimate, winning in ’86.

  —GARY CARTER

  In 1986 the pieces of our team fit together like a perfect puzzle.

  We had two transcendent talents hitting their prime in Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry. Guys with that much physical talent and potential rarely come around—and we had a pair of them on the same team.

  In the clubhouse we had the leadership of Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter. Keith played the most important role on the ’86 team. He was smart and was the best first baseman I ever played with, or against, in my entire career. I would describe his style of play as “smooth.” It was actually fun to watch him play, and anyone who knows me understands I don’t say that about many players. Plus he was the best clutch hitter I ever shared the field with. He wasn’t overly strong or powerful, but he could leave the yard when he had to. Whenever we needed a hit, he seemed to be able to get it.

  Keith also knew how to utilize the rules of the game to his advantage. He wore one of those old batting helmets without the earflaps. This type of helmet allowed him to peek back at the catcher just enough to see where he was setting up, so Keith would know if the pitcher was going to try to pitch him inside or outside. This gave him a leg up, and technically he was not breaking any rule. Truth was that in 1983, MLB made it mandatory for a player to wear a helmet with at least one earflap. Only a player who was active in the major leagues before the earflap era began could use a flapless helmet if he wanted. Keith was one of those players. Keith stayed with the no-flap helmet—and who could blame him! He did anything he could to succeed and defined what a big-league player was to me.