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Dykstra still fighting as jail walls close in on him

LYNCHBURG, Va. - Lenny Dykstra could have been anywhere on this hot Sunday afternoon. Well, that's not exactly true. His passport had been taken away. He needed a judge's permission to leave Southern California and travel to City Stadium. His driver's license had been revoked, too, so he had to take a $60 cab ride to Roanoke to catch his flight home.

The stated reason for the trip was to see his son, Cutter, play for the Class A Potomac Nationals against the Lynchburg Hillcats. There was more to it than that. He could have picked a more convenient Carolina League outpost. But it was here, on this field, as a member of the 1983 Lynchburg Mets, that he put himself on the baseball map. Led the league in batting average (.358), games (136), runs (132), hits (188), triples (14), walks (107) and stolen bases (105). Was named the Carolina League MVP . . . even though teammate Dwight Gooden went 19-4 with 300 strikeouts in 191 innings.

So this was a family visit, but it also was a chance to revisit his past, a glorious time when he was still just 20 years old and the future was full of promise. A time when he couldn't have begun to imagine the dozens of lawsuits that would be filed against him. The high-profile Chapter 7 bankruptcy that he calls a "death sentence." The smutty allegations that he groped a teenaged girl, demanded regular oral sex from his housekeeper, bounced a $1,000 check to an escort service. The divorce. The arrests that would put him in jail and drag him down, ruin his reputation and cost him everything but his desperate determination to fight to the bitter end.

"These [stories] are [expletive], the bankruptcy and all the rest of the [expletive] is eyewash, dude," he said indignantly during an extended May 22 interview with the Daily News . "Show me one legitimate businessman who's respected who's said anything bad about me. Forget about the lawsuits. Pilots? Whores? What? Is that what it's about, people piling on and trying to get free money? And I tell them to go [expletive] themselves so I'm going to get extorted? Give me a lawsuit that means something."

Two weeks and a day later he was back in jail after being hit with a 25-count state indictment alleging that he had tried to lease cars using phony business and credit-card information, and drug possession. Yesterday, in San Fernando, Calif., he pleaded not guilty to the charges. He remains in custody with bail set at $500,000.