Retired professional baseball player Lenny Dykstra faces charges after Pennsylvania State Police said a trooper found drugs and paraphernalia in his possession during a traffic stop on New Year’s Day. <\/p>\n
Dykstra, 62, was a passenger when the vehicle was pulled over by a trooper with the Blooming Grove patrol unit in Pike County, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Scranton, where Dykstra lives.<\/p>\n
Police said in a statement that charges will be filed but did not specify what they may be or what drugs were allegedly involved. <\/p>\n
Matthew Blit, Dykstra\u2019s lawyer, said in a statement that the vehicle did not belong to Dykstra and he was not accused of being under the influence of a substance at the scene.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo the extent charges are brought against him, they will be swiftly absolved,\u201d Blit said.<\/p>\n
Dykstra’s gritty style of play over a long career with the New York Mets<\/a> and Philadelphia Phillies<\/a> earned him the nickname \u201cNails.\u201d He spent years as a businessman before running into a series of legal woes.<\/p>\n Dykstra served time in a California prison for bankruptcy fraud, sentenced to more than six months for hiding baseball gloves and other items from his playing days. That ran concurrent with a three-year sentence for pleading no contest to grand theft auto and providing a false financial statement. He claimed he owed more than $31 million and had only $50,000 in assets.<\/p>\n In April 2012, Dykstra pleaded no contest to exposing himself to women he met through Craigslist.<\/p>\n In 2019, Dykstra pleaded guilty on behalf of his company, Titan Equity Group, to illegally renting out rooms in a New Jersey house that it owned. He agreed to pay about $3,000 in fines. <\/p>\n That same year a judge dropped drug and terroristic threat charges against Dykstra after an altercation with an Uber driver. Police said they found cocaine, MDMA and marijuana among his belongings. Dykstra’s lawyer called that incident \u201coverblown\u201d and said he was innocent.<\/p>\n