One of those misadventures, it seems, was becoming financially involved with Dykstra. And that involvement, he writes, led to an admission by Dykstra that, yes, he used steroids. Book excerpts appear on the Daily Beast Web site.
Wrote Lane, quoting Dysktra: "You gotta understand, there were only 28 people who had my job in the whole world." He was referring to the fact that there were only 28 Major League Baseball teams (there are now 30), and that each only had one starting centerfielder. "And thousands of people wanted those jobs, and every year, there were guys trying to take my job.
"So I needed to do anything I could to protect my job, take care of my family. Do you have any idea how much money was at stake? Do you?"
There are actually now 30 teams in the major leagues.
Lane said the admission came during a late-night conversation in February 2008 when he was in Dykstra's New York hotel room to convince him to pay $250,000 he owed in connection with the publication of a glossy magazine he was publishing at the time.
As it happened, Roger Clemens has testified before Congress that day after being fingered in the Mitchell Report as a user of performance-enhancing substances. Dykstra's name had also been included by Mitchell's investigators. As the reports aired on a continuous cable loop, Dykstra blurted out his confession.
"You know," Lenny said, finally breaking the ice. "I was like a pioneer for that stuff."
"Excuse me, Lenny?"
"The juice. I was like the very first to do that. Me and [Jose] Canseco."
He straightened up, as he prepared, somewhat proudly, to reveal his role in this dangerous, unseemly history.
