Lenny Dykstra is not taking Ron Darling's accusation of the Mets slugger using racial slurs during the 1986 World Series lying down.
He is suing Darling over the book's contents, according to the New York Post, claiming defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The lawsuit claims the book "maliciously portrayed" the plaintiff as "a racist, an irremovable stain and permanent cloud which will forever diminish Mr. Dykstra."
"Apparent from the book's title and content is Darling's blatant attempt to sell his latest publication through a strategy of sensationalizing and shocking his audience, at the expense of no less than Mr. Dykstra, who Darling apparently considered an easy target due to his past," the lawsuit states.
In the book, titled "108 Stitches: Loose Threads, Ripping Yarns, and the Darndest Characters from My Time in the Game" Darling, who is now an SNY color commentator, says that the slugger directed slurs at Dennis 'Oil Can' Boyd, the Red Sox's starting pitcher, throughout game 3 of the World Series.
Dykstra said "every imaginable and unimaginable insult and expletive in his (Boyd's) direction -- foul, racist, hateful, hurtful stuff," according to Darling. He believes that the slurs Dykstra used were "worse than anything Jackie Robinson might have heard."
Darling's publishers, St. Martin's Press and Macmillan Publishing Group, are also named in the lawsuit.
The suit makes good on a threat Dykstra recently directed towards Darling on Michael Kay's radio show. On the air, Dykstra vehemently denied the accusation and threatened to sue him.
"What he said? That's as low as you go. They're flat out lies," Dykstra said. "...I'm suing Darling, I'm gonna sue him. How am I not going to sue?"
He claims that no one on the 1986 championship Mets team "got along" with Darling and added that he would "drop [Darling] like a red-headed f------ stepchild" if he saw him in person.
Darling, meanwhile, stands by his comments but does feel guilty for not expressing his discontent of Dykstra's actions in the moment back in 1986.
"I do say, if you read the entire chapter, it's really how ashamed about my complicitness in these kind of things that happened in those times where that seemed like the right way to compete," he said, per ESPN. "The right way to get on the opposition. The bench jockey could be anything that you wanted it to be."
Dykstra has battled legal troubles over the past year. He was indicted on drug and threat charges in October and five months earlier allegedly assaulted an Uber driver.
