By John Russo
After years of denying his steroid use, Lenny Dykstra admitted to doing so in his new book. But what’s interesting about his admission is that after years of denial, and usually a passionate denial, the former all start centerfielder kinda boasted about juicing. Is this guy going to turn into Jose Canseco 2.0?
From a discussion with Randall Lane:
“You know,” Lenny said, finally breaking the ice, “I was like a pioneer for that stuff.”
“Excuse me, Lenny?”
“The juice. I was like the very first to do that. Me and [Jose] Canseco.”
It always hits harder when it’s one of your guys doing the cheating. And I’m not going to go easy on my opinion of him. Like every player that cheated, no matter the reason, you are a tarnish to the game of baseball and you don’t deserve to revel in the fact that you cheated. Dykstra, like all the other ‘roided-out rejects who admitted their use, offered an explanation… an excuse:
“You gotta understand, there were only 28 people who had my job in the whole world.” He was referring to the fact that there were only 28 Major League Baseball teams, and that each only had one starting centerfielder. “And thousands of people wanted those jobs, and every year, there were guys trying to take my job.
“So I needed to do anything I could to protect my job, take care of my family. Do you have any idea how much money was at stake? Do you?”
You know what they say about excuses, Lenny. So basically you had to cheat to live in your rich, over sized house because you felt that you weren’t good enough to start in the majors. You couldn’t settle for playing left or right field, opening up more job opportunities?
Don’t lie to baseball, Dutch. You wanted to take a short cut and didn’t want to do all the hard work that everyone else did. You stuck a needle in your ass and you tried to be the best. It wasn’t worth it Lenny. You had a few good seasons and then burned out in 12 years because your body broke down.
Was it worth it?
TTB 