Nails Never Fails.(Lenny Dykstra)(Interview)

The first time I met Lenny Dykstra, the former Mets and Phillies star, he nearly stood me up for lunch at the St. Regis Hotel, in New York. Dykstra is a luxury-hotel junkie--a self-proclaimed "robes-and-room-service kind of guy." When I finally reached him, forty minutes after our scheduled appointment, he wondered what time it was, and said that he'd be down as soon as he could put on a suit. Five minutes later, he called back and, to assuage his guilt, suggested that I go ahead and order steak and lobster. He still had to put on his suit. I waited a few minutes longer, then ordered. The food arrived. I let it sit, and eventually--slowly--began to eat. I finished. The waiter cleared away my plate. At last, as I was about to signal for the check, Dykstra emerged from the elevator, lugging three briefcases. For reasons that were not immediately evident, he started showing me glossy photos of airplanes, and mentioned something or other about Dubai. "Sorry about the hecticness," he then said. "I shaved. I cleaned up for you."

Mets fans of a certain age will recall a popular poster from 1986, bearing the word "Nails" in bold letters across the top, and featuring a shirtless Dykstra, wearing eye black and holding a bat against his shoulder. The nickname referred to his tenacity and also to his peculiar Southern California lexicon. ("MTV is nails," he explained in his autobiography, also called "Nails," which was published in 1987, when he was twenty-four. "Winning is nails.") He was wiry then; he used to complain that Lenny might as well have been his middle name, given how often it was preceded by the word "little": Little Lenny Dykstra. He is lumpy now. Referring to his suit, which was pin-striped, he said, "It gets a little tighter, you know?" His hands tremble, his back hurts, and his speech, like that of an insomniac or a stroke victim, lags slightly behind his mind. He winks without obvious intent. In his playing days, he had a term for people like this: fossils. Nothing about his physical presence any longer suggests nails, and sometimes, as if in joking recognition of this softening, he answers the phone by saying, "Thumbtacks."

Dykstra ordered a Coke and French fries with ketchup: "And I'm actually going to have that as my meal--might be the oddest order of the day." (Healthy living was never his specialty.) When the Coke arrived, he sent it back, believing it to be Diet. After the fries were delivered, he made a show of extracting a "You're welcome" from the waiter, who had since moved on to another table. "I pay a thousand bucks a night--actually, three thousand bucks a night--and people are discourteous," he said, shaking his head. "There's some point in life when you have to grow up."

For many ballplayers, the growing-up point does not arrive until after retirement, when all the freebies vanish and equipment managers and hotel maids can no longer be relied upon for regular laundry service. Dykstra last played in the majors in 1996, at age thirty-three. Improbably, he has since become a successful day trader, and he let me know that he owns both a Maybach ("the best car") and a Gulfstream ("the best jet"). The occasion for our lunch, however, was a new venture: Dykstra is launching a magazine, intended specifically for pro athletes, called The Players Club. An unfortunate number of his former teammates have ended up broke, or divorced, or worse. The week before we met, the ex-Yankee Jim Leyritz, himself twice divorced and underemployed, had hit a woman while driving home from a bar. He never grew up.

"You've got the ten per cent who are going to find their way no matter what," Dykstra said of the athlete population. "And you get the ten per cent that are fuckheads no matter what--we'll paste an 'L' to 'em." The rest need guidance, and Dykstra, who will write a regular column called "The Game of Life," is prepared to give it. "This will be the world's best magazine," he said.

As proof of the worthiness of his cause, he brought up his old Phillies teammate Pete Incaviglia: "Remember the big, burly guy? Best five-o'clock hitter in baseball history. Allergic to leather. Allergic to leather." (Translation: Incaviglia could hit the ball a mile in batting practice, and was no good with a glove.) "Inky called me this winter, and he asked me for a job. And I felt bad--said, 'Come on down.' I showed him our business plan, and he said, 'Where was that when I was playing?' " (Incaviglia, who now manages a minor-league team in Texas, later told me, "Lenny's idea is the most brilliant, best idea I've ever heard in my life. It's mind-boggling.")

Dykstra's business plan extends beyond the magazine. "We're creating a life style!" he said, and emphasized that he wanted to encourage athletes in their prime to set aside a half-million dollars a year in a customized retirement account, thereby insuring "recurring cash flow" for life. He turned over a piece of paper and drew a small circle, inside which he wrote the letters "TPC," for The Players Club. Next, he drew a larger circle around it and began connecting the two circles with spokes: "building bridges," as he put it. At the end of the spokes, he wrote things like "annuity," "private jets," "real estate," and "concierge." That last one, he said, was for "when you forgot your wife's birthday, and you're in the on-deck circle. You go, 'Oh, no! Batboy, go call the concierge service for The Players Club. Tell him to get flowers for my wife, and tell her I love her.' " He had already asked two of the butlers at the St. Regis to come work for him.