Even though they lost, I like what I saw by the end of the night - started out not taking pitches, but then started working counts, etc. And, of course, sans Hamels' location but that's alright. Overall, it's all a matter of health. And my prediction is Durbin is released by June.
Cole shouldn't have shaved his stache. The plate umpire blew last night. There were the obvious ones to Revere in the 8th and Rollins in the 9th but also on Utley's at-bat before he got the 2 run single. All 3 weren't even close to strikes. But you're generally not going to win giving up 7 runs.
I liked Revere last night. Someone take Mayberry away please.
Alright, alright, alright!
Tom O. "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?"
-The Writer
Two hours into the season and Howard shows why despise him
ah god i love philly fans. our stud pitcher puts us in a 4-0 hole by the 2nd inning and it's ryan howard's fault. i guess ryan should have caught those 900 foot home runs by the braves :fp:
the one bad thing about opening day is the compete overreaction's good and bad to things that happen in that one game.
Two hours into the season and Howard shows why despise him
ah god i love philly fans. our stud pitcher puts us in a 4-0 hole by the 2nd inning and it's ryan howard's fault. i guess ryan should have caught those 900 foot home runs by the braves :fp:
the one bad thing about opening day is the compete overreaction's good and bad to things that happen in that one game.
Two hours into the season and Howard shows why despise him
ah god i love philly fans. our stud pitcher puts us in a 4-0 hole by the 2nd inning and it's ryan howard's fault. i guess ryan should have caught those 900 foot home runs by the braves :fp:
the one bad thing about opening day is the compete overreaction's good and bad to things that happen in that one game.
No, but for 25 mil a year you should be able to hit opposite field. No need for "Philly fan" type comments or "opening day overreaction" comments. I don't like Howard and most likely never will. Not a big deal. I don't like any big league player that the D plays a shift on. The player should learn to hit.
I've met Rob
DEGENERATE FUK
This place is dead
"THERE ARE NO CLIQUES, ONLY THOSE WHO DON'T JOIN THE FUN" - Empty circa 2015
Two hours into the season and Howard shows why despise him
ah god i love philly fans. our stud pitcher puts us in a 4-0 hole by the 2nd inning and it's ryan howard's fault. i guess ryan should have caught those 900 foot home runs by the braves :fp:
the one bad thing about opening day is the compete overreaction's good and bad to things that happen in that one game.
Two hours into the season and Howard shows why despise him
ah god i love philly fans. our stud pitcher puts us in a 4-0 hole by the 2nd inning and it's ryan howard's fault. i guess ryan should have caught those 900 foot home runs by the braves :fp:
the one bad thing about opening day is the compete overreaction's good and bad to things that happen in that one game.
No, but for 25 mil a year you should be able to hit opposite field. No need for "Philly fan" type comments or "opening day overreaction" comments. I don't like Howard and most likely never will. Not a big deal. I don't like any big league player that the D plays a shift on. The player should learn to hit.
When Utley strikes out 32% of his ABs, I'll add him to my list.
But honestly, you can't compare Utley with Howard and the type off ball players they are. Not even on the same level
i don't. they are different players asked to do different things. love chase but he has never been asked to hit 40 home runs and to drive in 140 runs in a season. not every player, like employees in succesfful companies, has the same job to do. ryan is asked to do things differently than chase and i think they both do them extremely well. thus why they are the greatest 3-4 combo the franchise has every had and the 2 key offensive cogs in the greatest era the franchise has ever had.
Spectrum 10/27/09; New Orleans JazzFest 5/1/10; Made in America 9/2/12; WF Center 10/21/13; WF Center 10/22/13; Baltimore Arena 10/27/13; WF Center 4/28/16; WF Center 4/29/16; Fenway Park 8/7/16; Fenway Park 9/2/18; SeaHearNow Asbury Park 9/18/21; Camden 9/14/22
Tres Mtns - TLA 3/23/11; EV - Tower Theatre 6/25/11; Temple of the Dog - Tower Theatre 11/5/16
I was casually watching last night. when howard went down on 3 pitches and basically killed a rally, I thought "here we go again"
If I had known then what I know now...
Vegas 93, Vegas 98, Vegas 00 (10 year show), Vegas 03, Vegas 06
VIC 07
EV LA1 08
Seattle1 09, Seattle2 09, Salt Lake 09, LA4 09
Columbus 10
EV LA 11
Vancouver 11
Missoula 12
Portland 13, Spokane 13
St. Paul 14, Denver 14
At 1 a.m. on May 7, 1991, a drunken Lenny Dykstra sped along winding Darby-Paoli Road in Radnor Township and slammed his red Mercedes sports car into a tree. The Phillies centerfielder escaped with fractured ribs, a broken collarbone and cheekbone, and second-degree burns.
Twenty-two years later, that car crash remains an apt metaphor for Dykstra's life.
Laws and limits aren't made for him. Dykstra is a self-powered machine bound for self-destruction. He races through life headfirst, heedless of others, an irresistible force in search of immovable objects.
Since the mercurial ballplayer's retirement in 1996, the pace of those collisions has accelerated, the carnage has grown more severe. And the wreckage? Well, all these years later we still can't take our eyes off it.
Dykstra, 50 now and imprisoned in California, has lost his family, his money, and, as a fascinating new book on his equally fascinating unraveling makes clear, maybe his mind.
Christopher Frankie, a former business associate and a victim of Dykstra's most recent pileup, has written a richly detailed but disturbing book on the enigmatic man-child, Nailed! The Improbable Rise and Spectacular Fall of Lenny Dykstra.
Sadly but not surprisingly, it shows how an ex-ballplayer who always lived on the edge plunged into the abyss.
Like so many before, Frankie was charmed at first. Dykstra hired the journalist to work for his failed Players Club magazine (full disclosure: Dykstra contracted me to write a pair of stories for the short-lived publication), but soon he became his boss' caretaker, fixer, confidant, and ultimately target for abuse.
"The redeeming qualities that first made me trust him," Frankie writes, "were buried beneath severe, toxic paranoia, apparent substance abuse, reckless abandon, and a complete detachment from reality. It was only a matter of time, I suspected, before he would end up in jail . . . or worse."
Broke and severely broken by then, Dykstra did, of course, wind up in jail, sentenced to three years in December 2012 on a variety of charges that included grand theft auto and financial fraud. The winding road that led him to this latest smashup is this book's focus - and it's not a story for the fainthearted.
Crude Dude
As Dykstra's life and post-baseball enterprises unwound late in the first decade of the millennium, he doubled down on the unspeakably crude behavior that once, when he was leading the Mets and Phillies to World Series, was laughed off as Lenny being Lenny:
Obscene advances to women. Threatening phone calls and e-mails to employees. Estrangement from family and friends. Drug and alcohol abuse. Reckless spending and borrowing. Illegal business practices.
Frankie notes that Dykstra's downfall likely had its roots in his childhood, when the mischievous Southern California youngster was abandoned by his natural father. But the episode that triggered the downfall's denouement began when, after losing millions in the stock market, he connected with Jim Cramer, the Wall Street investment guru and die-hard Philadelphia sports fan.
Dykstra studied the market. Cramer gave him advice and, eventually, a column on his influential website, TheStreet.com. The ex-ballplayer revived his bank account and his reputation. In a burst of arrogant bravado, he bought Wayne Gretzky's California mansion, a fleet of expensive cars, and whatever else he wanted. More important, despite not having played baseball for years, he became a media curiosity again.
That led to an HBO Real Sports report that was essentially a puff piece on Dykstra as a stock-market savant, which in turn resulted in even more media coverage for the fly catcher turned stock picker.
"If there was one guy we thought was going to be successful in the stock market, it would not have been Lenny," Gary Carter, his late teammate, told the author.
Gradually, Dykstra's mask melted away. In one ridiculous interview on Fox and Friends, the out-of-shape former athlete, reenacting his brawl with Dodgers catcher Rick Dempsey, wrestled with cohost Brian Kilmeade, pulling a hamstring in the process.
Dykstra parlayed the media attention into what would be his fatal venture. The Players Club was the name of what was supposed to be both an entity that could provide an array of financial and personal services to millionaire athletes and a glossy magazine that would showcase those same superstars.
It was an interesting concept. Frankie and others were lured to the enterprise that was launched with the kind of no-limit glitz Dykstra admired. But soon the house of cards began to collapse. Rents and salaries weren't paid. Commitments evaporated. As the money disappeared, so did the always paper-thin veneer of respectability Dykstra had typically managed to summon when necessary.
Paranoia strikes
Spiraling out of control, he borrowed and stole money, begged his mother for her credit card, lost his wife, his home, his cars. If anyone dared challenge him, he exploded, often irrationally and obscenely. When his book agent asked that he repay the $250,000 he'd lent him, Dykstra fired back. It's one of the few e-mails in the book fit for a family newspaper.
"Hey, tough guy, it will be fun to see how you hold after you are $1.0 [million] dollars in after paying legal bills?" he wrote. "But if this is the way you want to play it - then let's get it on! BY THE WAY, YOU ARE FIRED! BY THE WAY, I do need you to reimburse me for the two private jet rides AND HOTELS."
Mind and body gave way. Paranoia gripped him. He told friends that a fortune-teller had foreseen his doom and "Someone's going to get me."
"Just listening to Lenny speak - he was practically incoherent," said Wally Backman, who'd played with him in Philadelphia and New York. "He was whispering, mumbling. . . . It was sad to see what'd happened to him. It broke my heart."
One of the countless examples of bizarre behavior involved Dwight Gooden. The pitcher, who had long struggled with drugs and alcohol, was part of a reality TV show in which he'd checked himself into a celebrity rehab facility. Dykstra, believing his former Mets teammate was being held against his will, "showed up unprompted, unannounced, and attempted to break Gooden out of the facility," Frankie writes.
"He thought I'd been hypnotized [and was being held] hostage," Gooden told a radio station.
For Phillies fans who recall Dykstra in slightly more coherent days, Frankie's book provides some interesting revelations. Among them:
After Dykstra parted ways with friend and former business partner Lindsay Jones, Jones' subsequent lawsuit claimed that Dykstra had indeed abused steroids while with the Phillies and that he also gambled on the team's games in 1993.
The dislike between Dykstra and Phils closer Mitch Williams went deeper than what had been revealed. Dykstra blamed Williams - "he's a barrel-finder" - for the '93 World Series loss. Williams said his former teammate was "the most common sense-void person I've ever met in my life. . . . You could have a better conversation with a tree."
Teammates often had concerns about Dykstra's health. "There was one night before a game, Dykstra had blood coming out of both his ears. . . . Obviously, you knew it wasn't going to end well," one said.
Minutes after telling HBO's Bernard Goldberg on camera that he hadn't abused steroids in Philadelphia, he told the reporter, off the record, that he had. Then he denied it again in a later phone call with Goldberg.
For all its painstaking detail and firsthand insights, Frankie's recounting overdoses. The litany of truly awful behavior becomes redundant, almost too difficult to bear.
But as always seems to be the case with this tragically flawed but oddly compelling character, we can't look away. All that remains for voyeurs like us, it seems, is Dykstra's final car wreck.
0
Options
The Juggler
Behind that bush over there. Posts: 47,312
positives from monday: revere's 12 pitch walk...dom brown's encouraging approach at the plate...and, of course, 26. score 5 runs, you should win most nights. there's no defending the r6 though. that 5th inning at bat was hard to watch. also---the ump changing his strike zone in the 8th inning did us no favors.
2nd game of the season...but a pretty big one tonight. come on doc...
positives from monday: revere's 12 pitch walk...dom brown's encouraging approach at the plate...and, of course, 26. score 5 runs, you should win most nights. there's no defending the r6 though. that 5th inning at bat was hard to watch. also---the ump changing his strike zone in the 8th inning did us no favors.
2nd game of the season...but a pretty big one tonight. come on doc...
2nd game of the season and the media and fan base is already in panic mode. love this town sometimes :roll:
and that dykstra book has to be a must read. gotta be some insane stories.
0
Options
The Juggler
Behind that bush over there. Posts: 47,312
positives from monday: revere's 12 pitch walk...dom brown's encouraging approach at the plate...and, of course, 26. score 5 runs, you should win most nights. there's no defending the r6 though. that 5th inning at bat was hard to watch. also---the ump changing his strike zone in the 8th inning did us no favors.
2nd game of the season...but a pretty big one tonight. come on doc...
2nd game of the season and the media and fan base is already in panic mode. love this town sometimes :roll:
and that dykstra book has to be a must read. gotta be some insane stories.
panic mode? god you're an idiot sometimes. it's sort of important to see how halladay does tonight. i assumed people who follow this team know what i'm talking about. 162 game season man. relax...
positives from monday: revere's 12 pitch walk...dom brown's encouraging approach at the plate...and, of course, 26. score 5 runs, you should win most nights. there's no defending the r6 though. that 5th inning at bat was hard to watch. also---the ump changing his strike zone in the 8th inning did us no favors.
2nd game of the season...but a pretty big one tonight. come on doc...
2nd game of the season and the media and fan base is already in panic mode. love this town sometimes :roll:
and that dykstra book has to be a must read. gotta be some insane stories.
panic mode? don't be an idiot. it's important to see how halladay does. 162 game season man. relax...
oh i'm 100% on the relax part but the Inquirer this morning (and uhh you above) called it a big game. the important part for halladay is health. if he doesn't pitch great tonight but is healthy (he says he is but who knows) then it should be fine. let's not overstate the importance of his performance tonight unless it's due to injury. basically what i'm saying is the season isn't over if roy doesn't pitch great tonight or because of a 5th inning strikeout.
Post edited by pjhawks on
0
Options
The Juggler
Behind that bush over there. Posts: 47,312
2nd game of the season and the media and fan base is already in panic mode. love this town sometimes :roll:
and that dykstra book has to be a must read. gotta be some insane stories.
panic mode? don't be an idiot. it's important to see how halladay does. 162 game season man. relax...
oh i'm 100% on the relax part but the Inquirer this morning (and uhh you above) called it a big game. the important part for halladay is health. if he doesn't pitch great tonight but is healthy (he says he is but who knows) then it should be fine. let's not overstate the importance of his performance tonight unless it's due to injury. basically what i'm saying is the season isn't over if roy doesn't pitch great tonight or because of a 5th inning strikeout.
well that's a relief. pjhawks states the season isn't over if halladay doesn't pitch great tonight. PHEW.
every start of his is important to me as a large part of our success this year is riding on him reinventing himself throughout the season. and there is a possibility that he's hurt. he said he was fine last year too.
well that's a relief. pjhawks states the season isn't over if halladay doesn't pitch great tonight. PHEW.
every start of his is important to me as a large part of our success this year is riding on him reinventing himself throughout the season. and there is a possibility that he's hurt. he said he was fine last year too.
effyou.
so is it a big game or not? 2 posts above you said, and i quote "it's a big one tonight" and now you say it's not. i swear this thread is like arguing with a woman who changes her mind within 2 minutes.
0
Options
The Juggler
Behind that bush over there. Posts: 47,312
well that's a relief. pjhawks states the season isn't over if halladay doesn't pitch great tonight. PHEW.
every start of his is important to me as a large part of our success this year is riding on him reinventing himself throughout the season. and there is a possibility that he's hurt. he said he was fine last year too.
so is it a big game or not? 2 posts above you said, and i quote "it's a big one tonight" and now you say it's not. i swear this thread is like arguing with a woman who changes her mind within 2 minutes. effyou
wow you just have bad reads on almost everything you post about in here.
it's a big one because doc is on the mound. "come on doc" is what i said after calling it big. they can get swept but if doc looks decent, i'll be happy.
and you should know, if you're paying attention to this team, that it's not just health. he can be perfectly healthy but he's lost his 92 mph fast ball. he's got to reinvent himself this year. it's not an easy task for a guy who relied on his fast ball for so many years. if anyone can do it, it's him. but it may take a while.
well that's a relief. pjhawks states the season isn't over if halladay doesn't pitch great tonight. PHEW.
every start of his is important to me as a large part of our success this year is riding on him reinventing himself throughout the season. and there is a possibility that he's hurt. he said he was fine last year too.
so is it a big game or not? 2 posts above you said, and i quote "it's a big one tonight" and now you say it's not. i swear this thread is like arguing with a woman who changes her mind within 2 minutes. effyou
wow you just have bad reads on almost everything you post about in here.
it's a big one because doc is on the mound. "come on doc" is what i said after calling it big. they can get swept but if doc looks decent, i'll be happy.
and you should know, if you're paying attention to this team, that it's not just health. he can be perfectly healthy but he's lost his 92 mph fast ball. he's got to reinvent himself this year. it's not an easy task for a guy who relied on his fast ball for so many years. if anyone can do it, it's him. but it may take a while.
"it's a big one tonight"
"it's sort of important"
"it's a big one becuase doc is on the mound"
3 posts within 5 minutes by you but i guess i misread those 3 fn comments by you . and you call me an idiot. :fp:
i can understand mike rice wanting to throw balls at peoples heads sometimes.
Post edited by pjhawks on
0
Options
The Juggler
Behind that bush over there. Posts: 47,312
so is it a big game or not? 2 posts above you said, and i quote "it's a big one tonight" and now you say it's not. i swear this thread is like arguing with a woman who changes her mind within 2 minutes. effyou
wow you just have bad reads on almost everything you post about in here.
it's a big one because doc is on the mound. "come on doc" is what i said after calling it big. they can get swept but if doc looks decent, i'll be happy.
and you should know, if you're paying attention to this team, that it's not just health. he can be perfectly healthy but he's lost his 92 mph fast ball. he's got to reinvent himself this year. it's not an easy task for a guy who relied on his fast ball for so many years. if anyone can do it, it's him. but it may take a while.
"it's a big one tonight"
"it's sort of important"
"it's a big one becuase doc is on the mound"
3 posts within 5 minutes by you but i guess i misread those 3 fn comments by you . and you call me an idiot. :fp: soyeagofuckyourselfi'm done.
1. "it's a big one tonight...come on doc" -(might help if you read my full post next time)
2. yeah this is called sarcasm...and it's fitting you didn't pick up on it.
3. makes perfect sense when looking at what i actually said.
you feeling okay this morning? telling me to go f myself over this seems a tad harsh. just read my posts more clearly next time and you should be okay.
Comments
DEGENERATE FUK
This place is dead
"THERE ARE NO CLIQUES, ONLY THOSE WHO DON'T JOIN THE FUN" - Empty circa 2015
"Kfsbho&$thncds" - F Me In the Brain - circa 2015
That's all it takes.
8/28/98- Camden, NJ
10/31/09- Philly
5/21/10- NYC
9/2/12- Philly, PA
7/19/13- Wrigley
10/19/13- Brooklyn, NY
10/21/13- Philly, PA
10/22/13- Philly, PA
10/27/13- Baltimore, MD
Tres Mts.- 3/23/11- Philly
Eddie Vedder- 6/25/11- Philly
I liked Revere last night. Someone take Mayberry away please.
Tom O.
"I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?"
-The Writer
ah god i love philly fans. our stud pitcher puts us in a 4-0 hole by the 2nd inning and it's ryan howard's fault. i guess ryan should have caught those 900 foot home runs by the braves :fp:
the one bad thing about opening day is the compete overreaction's good and bad to things that happen in that one game.
The irony of this is just magical.
No, but for 25 mil a year you should be able to hit opposite field. No need for "Philly fan" type comments or "opening day overreaction" comments. I don't like Howard and most likely never will. Not a big deal. I don't like any big league player that the D plays a shift on. The player should learn to hit.
DEGENERATE FUK
This place is dead
"THERE ARE NO CLIQUES, ONLY THOSE WHO DON'T JOIN THE FUN" - Empty circa 2015
"Kfsbho&$thncds" - F Me In the Brain - circa 2015
thanks for noticing
umm utley?
touché
When Utley strikes out 32% of his ABs, I'll add him to my list.
But honestly, you can't compare Utley with Howard and the type off ball players they are. Not even on the same level
DEGENERATE FUK
This place is dead
"THERE ARE NO CLIQUES, ONLY THOSE WHO DON'T JOIN THE FUN" - Empty circa 2015
"Kfsbho&$thncds" - F Me In the Brain - circa 2015
i don't. they are different players asked to do different things. love chase but he has never been asked to hit 40 home runs and to drive in 140 runs in a season. not every player, like employees in succesfful companies, has the same job to do. ryan is asked to do things differently than chase and i think they both do them extremely well. thus why they are the greatest 3-4 combo the franchise has every had and the 2 key offensive cogs in the greatest era the franchise has ever had.
WF Center 10/22/13; Baltimore Arena 10/27/13; WF Center 4/28/16; WF Center 4/29/16;
Fenway Park 8/7/16; Fenway Park 9/2/18; SeaHearNow Asbury Park 9/18/21; Camden 9/14/22
Tres Mtns - TLA 3/23/11; EV - Tower Theatre 6/25/11; Temple of the Dog - Tower Theatre 11/5/16
I was casually watching last night. when howard went down on 3 pitches and basically killed a rally, I thought "here we go again"
Vegas 93, Vegas 98, Vegas 00 (10 year show), Vegas 03, Vegas 06
VIC 07
EV LA1 08
Seattle1 09, Seattle2 09, Salt Lake 09, LA4 09
Columbus 10
EV LA 11
Vancouver 11
Missoula 12
Portland 13, Spokane 13
St. Paul 14, Denver 14
do you usually come into this thread for the fruity beers and restaurant talks?
http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/phi ... slide.html
Book on Dykstra exposes tragic slide
Frank Fitzpatrick
At 1 a.m. on May 7, 1991, a drunken Lenny Dykstra sped along winding Darby-Paoli Road in Radnor Township and slammed his red Mercedes sports car into a tree. The Phillies centerfielder escaped with fractured ribs, a broken collarbone and cheekbone, and second-degree burns.
Twenty-two years later, that car crash remains an apt metaphor for Dykstra's life.
Laws and limits aren't made for him. Dykstra is a self-powered machine bound for self-destruction. He races through life headfirst, heedless of others, an irresistible force in search of immovable objects.
Since the mercurial ballplayer's retirement in 1996, the pace of those collisions has accelerated, the carnage has grown more severe. And the wreckage? Well, all these years later we still can't take our eyes off it.
Dykstra, 50 now and imprisoned in California, has lost his family, his money, and, as a fascinating new book on his equally fascinating unraveling makes clear, maybe his mind.
Christopher Frankie, a former business associate and a victim of Dykstra's most recent pileup, has written a richly detailed but disturbing book on the enigmatic man-child, Nailed! The Improbable Rise and Spectacular Fall of Lenny Dykstra.
Sadly but not surprisingly, it shows how an ex-ballplayer who always lived on the edge plunged into the abyss.
Like so many before, Frankie was charmed at first. Dykstra hired the journalist to work for his failed Players Club magazine (full disclosure: Dykstra contracted me to write a pair of stories for the short-lived publication), but soon he became his boss' caretaker, fixer, confidant, and ultimately target for abuse.
"The redeeming qualities that first made me trust him," Frankie writes, "were buried beneath severe, toxic paranoia, apparent substance abuse, reckless abandon, and a complete detachment from reality. It was only a matter of time, I suspected, before he would end up in jail . . . or worse."
Broke and severely broken by then, Dykstra did, of course, wind up in jail, sentenced to three years in December 2012 on a variety of charges that included grand theft auto and financial fraud. The winding road that led him to this latest smashup is this book's focus - and it's not a story for the fainthearted.
Crude Dude
As Dykstra's life and post-baseball enterprises unwound late in the first decade of the millennium, he doubled down on the unspeakably crude behavior that once, when he was leading the Mets and Phillies to World Series, was laughed off as Lenny being Lenny:
Obscene advances to women. Threatening phone calls and e-mails to employees. Estrangement from family and friends. Drug and alcohol abuse. Reckless spending and borrowing. Illegal business practices.
Frankie notes that Dykstra's downfall likely had its roots in his childhood, when the mischievous Southern California youngster was abandoned by his natural father. But the episode that triggered the downfall's denouement began when, after losing millions in the stock market, he connected with Jim Cramer, the Wall Street investment guru and die-hard Philadelphia sports fan.
Dykstra studied the market. Cramer gave him advice and, eventually, a column on his influential website, TheStreet.com. The ex-ballplayer revived his bank account and his reputation. In a burst of arrogant bravado, he bought Wayne Gretzky's California mansion, a fleet of expensive cars, and whatever else he wanted. More important, despite not having played baseball for years, he became a media curiosity again.
That led to an HBO Real Sports report that was essentially a puff piece on Dykstra as a stock-market savant, which in turn resulted in even more media coverage for the fly catcher turned stock picker.
"If there was one guy we thought was going to be successful in the stock market, it would not have been Lenny," Gary Carter, his late teammate, told the author.
Gradually, Dykstra's mask melted away. In one ridiculous interview on Fox and Friends, the out-of-shape former athlete, reenacting his brawl with Dodgers catcher Rick Dempsey, wrestled with cohost Brian Kilmeade, pulling a hamstring in the process.
Dykstra parlayed the media attention into what would be his fatal venture. The Players Club was the name of what was supposed to be both an entity that could provide an array of financial and personal services to millionaire athletes and a glossy magazine that would showcase those same superstars.
It was an interesting concept. Frankie and others were lured to the enterprise that was launched with the kind of no-limit glitz Dykstra admired. But soon the house of cards began to collapse. Rents and salaries weren't paid. Commitments evaporated. As the money disappeared, so did the always paper-thin veneer of respectability Dykstra had typically managed to summon when necessary.
Paranoia strikes
Spiraling out of control, he borrowed and stole money, begged his mother for her credit card, lost his wife, his home, his cars. If anyone dared challenge him, he exploded, often irrationally and obscenely. When his book agent asked that he repay the $250,000 he'd lent him, Dykstra fired back. It's one of the few e-mails in the book fit for a family newspaper.
"Hey, tough guy, it will be fun to see how you hold after you are $1.0 [million] dollars in after paying legal bills?" he wrote. "But if this is the way you want to play it - then let's get it on! BY THE WAY, YOU ARE FIRED! BY THE WAY, I do need you to reimburse me for the two private jet rides AND HOTELS."
Mind and body gave way. Paranoia gripped him. He told friends that a fortune-teller had foreseen his doom and "Someone's going to get me."
"Just listening to Lenny speak - he was practically incoherent," said Wally Backman, who'd played with him in Philadelphia and New York. "He was whispering, mumbling. . . . It was sad to see what'd happened to him. It broke my heart."
One of the countless examples of bizarre behavior involved Dwight Gooden. The pitcher, who had long struggled with drugs and alcohol, was part of a reality TV show in which he'd checked himself into a celebrity rehab facility. Dykstra, believing his former Mets teammate was being held against his will, "showed up unprompted, unannounced, and attempted to break Gooden out of the facility," Frankie writes.
"He thought I'd been hypnotized [and was being held] hostage," Gooden told a radio station.
For Phillies fans who recall Dykstra in slightly more coherent days, Frankie's book provides some interesting revelations. Among them:
After Dykstra parted ways with friend and former business partner Lindsay Jones, Jones' subsequent lawsuit claimed that Dykstra had indeed abused steroids while with the Phillies and that he also gambled on the team's games in 1993.
The dislike between Dykstra and Phils closer Mitch Williams went deeper than what had been revealed. Dykstra blamed Williams - "he's a barrel-finder" - for the '93 World Series loss. Williams said his former teammate was "the most common sense-void person I've ever met in my life. . . . You could have a better conversation with a tree."
Teammates often had concerns about Dykstra's health. "There was one night before a game, Dykstra had blood coming out of both his ears. . . . Obviously, you knew it wasn't going to end well," one said.
Minutes after telling HBO's Bernard Goldberg on camera that he hadn't abused steroids in Philadelphia, he told the reporter, off the record, that he had. Then he denied it again in a later phone call with Goldberg.
For all its painstaking detail and firsthand insights, Frankie's recounting overdoses. The litany of truly awful behavior becomes redundant, almost too difficult to bear.
But as always seems to be the case with this tragically flawed but oddly compelling character, we can't look away. All that remains for voyeurs like us, it seems, is Dykstra's final car wreck.
2nd game of the season...but a pretty big one tonight. come on doc...
2nd game of the season and the media and fan base is already in panic mode. love this town sometimes :roll:
and that dykstra book has to be a must read. gotta be some insane stories.
panic mode? god you're an idiot sometimes. it's sort of important to see how halladay does tonight. i assumed people who follow this team know what i'm talking about. 162 game season man. relax...
oh i'm 100% on the relax part but the Inquirer this morning (and uhh you above) called it a big game. the important part for halladay is health. if he doesn't pitch great tonight but is healthy (he says he is but who knows) then it should be fine. let's not overstate the importance of his performance tonight unless it's due to injury. basically what i'm saying is the season isn't over if roy doesn't pitch great tonight or because of a 5th inning strikeout.
well that's a relief. pjhawks states the season isn't over if halladay doesn't pitch great tonight. PHEW.
every start of his is important to me as a large part of our success this year is riding on him reinventing himself throughout the season. and there is a possibility that he's hurt. he said he was fine last year too.
effyou.
so is it a big game or not? 2 posts above you said, and i quote "it's a big one tonight" and now you say it's not. i swear this thread is like arguing with a woman who changes her mind within 2 minutes.
wow you just have bad reads on almost everything you post about in here.
it's a big one because doc is on the mound. "come on doc" is what i said after calling it big. they can get swept but if doc looks decent, i'll be happy.
and you should know, if you're paying attention to this team, that it's not just health. he can be perfectly healthy but he's lost his 92 mph fast ball. he's got to reinvent himself this year. it's not an easy task for a guy who relied on his fast ball for so many years. if anyone can do it, it's him. but it may take a while.
"it's a big one tonight"
"it's sort of important"
"it's a big one becuase doc is on the mound"
3 posts within 5 minutes by you but i guess i misread those 3 fn comments by you . and you call me an idiot. :fp:
i can understand mike rice wanting to throw balls at peoples heads sometimes.
1. "it's a big one tonight...come on doc" -(might help if you read my full post next time)
2. yeah this is called sarcasm...and it's fitting you didn't pick up on it.
3. makes perfect sense when looking at what i actually said.
you feeling okay this morning? telling me to go f myself over this seems a tad harsh. just read my posts more clearly next time and you should be okay.
DEGENERATE FUK
This place is dead
"THERE ARE NO CLIQUES, ONLY THOSE WHO DON'T JOIN THE FUN" - Empty circa 2015
"Kfsbho&$thncds" - F Me In the Brain - circa 2015
what's the weather like in mechanicsburg today?
Tom O.
"I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?"
-The Writer