Dykstra’s suit against Darling dismissed

A judge has dismissed Lenny Dykstra’s defamation lawsuit against former New York Mets teammate Ron Darling, ruling the outfielder’s reputation already was so tarnished it could not be damaged more.

Dykstra claimed he was defamed when Darling alleged he had made racist remarks toward Boston pitcher Oil Can Boyd during the 1986 World Series. Justice Robert D. Kalish in New York Supreme Court in Manhattan did not evaluate whether the remarks occurred.

“It is only to say that Dykstra’s reputation for unsportsmanlike conduct and bigotry is already so tarnished that it cannot be further injured by the reference,” Kalish said in a decision issued Friday.

Dykstra filed the suit in April 2019 following the publication of Darling’s book, “108 Stitches: Loose Threads, Ripping Yarns, and the Darndest Characters from My Time in the Game.” Dykstra alleged defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Darling wrote Dykstra was “one of baseball’s alltime thugs” and was in the on-deck circle at Boston’s Fenway Park before Game 3 of the 1986 World Series while Boyd warmed up and was “shouting every imaginable and unimaginable insult and expletive in his direction — foul, racist, hateful, hurtful stuff.” Darling called it “the worst collection of taunts and insults I’d ever heard — worse, I’m betting, than anything Jackie Robinson might have heard.”

“The nature and seriousness of Dykstra’s criminal offenses, which include fraud, embezzlement, grand theft, and lewd conduct and assault with a deadly weapon, and notably the degree of publicity they received, have already established his general bad reputation for fairness and decency far worse than the alleged racially charged bench-jockeying in the reference could,” the judge wrote.