9-Hour Dumpster Dive Pays Off for Lenny Dykstra

Ex-ballplayer finds his $80K dentures in the trash
By Bob Cronin,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 19, 2019 2:44 PM CDT

Former ballplayer Lenny Dykstra really wanted his dentures back. The onetime New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies outfielder accidentally left them at a Jersey Mike's sandwich shop a couple miles from his Linden, New Jersey, home on Saturday. "The bread is so hard on those subs," he tells NJ.com. So he removed his teeth, tucked them in a napkin, and forgot all about them. That was especially problematic because they aren't just any dentures; they were specially made with bone marrow and cost $80,000, Dykstra says. When he realized he'd left without the dentures and went back to Jersey Mike's, employees told him the napkins had all been thrown in the trash.

So began what Dykstra says was ultimately a nine-hour Dumpster dive that he tweeted about. He enlisted a friend, tag-team wrestler Sprinkles the Clown, to help. At one point Saturday night, Sprinkles was ready for more assistance and posted a tweet asking if anyone wanted to join the dentures search. "This is a serious question," he wrote. The search apparently ended in success early Sunday. "IT'S ALL ABOUT DETERMINATION AND REFUSING TO GIVE UP!" Dykstra later tweeted, asking if his former teams were listening. As for Dykstra's other big wins in life, he won a World Series with the Mets in 1986, USA Today notes, and was a three-time All-Star with the Phillies. (More Lenny Dykstra stories.)

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