At one point in my life I owned every Lenny Dykstra rookie card in existence. And it was a section of my Baseball Card Collection that I was proud of, too. Not everyone pursued Dykstra rookies and there were many ocassions when my friends, upon inspection of my collection, would come across all those 1986 Dystra cards and say, “Lenny Dystra rookie? Wow, that’s kinda cool.” Sometimes they’d offer to trade me, say, a Fred McGriff rookie or maybe a Danny Tartable but no, I would never pull the trigger on my Lenny Dystra rookies.

Why did I like him so much? I dunno. I guess because like “Nails”, as he was called, I was a short fast white ballplayer too. And for me, he represented the hope that even those less that physically gifted could hold their own in the majors. What I should’ve known was that by the early 90′s Dykstra was on the steroids. His cranium was expanding, he could barely get his batting helmet over that thing. His neck was so thick it looked as though he kept four pounds of chewing tobacco stored in it like a parrot.

His power trip culminated with his jacking six post season home runs for the 1993 Phillies, which at the time I believe was a single post season record – later broken by Carlos Beltran’s eight homers a decade later for the Astros.

CUT TO: Post-retirement Dystra, whose face puffs out like all post-steroid faces do, files bankruptcy after a failed “stock guru” career. He’s then prosecuted for hiding half a million dollars in assets from said bankruptcy and winds up in the news for being “homeless”.

Today it all came to a head when Nails was “nailed” in his Encino home (I believe he was just staying on a friend’s couch) and thrown in jail under a $500,000 bail. Twenty-five total charges are being brought against Lenny: auto theft, embezzlement, identity theft, and drug possession with intent to distribute (cocaine, ecstasy and human growth hormone found).

I don’t know about you but when I heard this I could only think of one thing: a VIDEO GAME starring Nails MUST be forthcoming! Who’s with me? Picture it: a Grand Theft Auto type of game featuring a drugged-out former ballplayer on a rampage! It’s like Kenny Powers to the tenth power. In the game, you’d play as Lenny and you have forty-eight hours to come up with thirty million dollars any way you can. Start with ponzi scheme and end with armed robbery! There’s no limits to what Lenny can do in this game that’s enjoyable for kids of all ages!