House of Nails

by Lenny Dykstra

  One of my favorite hits during this period of my career was when John Smoltz was pitching a no-hitter in Philly—and the only reason he didn’t have a perfect game going into the ninth was because he walked me earlier in the game. Smoltz’s shit was electric. He sawed right through our lineup like we were a bunch of amateurs. He takes his no-hitter into the ninth, and guess who’s up third in the ninth inning? That’s right, me. And I was hitting close to a .400 average, making my monster year come true. He starts out the ninth like he did the rest of the game, mowing down the first two hitters like they were toddlers. So he’s one out away from what every pitcher dreams of: a no-hitter. Smoltz had a six-run lead, but his ego wouldn’t let him pitch around me, so the baseball gods had to make him pay.

  The count was 1-0 and I’m thinking, This guy is feeling so cocky, he’s going to try to sneak some gas by me.

  I was sitting dead red, inner half, and I hit a tracer, a frozen fucking rope off the glass in right field. As I stood on second base, Smoltz was stomping around the mound like a spoiled five-year-old, and when he looked over at me, I took my chew out and threw it down. “You dumb motherfucker,” I told him, “that’s what you fucking deserve.”

  That was also the year I got into the infamous fight with Rick Dempsey. We were playing at Dodger Stadium, and one of the regular umpires was on vacation. In other words, the home plate umpire wasn’t one of the umps I had my PI investigate. The new ump had been called up from Triple A, and Dempsey, the Dodgers catcher and a longtime veteran who knew how to work the umps, was brown-nosing him. How else could Dempsey stay in the big leagues for as long as he did? He couldn’t have hit water if he fell out of a fucking boat.

  I was up against pitcher Mike Morgan, and his first pitch hit Dempsey’s glove two inches outside and the umpire called it a strike. Then Dempsey said something to the ump, and the two of them started laughing.

  I was furious.

  “What the hell are you guys laughing at?” I said. “I’m playing for real money here. I have to pay my bills. This is how I feed my family.”

  I was putting up Ted Williams–style numbers at the time, so I said directly to the replacement umpire, “You see that fucking scoreboard up there? What’s it say? Four fucking hundred. Do you know why? Because I know what a strike is, and that was not a strike.”

  At that point, Dempsey stood up. “Oh, stop whining, Lenny.”

  “You’ve been brown-nosing this motherfucker all fucking night, man,” I said. Then I called him a cunt, and Dempsey took something that resembled a swing at me. We went at it right there at home plate, and I landed a couple of pretty good punches on the stupid bastard.

  They suspended Dempsey, because unlike today, where everyone involved gets punished, back then you got suspended only if you threw the first punch.

  I only got fined, but I had made my point.

  Even the media took notice. Here’s how Jim Murray, the esteemed sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times, wrote about it:

  When Lenny Dykstra picked a fight with Rick Dempsey recently, no one in baseball was surprised. If he’d been there at the time, Lenny Dykstra would have picked a fight with Jack Dempsey. And expected to win . . . Lenny Dykstra doesn’t belong in this point in time anyway. . . . He should be matching spikes with Ty Cobb, trading insults with John McGraw, playing on a team called the Gas House Gang. Lenny is like a lot of us, in the wrong century . . . Lenny plays it as if it were a guerrilla attack on a munitions train. Lenny doesn’t take prisoners either. Lenny doesn’t make friends. He comes to beat you.

  Man, that made me proud as hell, but I was still feeling unfulfilled. I was on a mission to bring the Phillies a pennant and a world championship and we hadn’t accomplished it yet. To really help get us there, I needed to remain injury-free.

  But the way I played, it wouldn’t be easy.

  14

  CHARLIE SHEEN

  The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

  —OSCAR WILDE

  I first met Charlie Sheen during the 1993 season when the Phillies visited the Dodgers in Los Angeles. A clubhouse guy approached me before we took the field and handed me a piece of paper with a phone number on it; he told me that Charlie Sheen wanted to meet me after the game.

  The Phillies were in first place, dominating the National League. We were the most talked-about team in baseball, with me leading the charge. When I would step onto the baseball field, I was arrogant and cocky, combined with a fuck-you attitude. I wanted the other team to hate me; I wanted the opposing team’s fans to hate me. When I would lead off the game, I would strut up to home plate like I had a fifteen-inch cock. This was all part of the master plan. I never did anything on the baseball field that wasn’t planned out. And it worked: everything went according to plan, with the exception, of course, of the fifteen-inch cock.

  After the game I called Charlie, we had a brief conversation about the game that night, and he then invited me over to his compound in Malibu. Of course I accepted.

  I admired his work as an actor, especially his portrayal of Bud Fox in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street. I genuinely looked forward to meeting him.

  When I arrived, Charlie gave me a big hug and took me on a tour of his spread, which was impressive to say the least. Charlie then asked me if I wouldn’t mind checking out his swing. I thought to myself, Another actor who wants to be a baseball player; this is going to be painful. But I gave him the courtesy. “Sure, Charlie, but it’s kind of dark, how are you going to see the ball?”

  Charlie then walked me around to the side of his mansion, and the next thing I know he flips on a switch, the lights come on, and I see the best batting cage I have ever seen in my entire life. It was better than any batting cage in the major leagues.

  The next thing I know, Charlie tells his longtime friend Tony Todd to get the machine ready. Charlie starts taping up his wrists, stretching, puts on his game face, the whole deal, almost as if he was getting ready for a World Series game. I’m thinking to myself, This guy has been watching too much baseball on TV.

  Charlie steps into the cage and asks me if I want to see him hit left-handed or right-handed. Now I’m thinking, This guy is taking himself way too serious. I said, “Whichever side you want, Charlie. Doesn’t matter to me.”

  Charlie gets in the box from the left side and shouts to Tony, “Turn it up to ninety.” Tony hit the power button, and the next thing I see is Charlie fucking raking! He is hitting bullets all over the cage. I was blown away, and I said to Charlie, “Dude, you can fucking hit! Holy shit! That’s a real baseball swing.”

  Charlie showed his baseball skills in three very popular movies about baseball: Eight Men Out, Major League, and Major League II. In the two Major League movies, Charlie played relief pitcher Rick Vaughn. In the movie, he would walk from the bullpen to the mound to the tune “Wild Thing.” Today, hitters and pitchers all have walk-up music. Charlie Sheen, as Rick Vaughn, was the trendsetter.

  One of my favorite baseball stories from Charlie was when he told me, “One time, I bought every seat in the right field stands of an Angel game to make sure I would catch a home run ball. It was like three thousand tickets I had to buy, and I ended up with air. Nobody hit a home run that game. Can you believe that?”

  After Charlie finished hitting we sat down at his customized bar that took the cool meter off the chart. Charlie asked me if I liked wine. I said, “Sure, what do you have?”

  Charlie comes back by saying, “A better question would be, ‘What don’t I have?’ ” He pulled out some $3,000 bottle of red wine; we drank and talked baseball for the next four hours. Charlie knew his shit when it came to baseball. He told me as a kid his dream was to be a Major League Baseball player.

  Years later, our paths crossed again. My career was over, so partying became my full-time job for a while. Eventually I landed in a rehab facility, but I was so fucked up that I didn’t know where I was. When I came out of my coma, I realized I was part of a star-studded group at Promises, the
famous rehab in Malibu that overlooks the Pacific Ocean.

  This place is so exclusive that they always have a waiting list. If you were a big-name celebrity, they magically found a way to move you to the front of the line. Charlie Sheen was there along with several other famous actors and celebrities. Trust me, I was the low man on the totem pole there.

  When I arrived, I slept for four days straight. Now that I was finally able to reenter the world, I looked around the place and said to myself, What in the fuck am I doing here with all these fucking losers? I’m getting the hell out of here.

  Then one of the counselors walked over to me and started barking out orders. I fired back, “Who in the fuck do you think you are talking to, motherfucker?” I didn’t know the system yet and how it really worked. Plus, I had been living a life where I wasn’t used to taking orders from anybody. I gave the fucking orders.

  Then one of the bean counters said to me, “You’re not getting your money back.”

  I shot back, “Money? Do you think I give a fuck about the money? Keep it. Keep it all. I don’t give a fuck. It’s only paper. I can make more of that. But let me tell you what I can’t buy back: the fucking time I just wasted listening to your bullshit.”

  Looking back, I shouldn’t have behaved that way. I had all my shit packed, just waiting for my limo to arrive, when Charlie showed up out of nowhere. I didn’t know any of the other actors; I wasn’t into all of the Hollywood bullshit.

  I was completely caught off guard.

  Charlie walked up to me and said, “Hey, man, I know what you are feeling, I was just like you. I felt the same way. But you should try to stick it out. It’s not so bad. After the third or fourth day, it gets better. It gets easier.”

  Charlie had a way of talking to you that’s hard to describe. When he was sober he was a very humble man, and there was an inexplicable “coolness factor” to him.

  “I’m not telling you what to do. But you’re here. You might as well stick it out a few more days and see what happens. I’ll be here, and we’ll go hit and take batting practice. It’s not as bad as you think. Trust me, bro. Just stay a little longer until you get sober.”

  Let’s fast-forward to the year 2014. I was out of prison, I was in New York, and I received a call out of the blue from Charlie, telling me that I was right about all the people who were stealing his money, and then he said, “When are you going to be back from New York?”

  I said, “Friday night.”

  Charlie responded by saying, “If you have time, you should stop by when you get home. We have a lot to catch up on.”

  I responded by saying, “That sounds great. I’ll be back in town on Saturday.”

  When I showed up it was like old times, Charlie and me sitting on his top-notch outdoor furniture, staring out at his picturesque backyard. The first thing Charlie said was “I want to apologize for what happened, for how it ended before you went away.” He went on to say, “When people kept telling me lies about you, I believed them, and for that, I am sorry.”

  “Charlie, you don’t need to apologize, especially when these are supposed to be people you trust, people that supposedly are on your team.” I went on to say, “Charlie, I don’t live in the past, I live my life going forward. It’s all good, bro, all good.”

  We started talking about everything and anything, like old times. Fifteen minutes later, this chick walked up to Charlie and gave him a kiss, the kind of kiss that told me they were a couple. Charlie introduced her: “Lenny, I want you to meet my fiancée, Scottine.”

  As soon as I met her, I knew she was bad news. I have always had a talent for reading people, especially when it comes to pussy. My instincts immediately told me that she was a selfish bitch, that she only cared about herself. It wasn’t until later that I found out she was a porn star. Guess how I learned that? Scottine herself told me.

  A few days later, Charlie and I were talking and he brought up his Warner Bros. deal. I only knew what I read—that he’d sold all his syndication rights back to Warner Bros. for something like $100 million.

  Charlie asked me if I could recommend an investment expert. One of the things Charlie liked about me was that I did not waste his time. I am a “whale hunter,” I would always tell him. “I only bring you the decision makers, Charlie, no fucking middlemen.”

  While I was talking to Charlie, Scottine showed up out of the blue and asked, “You know I was the world’s number one woman-on-woman porn star, don’t you?” Talk about being Pearl Harbored. How do you respond to that?

  So I said, “Oh, okay, congratulations . . . I guess.”

  A few weeks later on a Friday afternoon, around five P.M., I received a phone call from a woman who was crying hysterically. I kept saying, “Who is this? Who is this?”

  She finally caught her breath and said, “It’s Scottine, remember, you met me at Charlie’s? I’m his fiancée.”

  I said, “Okay, why are you crying?”

  She said that Charlie was smoking crack and that he had been holed up in his room for nine straight days. She said he told her to leave and to stop ruining his buzz.

  I asked, “Why are you calling me?”

  “Because everyone told me that you are the only person that Charlie will listen to who has the balls to stop him.”

  I said, “Where are you?”

  She said she was in the bathroom having a nervous breakdown.

  I said, “Get in your car right now and meet me at Beverly Glen Center.”

  “But I look like shit.”

  I said, “I don’t give a fuck what you look like, get in the car and meet me there now.”

  When I pulled up she was waiting in one of the numerous different Mercedes Charlie owned. She looked like death; she was obviously shaken up. I said, “Get me through the gates, and I will take care of it.”

  She responded with something that caught me off guard: “You will never find him.”

  I responded, “What are you talking about? I’ve been to Charlie’s house thousands of times.”

  She said, “Nobody knows about this room. It’s in the master bedroom but it’s behind a bookcase and you have to punch in a code to get in.”

  I said, “Okay, then you’ll have to walk up the stairs with me and punch in the code. I’ll handle it from there.”

  She said, “How are you going to get through security at the house?”

  I said, “Don’t worry about it.”

  We pulled up to Charlie’s house, and as I was walking up to his master bedroom, one of Charlie’s security guys said, “You’re not allowed up there. Charlie gave us strict orders that nobody is allowed in the house.”

  I fired back, “Fuck you, the only way you’re going to stop me is to shoot me! You fucking people are as bad as the drug dealer—you’re just an extension of his drug dealer. So call the cops or shoot me in the back, but I’m going up to save my friend’s life.”

  The room was right out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie, a sliding bookcase and all. It felt like I was a character in a mystery spy thriller.

  I walked in and Charlie was standing there with a glass dick, or crack pipe, in one hand and his phone in the other, obviously surprised to see me.

  I took one look around and said, “Charlie, I have to admit, if you’re going to smoke crack, this has got to be the best crack room on the planet!”

  It was unbelievable. A theater, Babe Ruth’s ring, Cincinnati Reds jerseys, and some of the coolest paintings I have ever seen. All fucking amazing. After breaking the ice, I got serious with Charlie.

  “Is this it? Is this what you’ve worked your whole life for? Charlie, do you realize you have been up in this room for nine straight days? What the fuck kind of life is this, holed up in a room, smoking crack by yourself? Come on, Charlie, wake the fuck up!”

  I told him, “You remember that show you own, Anger Management? Today is Friday and you have to be at work on Monday. Give me all the drugs. I’m flushing them down the toilet.” Charlie handed me the poiso
n, and I said, “Are you sure that’s all of them?”

  “Yes, I’m sure, I’m positive. I was just getting ready to call my drug dealer to order more shit, then you walked in.”

  “Charlie, you have to go to sleep. Where do you keep your sleeping shit?” He opened up a drawer and pulled out a bottle of Valium, and I said, “Take two and go to sleep. I’ll call you tomorrow to check on you.”

  He quickly responded with desperation in his voice. “Wait, wait, can you do me a favor?”

  I said, “Of course, you’re my friend. What do you need?”

  He said, “I need you to stay here at the house, because if you don’t I know I’ll order more shit.”

  I was caught off guard. I said, “Sure, Charlie, of course. But I’ll only stay if you call your Israeli hit squad down there and tell them that every package that comes to your house must come through me first, and then I’ll bring it up to you, and we will open it together.”

  Charlie immediately picked up his cell phone and called his security and told them, “Listen, all packages, mail, or anything else delivered to my house must immediately be brought to Lenny.”

  For the next four days, Charlie went dark. I checked on him every few hours and would bring him a pizza when he would get hungry. (He told me that was all he wanted to eat.)

  Eventually, Charlie started feeling better, which was good and bad, and I’ll tell you why. Obviously the fact that he was off the drugs and moving around was a good thing, but the humiliation factor of having to reenter the world was the hardest part for Charlie.

  When Charlie decided to come downstairs, he immediately started drinking anything and everything. He had one goal: to escape reality. But what I witnessed was a guy who seemed like he was on a mission to check out permanently.

  “Charlie, what in the fuck are you doing? It’s almost like you want to kill yourself.”

  Charlie quickly responded, “I do.”

  I said, “What are you talking about?”