Today former Mets and Phillies outfielder Lenny Dykstra claims to have blackmailed umpires during his career for favorable calls on balls and strikes at the plate. Seems rather outrageous, but anyone interested in Dykstra’s playing career should pick up Keith Hernandez’s Pure Baseball, which featured Dykstra prominently in his pitch-by-pitch analysis of two MLB games in 1993. Whatever his failures off the field, Dykstra, known to Hernandez and his teammates as “Nails,” was an abnormally driven player on it, always seeking out and using every competitive advantage he could find. I doubt that Hernandez would have dreamed of Dykstra using blackmail back then, but he would likely have found it within his character.
Awesome book, BTW. No baseball library is complete without it.
Post Script: Here’s another Dykstra interview from 2013. The interviewers are former players Robert Fick and Dmitri Young. A bit unpolished, but it’s like sitting on the next bar stool while players unwind after a game. Definitely worth a listen.
