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 pulled over by a trooper at the Blooming Grove police station in Pike County, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Scranton, where Dykstra lives.
In a statement the Police said that charges will be filed but did not specify what they might be or what drug was allegedly involved.
Matthew Blit, Dykstra’s lawyer, said in a statement that the vehicle did not belong to Dykstra and he was not accused of being under the influence of a substance at the scene.
“As long as charges are brought against him, they will be released quickly,” said Blit.
Dykstra’s gritty playing style over a 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 woes.
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. This occurred concurrently with a three-year sentence for pleading no contest to grand theft auto and providing a false financial statement. He claimed to have more than $31 million and only had $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 out rooms in a New Jersey home he owned. He agreed to pay about $3,000 in fines.
That same year a judge dropped drug charges and terroristic threats against Dykstra after an altercation with an Uber driver. The Police said they found cocaine, MDMA and marijuana among his belongings. Dykstra’s attorney called that incident “overblown” and said he was innocent.
And in 2020 a New York Supreme Court judge dismissed a defamation lawsuit Dykstra filed against 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 tarnished to the point where no more damage could be done.
“Based on the papers submitted on this motion, prior to the book’s publication, Dykstra was infamous for, among other things, being a racist, misogynist, and anti-gay, as well as a sexual predator, drug abuser, thief, and racketeer,” Kalish wrote.