If there’s extraordinary chutzpah, look for alcoholism: Lenny Dykstra goes to prison in full denial
Chutzpah of the month:
Former New York Mets star and would-be financial guru Lenny Dykstra, sentenced to three years in California state prison after a judge rejected the unrepentant Dykstra’s last-ditch effort to change his no contest plea and fight charges of grand theft auto and filing false financial statements by essentially stealing someone else’s identity. “Did I do something I’m not proud of? Yes,” Dykstra said. “Am I a criminal? No,” he told the court while asking for leniency in a rambling and repetitive speech in which he apologized to his family but not his victims. Prosecutors said Dykstra had no remorse. He had been arrested at his Encino, CA home, where authorities, serving a search warrant, also found cocaine and Ecstasy. I began chronicling Dykstra’s life in TAR after watching a TV interview in which I suspected he was drunk, earning him a spot in the “under watch” section of issue #18 of TAR. He graduated to “runners-up for Top Story” in issue # 50 and was one of the subjects I suggested might make a fun movie in the “Review of the month” in issue # 64.