* Lenny Dykstra’s doing what??

I could understand the car wash gig. But this?? From a guy who could barely keep the tobacco juice from dribbling down his chin?

* Nailing it

Awhile back it was announced that Lenny Dylstra was working on a lifestyle magazine aimed at former professional athletes which would also purportedly help them manage their finances.

Not so fast.

According to this piece in the New York Post, there’s trouble a-brewing’.

Announcement: Dykstra launches new magazine for ex-athletes

Doubledown Media, LLC (http://www.doubledownmedia.com), announced its newest magazine launch, The Players Club — a magazine by and for professional athletes launched in partnership with New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies All-Star outfielder Lenny Dykstra. The Players Club will be focused on providing athletes with the resources to make well-informed financial and lifestyle decisions.

Dykstra, a member of the 1986 World Champion New York Mets, who has since emerged as very successful businessman and influential financial columnist on theStreet.com, says the Players Club is about financial security, both through advice in the magazine and customized financial products geared specifically toward athletes.

“For the first time a player will have the ability to have guaranteed, recurring cash-flow for himself and his family,” said Dykstra. “This way, when a player retires at 35 or even younger, he will have the ability to continue to support his family, while still enjoying a
comfortable lifestyle.”

The Players Club will have a circulation of 20,000, with copies sent directly to athletes in the ten major sports including: baseball, basketball, football, hockey, soccer, professional tennis, golf, NASCAR, Formula I and others. Agents, team management, team offices and financial advisors will also receive the magazine.

“Players helping players is something that has been needed for a long time, The Players Club makes a lot of sense,” said NHL legend Wayne Gretzky, who is part of the Players Committee.

The Players Club will debut in April of 2008, to coincide with the opening of Major League Baseball. Pre-sold advertisers include Mercedes Benz and AIG.

Randall Lane, President of Doubledown Media, publisher of Trader Monthly, Dealmaker, Private Air, Corporate Leader and The Cigar Report, noted that professional athletes fit perfectly into Doubledown’s model of reaching affluent affinity groups.

“Hedge fund managers, investment bankers, CEO’s - each of these individuals has risen to the top of a very sharp pyramid and made sacrifices to get where they are,” he said. “For athletes, the competition to be at the top is even tougher, coupled with a career that is, by definition, much shorter than that of someone in traditional business. The brilliance of The Players Club is that it’s going to help them enjoy their fantastic earnings and show them ways to make sure that they’ll continue to live well even when their playing career has finished.”

Tim Brown, who won the Heisman Trophy in 1987, and went on to a storied career with the Raiders, is a member of The Players Club’s Players Committee.

“When you’re playing football you have this wonderful fantasy that it’s going to last forever, and you’ll retire when and if you decide to,” Brown said, adding, “And then comes the injury that ends your career, and you have to figure out how to pay your bills.”

More Dykstra News

If one doesn’t expect to see the name Lenny Dykstra in the same sentence as New Yorker magazine, it’s probably a similar sentiment that one would seek him out for investment tips.

Au contraire, according to this piece on MoneyCNN.com.

“Nailing” it

If ever there was a player who did not fit the New Yorker mold, it’s Lenny Dykstra, former Mets star. Ben McGrath wrote this in-depth profile about what “Nails” is doing these days.

In fact, he’s is doing pretty well (”Improbably, he has since become a successful day trader. “).

He’s also “launching a magazine, intended specifically for pro athletes, called The Players Club. An unfortunate number of his former teammates have ended up broke, or divorced, or worse.”

The article also features an audio interview with McGrath.

You say it’s your birthday

Belated best wishes to Lenny Dykstra, who turned 45 on Feb. 10. The chaw-sprouting outfielder was part of Mets tandem along with Mookie Wilson — “Mookstra” — during the team’s heyday of the 1980s. He took advantage of his fleeting fame by publishing his profanity-laced autobio, Nails (his nickname). He was later part of one of the Mets’ all-time worst trades, going to the Philadelphia Phillies along with reliever Roger McDowell in exchange for Juan Samuel.

Moneyball vs. Mitchell Report

Revisiting the Michael Lewis opus, which the writer deems “the most influential book of what’s now officially baseball’s Steroids Era,” has become joined at the hip with the recent release of the Mitchell Report.

In this article from Slate.com, Tom Scocca wonders if Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics and the “protagonist” of Lewis’ analysis of front-office management, consider the possibilities of players “using,” when he assembled his teams:

As Beane says elsewhere in the book: “Power is something that can be acquired…. Good hitters develop power. Power hitters don’t become good hitters.” Oakland, with its limited funds, wouldn’t spend payroll to buy power hitters. Instead, it invested in cheaper, patient hitters. And those hitters, it seems, bought the power themselves.

Did Beane have steroids deliberately or explicitly in mind? He was talking about his hopes of drafting someone who could be the next Jason Giambi. And Jason Giambi, the 2000 American League MVP, was juiced. So was his younger brother and Oakland teammate, Jeremy. So, according to Mitchell, was the A’s other MVP, Miguel Tejada, who asked for and received steroids and testosterone from teammate Adam Piatt. And Oakland’s veteran pickup David Justice (”an extraordinary ability to get on base was more likely to stay with a player to the end of his career than, say, an extraordinary ability to hit home runs”). The Oakland locker room, the report says, was an open-air drug market.

But “Where were the steroids in Moneyball,” asks Scocca? “They were out of sight, where the baseball world wanted them to be. This is not a reflection on Lewis’ reporting, even. The book advanced people’s understanding of baseball, on the terms in which people were willing to think about baseball at the time. It accurately named and explained the batting approach that defines this era: power hitting channeled through strict strike-zone discipline.”

The Slate story includes links to other illuminating pieces on the MR, including Bonnie Goldstein’s “Hot Document of the best material in the Mitchell report” and a group of Slate writers and editors who discussed the implications and innuendos of the report.