The ghost of Jackie Robinson is getting dragged into a legal fight between former Met teammates Lenny Dykstra and Ron Darling over how much racism the legendary black player faced.
Darling’s book “108 Stitches: Loose Threads, Ripping Yarns, and the Darndest Characters from My Time in the Game,’’ — in which he “falsely” accuses Dykstra of going on a racist rant, “worse, I’m betting, than anything Jackie Robinson might have heard,” — not only hurt Dykstra’s reputation but also diminished Robinson’s journey in breaking “baseball’s color barrier,” new court papers allege.
Darling says in the book that during the 1986 World Series while on-deck Dykstra said racial slurs to black Red Sox pitcher Dennis Ray “Oil Can” Boyd that were “the worst collection of taunts and insults I’d ever heard – worse, I’m betting, than anything Jackie Robinson might have heard, his first couple times around the league.