Lenny Dykstra, or as we here at Hot Foot know him as “Nails” settled his lawsuit that charged he didn’t pay almost $140,000 in accounting fees.

Lenny said the firm “folded like Mitch Williams in the ninth” and added, “There was no case. There was nothing”

The entire time he spoke to reporters he had a Twizzler dangling from his mouth, as he chewed away at it.

Asked about a $7,000 check he alledgedly bounced for a private plane flight Dykstra said, “That’s my f—in’ ashtray money, bro. I don’t even know if I flew on their plane.”

He then showed the reporter the label of his pinstripe suit and said “See that purple label, bro? That’s seven large.”

Hat tip to Gothamist for the picture and news.

I had a chance to catch up with Buddy Harrelson at Citibank park a week before Willie Randolph was fired. In addition to talking about the highlights of his time playing, coaching, and managing the Mets, Buddy discussed his thoughts on managing in New York.

To listen click here or download it at the NY Baseball Digest Archive

Ebay find via Lets Go Mets Tumblr.com

25 years ago today, on May 6th, 1983, Darryl Strawberry made his major league debut at Shea Stadium. On MLB.com, Marty Noble describes how Darryl’s debut was bigger than any Met in history. Bigger than Piazza, bigger than Doc, bigger than Wright or Reyes, even bigger than Seaver.

Straw recalls the reception he received on the historic day.

“I remember a lot of that, especially the strikeouts,” Strawberry said on Monday morning from his home outside St. Louis. “Mario Soto got me all three times. And they cheered anyway. [Soto] had the best changeup in the game. And I didn’t want to see changeups that night. I wanted fastballs.”

Head over to MLB.com for Noble’s fantastic piece on the day Strawberry came to Shea.

Wayne Coffey of the Daily News sits down with former Met skipper and current Olympic Coach Davey Johnson . If we need to tell you who Davey Johnson is, its safe to assume you’re at this site by accident. The interview covers a range of topics, from his days playing with the O’s, the Olympics, and of course, the 80s Mets.

For those Boo Birds out there reading this, before you get any ideas, Davey does answer one of the big questions, is there MLB in his future:

No. After a tough time in Cincy , and a tough time in Baltimore after winning, and then going out to L.A., where they already made all the player moves before I was hired and having no minor-league system, I was burned out. I didn’t even have a good time in the dugout when we had a lead. Now I’m energized. I love what I’m doing. I get enough baseball to float my ship.

Head on over to the News and check it out.

In addition to being an outfield coach and special ambassador to the Mets, Darryl Strawberry can add SNY contributor to his list of responsibilities.

The Mets have added Strawberry to broadcasts on SNY starting April 28th, Bart Hubbuch reports on his blog for the New York Post.

Strawberry will work primarily with Matt Yallof on SNY’s pre- and post-game shows.

Rumors and Rants recently asked bloggers what their all time favorite baseball teams were and of course the beloved 1986 Mets were among them.

Cecilio’s Scribe, of The Legend of Cecilio Guante wrote in the following nomination.

“When you’re a 30 year-old Mets fan, the task of identifying your favorite baseball team of all-time takes about 30 seconds. The ‘86 Mets gave you just about everything you can look for in an “all-time” team. Won a championship? Check. Had a bunch of characters on the team? Check. Sweet nicknames? Umm…Nails, The Kid, Doc…Check.”

Among the other teams named, painfully, was the 2006 Cardinals.

Still stings.

Screwballs, a Fox Sports blog, has a head to head match up of the 1986 Mets vs the 1993 Phillies to see who was the cooler team.

Seriously, is this even a contest? The 1986 Mets are the coolest team ever, I defy you to find me a more brash, bold and entertaining group of World Champions.

Jonah Keri on ESPN Page2 writes a great essay about the failed 1986 New York Mets dynasty. While the Mets were the triumphant 1986 World Champions, they should have been much more. Johan looks back at what could have been for one of the great teams of our time.

Kevin Karnan of the Post catches up with Dwight “Doc” Gooden and his son, Dwight Jr, both out of prison and trying to stay that way.  Dwight Jr had been jailed for selling drugs, and his time in prison overlapped with that of his father. According the article, Doc is working on straightening out his life, spending time with his family, and helping his son, who is trying to better his life through music.  From Doc:

“It ain’t about me anymore; I’m living for my kids now”

Gooden was a Met by his teens, but already struggling with drugs by his time on the 86 World Series team. According to the article, he has no plans to return to baseball.

Its good to see that Doc seems to be making some progress, however the question as always remains is if he can stick with it. His problems have been on and off since the 80s, and its not the first time we’ve been told he’s on the straight and narrow and turning his life around. Hopefully through the help of his son and family this time it’ll work out for him.   

According to Glenn Thrush in Newsday, hours after the primary polls closed on Tuesday, a staffer from the Clinton campaign sent along an article written in the New York Times on October 26, 1986 about the Mets incredible comeback to win Game 6 of the World Series. The subject line? “Deja Vu”.

If you happened to turn to page A7 of the Newsday (print edition only, the picture isn’t online), you would see a picture of Senator Hillary Clinton (D-New York) with her fists pumped in the air…next to a picture of Jesse Orosco doing the same move as a result of the Mets win in Game 6. The caption of the picture read:

The Clinton camp sought to liken her victories over Barack Obama in Ohio and Texas to the Mets’ victory over the Boston Red Sox in the 1986 World Series. Down three games to two, the Mets scored three runs in the 10th inning to pull out a win in Game 6 (thanks to an infamous error by Sox first baseman Bill Buckner). The Mets then won Game 7.

That’s right, baseball fever is EVERYWHERE, folks! It’s even infecting the election. Does anyone else other than me hope Jon Stewart picks this one up? One can only hope.

On Friday’s edition of “Live From Mickey Mantle’s Restaurant” we did a three hour feature on the saga of Wally Backman. You may or may not know, but Wally is trying to get back into affiliated baseball for the first time since he was fired by the Arizona Diamondbacks.

We at Gotham are trying to set the record straight and get all the facts out to the listeners. You will hear from filmmaker John Fitzgerald, Wally’s agent Mike Mosa, Mike Colacchio and Tug Gillingham who played for Wally, and Wally Backman himself! If you want to listen to the replay of Friday’s show click here.

If you rather just hear Wally, I will be replaying my exclusive sit down with him tonight on Gotham Baseball Live at 7pm. Click here to listen live or download the replay.

It’s just three short days until pitchers, catchers, and David Wright report to Port St. Lucie to start their work. What a glorious time to be alive! The expectations for the 2008 season might be higher than any I’ve experienced in my 24 spring trainings as a fan. This is a Mets team that is supposed to win the National League, and is supposed to have an excellent chance of taking the whole damn thing. Wow.Some might say that nothing short of a World Series win can be considered a success for this club. It’s true that a championship would be the ultimate accomplishment, and gratify us as fans for years to come. After all, none of the teams I root for, in any sport, has won a championship since 1986—and even if they had, I would trade any number of victories in the lesser sports for just one more New York Mets World Series championship. Having said all that, I disagree that nothing less than a championship will do. I tremendously enjoyed the 1999, 2000, and 2006 seasons. Sure they were bittersweet in the end, but they were great rides while they lasted.

How much better is it, then, to have not just a great ride, but a title to go with it? I mentioned in my last column that it’s hard to evaluate how good a trade is from a fan’s standpoint, because we don’t really have a metric for measuring fan gratification. Indeed, most of the analysis of the Johan Santana trade fell into two camps: “Yeah, we got Johan!” or “Boo, we spent way too much to get Johan.” In my view, neither camp has it quite right. The “Yeah!” camp overlooks the idea that it might be tougher for the Mets to compete in the future because of the Johan trade and signing. The “Boo!” camp overlooks the idea that Mets fans don’t care if we paid a little too much to get Johan, so long as we still have money to spend, and so long as Johan brings us a championship.

The fans mostly only care about what happens to the product on the field, not what it cost to put it there. To evaluate the Johan trade in terms of dollars doesn’t really make sense. It would make more sense to evaluate the trade in terms of what it brings to us, as fans. In an attempt to come up with a measure to accomplish this feat, I propose the following totally arbitrary point system for fan gratification:

World Series championship: 1,000 points
LCS win: 50 points
Divisional series win: 50
Division title: 100 points
Wild card playoff appearance: 50 points
Regular season win: 1 point

The championship is the mother lode, but getting to the playoffs is still far better than not, and winning a playoff series enhances a fan’s enjoyment that much more. The 1999 season is far more memorable to me because of Todd Pratt’s walk-off homer in the divisional round, and the 2000 season would sit far differently in my mind without John Franco’s strikeout of Barry Bonds, or Mike Hampton’s complete-game shutout against the Cardinals. Also, even if you don’t win a playoff series, getting to the playoffs as a division winner is better than getting in as a wild card. (The clinching celebrations in 1986, 1988, and 2006 seemed far more warranted than those of 1999 and 2000.) To fans, getting to the playoffs matters, how you get there matters, winning playoff series once you’re there matters, and winning world championships matters a lot.

Based on this system that I just made up, here are fan gratification point totals for some Mets seasons.

2007: 88 points
2006: 246
2005: 83
2003: 66
2000: 244
1986: 1,258
1969: 1,250

The two championships are each more than five times better than any other season in our history—as it should be. 2007’s dismal ending made it only about a third as gratifying as 2006, but still 33% more gratifying than 2003, when we won a mere 66 games. If we ever do win a World Series in the current playoff system, it will likely be more gratifying than the championships of 1986 and 1988 because of the extra playoff series involved. This seems right to me. It’s a lot tougher to win three playoff series than two. Also, even though we got to the World Series in 2000, that season scores about the same as 2006. The playoff run in 2000 was great, but so was the regular season/division title of 2006. The scores reflect this fact.

The system isn’t perfect; for example, Robin Ventura’s grand single is nowhere accounted for, and that ain’t right. But while it’s not perfect, and while I completely pulled these numbers out of…the sky, I like this system that I’ve invented. If someone could tell me accurately what our chances of winning a title, a division championship, a playoff series, or a playoff berth were before and after the Johan trade, and then do that for every season of Johan’s contract, I would feel comfortable applying my own system to form an opinion about the trade. Without that information, however, I think I might’ve just wasted some time playing around with numbers before the season starts. Oh well. I guess the point I was really driving at is this—let’s win the World Series this year, shall we?

Sammy Sosa is named among 3 other players in an affidavit that was unsealed by the U.S. Department of Justice, the International Herald Tribune reports.

Sosa, Pete Incaviglia, Geronimo Berroa and Allen Watson - were named in a May 2006 affidavit by Jeffrey Novitzky, a special agent for the Internal Revenue Service criminal division, which details his interview with the former pitcher Jason Grimsley.

The Grimsley affidavit indentifies Sosa as having talked about using amphetamines, Incaviglia as having used amphetamines, Berroa as having used steroids and Watson as having used unidentified performance-enhancing drugs.

It also names Jose Canseco, Lenny Dykstra, Glenallen Hill, Chuck Knoblauch, Rafael Palmeiro, David Segui and Miguel Tejada, all of whom were named in the Mitchell report.

A second affidavit was unsealed that named former Met Sid Fernandez, reports the Washington Post.

According to ESPN.com, Radomski received a $3,500 check from Fernandez that was written in February 2005, eight years after El Sid’s final major league appearance. Phone records cited in the affidavit say Rose Jr. called Radomski several times in 2001, ESPN.com reported. Rose Jr., the son of baseball’s career hits leader, was sentenced in May 2006 to one month in prison and five months of home detention for distributing a steroid alternative to his minor league teammates.