Lenny Dykstra is taking a swing back at former Mets teammate Ron Darling.
The former Mets and Phillies center fielder, while a guest on “The Michael Kay Show” on 98.7 ESPN on Monday afternoon, said he plans on suing Darling over claims in the pitcher’s new book that Dykstra spat racial taunts at Red Sox pitcher Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd at the start of Game 3 of the 1986 World Series.
“When you start bringing up this kind of stuff, this is crossing the line,” Dykstra said during the interview. “And again, it’s not acceptable and it’s flat-out lies.”
Dykstra added that he wouldn’t say anything to Darling if he saw him right now, but instead “drop him like a red-headed f–king stepchild.”
In Darling’s book, “108 Stitches: Loose Threads, Ripping Yarns, and the Darndest Characters from My Time in the Game,” Darling claims Dykstra was in the on-deck circle before leading off the first game at Fenway Park “shouting every imaginable and unimaginable insult and expletive in his [Boyd’s] direction — foul, racist, hateful, hurtful stuff.”
In excerpts of Darling’s book that ran in The Post last week, the now-SNY broadcaster described the taunts as “worse than anything Jackie Robinson might have heard.” He does not get into specifics because he does not “want to commemorate this dark, low moment in Mets history in that way” and that it rattled Boyd.
Dykstra, who homered to right field in the at-bat, said it never happened and he isn’t going to let it slide.
“I’m going to sue him and the publisher,” Dykstra said. “I wrote a book myself. I had 30 lawyers calling me fact-checking everything. There is not one person to back this up, because you know why, it’s not true. It’s all a lie.”
Dykstra claimed others would have heard the racial taunts if it did happen, including the owners sitting down on the field, his other teammates and Red Sox catcher Rich Gedman. The three-time All-Star called it upsetting that Darling would “go to such lengths to try to sell a book.”
Earlier in the afternoon, Darling was a guest of Mike Francesa on WFAN and expressed regret for his role in allowing the incident to happen back in 1986.
“Lenny had a way about him. He was a little crazy,” Darling said. “The world has changed. What was said 33 years ago in a fraternity of young men trying to play a sport, as you look back on it when you’re 57 or 58 years old, you’re kind of ashamed of the complicity of yourself to these kind of things.”