Former baseball player Lenny Dykstra faces drug charges after New Year’s Day traffic stop
Retired professional baseball player Lenny Dykstra is facing charges after Pennsylvania State Police say a trooper found drugs and paraphernalia in his possession during a traffic stop on New Year’s Day.
Dykstra, 62, was a passenger when the vehicle was stopped by a trooper from the Blooming Grove patrol unit in Pike County, about 25 miles east of Scranton, where Dykstra lives.
Police said in a statement that charges would be laid, but did not say what they were or what drugs were believed to be involved.
Matthew Blit, Dykstra’s attorney, said in a statement that the vehicle did not belong to Dykstra and that all charges against him “will be promptly acquitted.”
“Lenny was not accused of being under the influence of any substance at the scene, nor was he arrested or taken into custody at the scene,” Blit said.
Dykstra’s gritty style of play during his long career with the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies earned him the nickname “Nails.” He spent years as a businessman before running into a series of legal problems.
Dykstra served time in a California prison for bankruptcy fraud, sentenced to more than six months for hiding baseball gloves and other items from his playing days. That ran concurrently with a three-year sentence for pleading no contest to auto theft and providing false financial statements. He claimed he owed more than $31 million and had only $50,000 in assets.
In April 2012, Dykstra pleaded no contest to exposing himself to women he met through Craigslist.
In 2019, Dykstra pleaded guilty on behalf of his company, Titan Equity Group, to illegally renting rooms in a New Jersey home he owned. He agreed to pay about $3,000 in fines.
That same year, a judge dropped drug and terroristic threat charges against Dykstra after an altercation with an Uber driver. Police said they found cocaine, MDMA and marijuana among his belongings. Dykstra’s lawyer called the incident “exaggerated” and said he was innocent.
And in 2020, a New York Supreme Court judge dismissed a defamation lawsuit Dykstra filed against his former Mets teammate Ron Darling over his allegation that Dykstra made racist remarks toward an opponent during the 1986 World Series.
Judge Robert D. Kalish said Dykstra’s reputation “for unsportsmanlike conduct and bigotry” had already been so tarnished that it could no longer be damaged.
“According to the materials submitted on this motion, prior to the book’s publication, Dykstra was infamous for, among other things, being racist, misogynist, and anti-gay, as well as being a sexual predator, drug addict, thief, and embezzler,” Kalish wrote.
