Lenny Dykstra was due to play baseball at Arizona State but decided to go pro after being drafted by the New York Mets in 1981.It turned out to be a great decision for the 13th-round pick, who led the Carolina League in at-bats, runs, hits, triples, batting average and stolen bases to be crowned MVP in 1983.GettyDykstra earned a reputation as a scrappy player in New York[/caption]GettyHe won the World Series in his first ML season[/caption]Dykstra became close with Billy Beane while playing Double-A together and the future Hall of Famer saw plenty of potential.Beane claimed his teammate was “perfectly designed, emotionally” to play baseball and had “no concept of failure.” He claimed that after watching pitcher Steve Carlton, who also wound up immortalized in Cooperstown, New York, Dykstra said: “S***, I’ll stick him.”Many felt the prospect was too short to make it but after being promoted to MLB he earned the nickname Nails thanks to a no-nonsense, hard-running playing style.The Mets won the World Series and Dykstra was an MVP contender.Dykstra’s three All-Star nods all came after he was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies in 1989.He won the Silver Slugger in 1993 after hitting 19 home runs to help the Phillies into the World Series, finishing behind Barry Bonds in the MVP race.What did Lenny Dykstra do after retiring?Dykstra retired in 1996 at the age of 33 after struggling with injuries.By 2008, successful investments in a chain of car washes had helped turn $24 million in career earnings into a net worth of $58 million, per the Philadelphia Inquirer.The hitter entered the league as a skinny athlete who made up for it with scrappy determination, by the end of his time in Philly he was a stocky power hitter.GettyDykstra beefed up during his time in Philadelphia[/caption]GettyHe only made the World Series one more time[/caption]In a 2016 interview with NBC Sports, he revealed that he felt pressure to turn to steroids in order to provide for his family.“So I said, I need to play,” Dykstra said. “I finally got traded to the Phillies in ’89, and I’m 150, 140 pounds. So I knew. [Then-Philadelphia general manager] Lee Thomas said, look, we’re going to give you 1990. You’ll be our everyday guy.“So I knew ’90 was it for me. So that’s why I went to the library in Mississippi and looked it up. Ben Johnson, remember? (Johnson, the 100-meter gold medalist in the 1988 Olympics was stripped of his medal when he failed a drug test for steroid use).“I literally called up some doctor in Mississippi and told him the story I’m telling you. I have a family. I have a chance to make a lot of money. It’s not that I can’t play. I know how to do that. You don’t have to teach me that.“But the schedule is six months. I’m just not physically big enough to hold up. If I can just stay strong…”Dykstra featured in the infamous Mitchell Report in 2005 as MLB tried to clean up its image and tasked Senator George Mitchell with investigating steroid use.According to The New York Times, Kevin Dykstra — Lenny’s brother and former business partner — was a key contributor.How much money did Lenny Dykstra lose?Lenny allegedly pulled his money out of the car wash business he ran with Kevin and refused to pay him $4 million that he was owed.“He screwed us all out of money. He didn’t do right by his family and we’ve kind of disowned him,” Wayne Neilsen — the uncle of Lenny’s mother Marilyn who also worked in the business — told the NYT.Kevin — a former minor league umpire — claimed he was the source of the performance-enhancing drugs.“Lenny’s whole thing was that he always wanted to be bigger, in every way,” he added in the Times’ report. “After baseball, he was just never happy with what he had. “He had a $4 million house, but he had to get Gretzky’s house. He had nice cars, but he had to have a Maybach. He flew first class, but he wanted his own private jet.” Dykstra became a favourite of TV star Jim Cramer, who hired him to write a column for TheStreet.com.He was a stock tipster and people paid almost $1,000 a year to read his advice.But Dykstra soon started chasing bigger gains and tried to release a magazine called Player’s Club, which collapsed after one issue.His losses mounted and he filed for bankruptcy.In 2012, he admitted to stealing assets from his own estate and selling merchandise without disclosing the profits and was sentenced to six-and-a-half months in custody.He was already serving a three-year prison sentence after pleading no contest to grand theft autoCourt documents revealed that he had regularly used Dexedrine, Adderall, and Vicodin during his career and had developed a problem, switching to other medications, including Percocet, after retirement.Alcohol was another problem, the New York Times reports that Dykstra injured himself and Phillies teammate Darren Daulton in a car crash and was later found to have twice the legal limit of alcohol in his blood. In the 2012 papers, he admitted to drinking a liter of vodka a day. Dykstra’s brother said he supplied him performance-enhancing drugsWhere is Lenny Dykstra today?Dykstra overcame the odds to make a career for himself in MLB but struggled with some of the trappings of fame.He is currently living in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and suffered a stroke in February 2024.The 62-year-old has been working with pastor Dennis D’Augostine of Steamtown Church — a Mets fan who remembers the 1986 World Series — and wants to produce a pay-per-view variety show to help other stroke victims find some joy.“They can be pretty miserable,” he told the Daily Times. “I’m going to call it, ‘Different strokes for different folks.”