Former MLB star Lenny Dykstra will face charges after a Pennsylvania State Police trooper said he found drugs and paraphernalia in his possession during a traffic stop on New Year’s Day.
Dykstra, 62, was arrested on suspicion of possessing narcotics and narcotic-related equipment but was not taken into custody, Trooper Kody Nowicki told The Athletic Friday. Dykstra was a passenger in a 2015 GMC Sierra truck that was pulled over due to a motor vehicle code violation in Pike County, according to police records. The traffic stop took place about 25 miles east of Scranton, where Dykstra lives.
Police said that charges will be filed but did not specify details of them or what drugs were involved, and gave no further comment. The driver of the vehicle was not identified.
Dykstra’s lawyer, Matthew Bilt, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dykstra was drafted by the New York Mets in 1981 and quickly became a minor-league star in the Carolina League. He was promoted to the majors in 1985, and he earned the nickname “Nails” for his hard-nosed personality and fearless play.
Dykstra was part of the Mets’ 1986 World Series championship team.
He was traded to the Phillies in 1989 and stayed in Philadelphia through a myriad of injuries. He played his final game in 1996 and retired after a 12-year career in 1998.
Dykstra was a three-time All-Star with the Phillies, including earning the 1993 Silver Slugger Award. He led the National League in hits (1990, 1993), runs (1993) and on-base percentage (1990).
Dykstra spent years as a businessman before dealing with a series of legal woes. In 2009, he founded a high-end jet charter company and magazine, marketed to professional athletes, and seven years later, Dykstra announced a partnership with a credit referral company.
Dykstra’s run-ins with the law overshadowed those efforts, though.
Dykstra served time in a California federal prison for bankruptcy fraud and was sentenced to more than six months for hiding baseball gloves and other items from his professional playing days. He claimed he owed $31 million but had only $50,000 in assets. That prison term ran simultaneously with a three-year sentence after he pleaded no contest to grand theft auto and providing a false financial statement.
In 2019, Dykstra had drug and terroristic threat charges dropped after an altercation with an Uber driver in New Jersey in 2018. When police said they found drugs among his belongings, Dykstra’s attorney at the time, David Bahuriak, called it “overblown” and claimed his client was innocent.