Lenny Dykstra was a ballplayer at just the right time. Earlier — during, say, the 1940s or ‘50s — and the media practices of the era, the godding-up of famous athletes and the whitewashing of their flaws, would have allowed him to be painted as a colorful bon vivant, entertaining but harmless. Later — and by later, I mean right now, when anyone, through social media, can eliminate all secrecy from his or her daily existence — and his life and his story would be even darker than they already are.
Dykstra came along in the mid-1980s and retired from Major League Baseball in the mid-1990s, though, and his decade with the Mets and the Phillies afforded him an ideal combination of celebrity and infamy.