Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
Lenny Dykstra, the ex-con and former major<br />
league center fielder, relishes his wild man<br />
reputation, and relishes running his mouth<br />
about it even more. With roughly Pete Rose’s<br />
chance of making it to Cooperstown, he’ll talk<br />
about gobbling Human Growth Hormone with<br />
his cereal during his playing days just as easily<br />
as he’ll open up about how, in his mid-50s,<br />
he’s developed a post-prison side gig as a silverhaired<br />
gigolo to Beverly Hills grandmothers.<br />
But over lunch in a corner booth at <strong>The</strong> Beverly<br />
Hills Hotel’s Polo Lounge, it’s another wild man,<br />
more famous and even more hard living, once<br />
his best buddy but with whom he no longer<br />
speaks, who has him gabbing. Dykstra explains<br />
that he believes his onetime friend Charlie<br />
Sheen is on the verge of being prosecuted, in<br />
a roundabout way, for knowingly spreading<br />
his HIV — and that the actor is under federal<br />
investigation for tax and wire fraud. What’s<br />
more, Dykstra claims to know this because it<br />
was his own semi-accidental whistle-blowing<br />
to the government that got the Internal Revenue<br />
Service sniffing around in the first place. “I<br />
don’t know why Charlie doesn’t try to leave the<br />
country,” he says.<br />
Dykstra, 54, nicknamed “Nails” decades ago<br />
for his relentlessness on the field — parts of five<br />
seasons with the New York Mets and eight with<br />
the Philadelphia Phillies — isn’t done. He goes<br />
on to float that Sheen was involved in the sudden<br />
death of a member of his own inner circle<br />
and beat his pregnant ex-fiancee. <strong>The</strong> 52-yearold<br />
Sheen, says Dykstra, is not simply the<br />
drug-addled clown the tabloids have been feasting<br />
on for years but is truly dangerous.<br />
Dykstra is going public now with this new<br />
info about Sheen, he says, because he’s genuinely<br />
sickened by the worst of the actor’s<br />
behavior. “I am not a saint, but I will not tolerate<br />
a man beating a woman,” he says. Still,<br />
under questioning, another motive emerges.<br />
Dykstra was friendly with Sheen for more<br />
than two decades, eventually joining his core<br />
clique. Now he’s excommunicated. His allegations<br />
against Sheen are telling; his willingness<br />
to share them even more so. <strong>The</strong> doomed bromance<br />
of Lenny and Charlie is a glimpse into the<br />
hedonistic lure of a real-life Entourage, only sadder,<br />
more desperate and ultimately damned — a<br />
cautionary tale about <strong>Hollywood</strong> alpha-male<br />
bonding at its most decadent and damaging.<br />
<strong>The</strong> industry has always been a magnet for<br />
guys like Dykstra: confident outsider-hustlers<br />
who see opportunity in its chaos, imagining<br />
that their accomplishments in other fields<br />
mean they must have the wits, guts and guile<br />
to conquer the gilded mayhem. But with Sheen<br />
and his all-star team of professional handlers,<br />
Nails met his match.<br />
Like his ex-pal, Dykstra has a public reputation<br />
so sullied that Newsweek referred to him<br />
as a “scumbag” after he had a Twitter dustup<br />
with Lena Dunham. Yet Nails, who speaks<br />
with a lisp due to a jailhouse beating that left<br />
him with many missing teeth, is self-aware<br />
enough of his notoriety (and so eager to instill<br />
confidence in his tale) that he insists on providing<br />
the password to his personal email<br />
account for full disclosure. “Look at whatever<br />
you want,” he says. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”<br />
Press Dykstra about his rationalization for<br />
selling out his former friend, and he’ll tell you<br />
that Sheen took his wise counsel for granted,<br />
ignored it and left him with nothing to show<br />
for it. No surprise, Dykstra is hoping to drum<br />
up interest in a possible stand-alone Sheen<br />
documentary project as well as a multipart<br />
docuseries about his own over-the-top life —<br />
he envisions it in the sweeping, kaleidoscopic<br />
terms of O.J.: Made in America. “<strong>The</strong>re are so<br />
1<br />
many people to interview, from prison guards<br />
to my [private plane] pilots to pussy,” he says.<br />
If Dykstra’s actions mean Sheen gets<br />
burned, so be it. “Charlie is getting what he<br />
deserves,” he says. Sheen declined to speak<br />
for this story. But Dykstra doesn’t appear at<br />
all conflicted about publicly crossing his<br />
ex-friend, even one who once warned him to<br />
“watch your front side, watch your backside,<br />
watch both sides.” Dykstra takes a swig of<br />
Irish coffee, settles into his booth and alludes<br />
to his time at the federal penitentiary in<br />
Victorville, California. “When you’ve been<br />
where I’ve been, I’m not afraid of anything.”<br />
T<br />
he bad-boy pair first hung out when<br />
Dykstra’s Phillies were in Los Angeles<br />
playing the Dodgers during the 1993<br />
season. Sheen — who dreamed of being<br />
a big leaguer as a kid and was then reprising<br />
his role as reliever Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughn<br />
for Major League II — cold called him at the<br />
clubhouse with an invitation to his Malibu<br />
home. “I was a huge fan of Wall Street,” says<br />
Dykstra. “Turns out he’s a serious baseball guy:<br />
He has a cage lit up like a pro stadium. I told<br />
him, ‘Dude, you can hit!’ He could.”<br />
That first evening, Sheen uncorked a $3,000<br />
bottle of red wine (“I spilled half”) and then,<br />
once “hammered,” showed off what Dykstra<br />
describes as his “legitimate fucking gunnery”<br />
and suggested they fire off automatic<br />
weapons together. Dykstra passed, but the two<br />
became buddies. “He’s funny, he’s smart,<br />
he knows about everything,” says Dykstra.<br />
Dykstra, who last played in the majors<br />
in 1996, retired at age 33 to a notoriously<br />
checkered business career. He was involved<br />
in car-wash dealerships, quick-lube centers,<br />
jet charters and stock picking. By 2008, he<br />
was worth $58 million. <strong>The</strong> following year, he<br />
2<br />
had filed for Chapter 11 and was reportedly<br />
forced to sell his Mets 1986 World Series ring<br />
to help pay off more than $31 million in debt.<br />
His problems weren’t merely financial.<br />
Between 2009 and 2011, Dykstra was accused<br />
by a former employee of making racist and<br />
homophobic remarks, writing a bad check to an<br />
escort and sexually assaulting his housekeeper.<br />
He also was charged with indecent exposure,<br />
drug possession, grand theft auto, identity theft<br />
and filing false financial statements — and<br />
eventually sentenced to three years.<br />
Before going to prison, Dykstra reconnected<br />
with Sheen in <strong>February</strong> 2011 after having<br />
lost touch for some time. Fittingly, they ran<br />
into each other at the UCLA baseball field, as<br />
Dykstra helped his son Cutter, then a minor<br />
league player (and husband of Sopranos actress<br />
Jamie-Lynn Sigler), practice for the upcoming<br />
season. “Charlie came running up to me,<br />
DYKSTRA GROOMING BY LAURA COSTA AT ENNIS INC. SHEEN: GEORGE PIMENTEL/WIREIMAGE. HOUSE:<br />
SPLASH NEWS. COURTHOUSE: MICHAEL ROBINSON CHAVEZ/LA TIMES/GETTY IMAGES. METS: AP PHOTO.<br />
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER<br />
66<br />
FEBRUARY 7, <strong>2018</strong>