Lenny Dykstra Is Now Claiming Ron Darling Faked His Cancer

Lenny Dykstra just can’t seem to let things go. Two weeks after a judge dismissed Dykstra’s lawsuit against former teammate Ron Darling, Dykstra is at it again. The former New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies outfielder continues to stir things up, this time saying Darling has faked having cancer.

The Lenny Dykstra vs. Ron Darling feud

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Lenny Dykstra originally filed a suit against former teammate Ron Darling for comments made in Darling’s autobiography  “108 Stitches: Loose Threads, Ripping Yarns, and the Darndest Characters from My Time in the Game.” Darling accused Dykstra of using racial slurs toward former Boston Red Sox pitcher Dennis ‘Oil Can' Boyd before Game 3 of the 1986 World Series.

According to the New York Post, Former Mets Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden, Kevin Mitchell, and others said the incident never happened. Dykstra then decided to file the suit. He sued Darling for defamation of character, but Judge Robert D. Kalish dismissed the suit saying that Dykstra's tarnished image was a result of his own doing.

In the ruling, which was obtained by NBCSports.com, Judge Kalish said Dykstra's past that included fraud and grand theft played a key role in his decision, saying “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.”

Dykstra's reaction to the ruling

To put it mildly, Lenny Dykstra hasn't handled Juge Kalish's ruling of dismissing Dykstra's lawsuit against Ron Darling well. Dykstra has taken his feud with Darling to a public setting, venting on Twitter. After the decision, Dykstra videoed himself on the highway after his Uber driver was involved in a minor accident. He vented about the case and said it wasn't over.

Dykstra, nicknamed Nails for his tough-as-nails play on the baseball field, said the accident wasn't nearly as bad as the judge's decision. “It’s not as bad as the judge’s decision to dismiss my case,” Dykstra said, according to the New York Post.

“I’m still coherent enough to know that. I ain’t done with Mr. P (Darling) by a long shot, OK? Ron Darling and the New York Mets were all-in on what can only be defined as the biggest fraud in the history of the game. And the fans, the fans that played like fools, they made them look like idiots, and now they’re going to pay. When you f-k with Nails, you get the f-king hammer, you hear me?”

Dykstra said Darling faked his cancer

In April of 2019, Ron Darling, a baseball analyst, left his job to deal with a mass in his chest. Doctors discovered the cancer. His play-by-play partner Gary Cohen then announced in January of 2020 that Darling was cancer-free. “I never gave two thoughts to mortality or ‘I got cancer,’” the 59-year-old Darling said in the New York Post. “I don’t know if that’s unusual or whatever, I haven’t really talked to anyone about that.”

Meanwhile, Lenny Dykstra thinks Darling's cancer is a hoax. He believes Darling was getting so much backlash from his book, he needed to take a break.  Dykstra sent Mets COO Jeffrey Wilpon an email that he shared with the New York Post that read, “As soon as the stories he wrote in his book … (he) started getting taken apart by the fans, his former teammates (three of them African-American) and the press on a daily basis. So, he did the only thing he could do to get out of the line of fire … (take) a ‘medical leave of absence.’ He knew the only way to get the fans to stop the daily beating he was taking was to play the ‘pity card.”

Dykstra wasn't done. In a text to the New York Post last week, Dykstra wrote, “IF RON DARLING HAD CANCER THEN HE WOULD SHOW IT, THAT WOULD PUT AN END TO EVERYTHING — BUT YOU CANNOT SHOW SOMETHING YOU DO NOT HAVE!” Stay tuned. This feud will only get uglier.