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Lenny Dykstra and an extra 15 pounds of muscle in the 1988 season

Here's the link to the full game,    • New York Mets at Montreal Expos - Apr...   Ah, the mysterious appearance of muscular bulk in Spring Training, circa 1988. That summer of bulging biceps is better known through the lens of Bay Area baseball, where the Tony LaRussa A's were straining short sleeves and impressing a naive nation of writers, broadcasters and fans. I don't mean to crap on Lenny's gains, but, c'mon, the Oakland Bash Brothers are the best iteration of the still young steroid era. How early was the spring of 88 in our collective awareness of drugs in sport? Ben Johnson hadn't even blown Carl Lewis' door off in Seoul yet. So when the Sportschannel crew were raving and grinning about little Lenny's new found fitness levels, I'd guess they weren't in on the secret just yet. Sure, baseball folks talk. But you have to consider the relative silence that a dealing in prohibited substances and needles naturally elicits, even today, when any illusion to innocence has been worn away by too many scandals and too many protestations of excuse. The jokes about Dykstra's weak liners is damn interesting. The reason guys like Canseco and McGuire were such a big deal at the beginning of that era of A's dominance was that weight training was hardly accepted as useful for baseball purposes. I can still remember Jays' colour dude and Yankees legend, Tony Kubek, complaining about Jesse Barfield's larger and more powerful physique after the 1985 season. Jesse was my guy, and I hated the hometeam voice criticizing him for being muscle bound every single time he was thrown out at first or was tied up by an inside fastball. Bodybuilder muscles were said to slow a ballplayer down and lead to injuries, as was the convention of the day. The gunshow, for as common as it became through the 90s, was not typically associated with success on the diamond. Jose's 40-40 season and McGuire's rookie homerun record started a change in that respect. The Mets' centerfielder, who had been a tiny little guy in years past, was undoubtedly in on Jose, Mark, and East Germany's competitive advantage. I love the Ralph Kiner comment about the Mets' manager not liking his lead-off man all bulked up, and how it led the still-platooning Dykstra to try and jack everything. No doubt, Lenny knew damn well that fulltime ballplayers made better coin, and if he was going to beat Mookie Wilson out, a homerun cut just might be the key. But that type of interest fucked with Davey Johnson's plan. The guy had already won a world title with New York's second team by having the scrappy Dykstra be an on-base batsman. In a time before dramatic shifts would take away the middle of the diamond and the hole between the second and first baseman, punch and judy hitters, the rabbits in a line-up, would seek to make it to first for the thunder to knock them home; in Queens, that thunder was in the person of Keith Hernandez and Straw. With the middle of the field not gummed up with infielders where they hadn't been historically, there was little sense in having skinny guys cranking up their launch angle. With infielders not occupying shallow right, a baseball didn't have to be hit over or perilously through the Frankenstein-ish positioning of today. But Lenny was no daft fool, as his Wikipedia history attests. Dude knew that dingers got ballplayers paid, and that chicks dig 'em. Lenny's bulk would continue to grow after he was dealt to the Phillies, where he would get paid like the big man he had become. I'm not one of those fans paralyzed by the morality of PEDs in sport. I like dingers. They're fun to listen to when struck and I'm entertained as they sail over fences. Dykstra's bat is a memory from that 1993 World Series. Dude was clutch, and memories of his homeruns in Games 4, 5, and 6, against the Jays, are an important part of my affection for the game. Lenny had other issues in life that I don't care to consider or hold against him. He was a fun character. For me, for his Mets and those that covered him, that's enough.