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Former baseball star Lenny Dysktra recently started his own magazine, The Players' Club. Of course, Dykstra couldn't operate the magazine by himself, so he hired some people to help him. One of those people was photo editor Kevin Coughlin.

As far as I can tell, Coughlin worked for roughly 75 days at TPC, and because he did not sign a confidentiality agreement when he joined the magazine, he wrote about his time with Dykstra for GQ in an article entitled, "You Think Your Job Sucks? Try Working for Lenny Dykstra."

Former Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Lenny Dykstra has been in the headlines quite a bit ever since he retired from the game of baseball. Unfortunately for the man they call Nails, all that publicity he gets is generally of the negative variety. I mean, he did start his own magazine, but then that magazine ran into some trouble when Dykstra didn't pay his business partners.

Of course, Lenny's business partners aren't the only people he isn't paying apparently, as he's also been sued by pilots for not paying for a flight and his accountants. Though why should you pay your accountants when you're not paying anybody? I mean, how much work can they be doing? Now Dykstra's name is mentioned in the April issue of GQ under a headline of "You Think Your Job Sucks? Try Working For Lenny Dykstra." Guess what Lenny didn't do.

Considering that most of the attention given to Gary Sheffield right now surrounds the comments he made about Latino players in GQ Magazine, most of us haven't paid much attention to how he's performing on the field. Long story short, he's hitting the hell out of the ball right now.

Wondering why Sheff's Latino teammates are so supportive of him and what he said? Well, it's easy to support a guy who's hitting .375 with 7 home runs and 17 RBI's over the last ten games.

Sheffield hit another home run in Thursday night's Tigers victory of the Rangers, and he passed Willie Stargell on the all-time RBI list in doing so. Before the game started, Sheffield remembered meeting Stargell as a star struck Little Leaguer when he was 11-years old.

"He came and talked to us about big league baseball," Sheffield said. "Seeing somebody like Willie Stargell sticks with you for life."

"Just his presence," Sheffield said. "Everybody had heard of him. We didn't know he was coming. We all met in the cafeteria. He sat right there and talked to us about the game, about life and about growing into a young man. I took all that to heart.

"He talked about being intelligent, too. That stood about more than anything -- using your brain. That's something my grandfather planted in my mind, too. That's why that stuck out the most: 'You want to be a thinking man when you play this game.' So I see and read things before they happen. That is the art of hitting."

The meeting took place in 1980, while Sheffield was in Williamsport, Pennsylvania for the Little League World Series. I have no idea if Stargell shared any thoughts with Sheffield about Latino baseball players, but here's hoping Sheff doesn't share them with Elijah Dukes.

Previously at The Fanhouse:
You Will Not Control The Sheff's Mind
Gary Sheffield Responds To GQ Comments
Gary Sheffield Suspended, Blames Conspiracy Theory
Elijah Dukes Needs To Call Uncle Sheffield
Gary Sheffield's Logic Is Too Much For Our Feeble Brains

Anybody who's ever followed the career of Gary Sheffield knows that the man says some pretty interesting things. I mean, you need not look past last week when he blamed a conspiracy theory for his suspension. It wasn't that he threw a bat at an umpire, it's that the man is trying to get him.

Well, Sheffield recently did an interview for the June issue of GQ Magazine, and as usual he had some odd things to say. None of them stood out as much as his reasoning why there are so few black players in baseball these days.

"I called it years ago. What I called is that you're going to see more black faces, but there ain't no English going to be coming out. ... (It's about) being able to tell (Latin players) what to do -- being able to control them. Where I'm from, you can't control us. You might get a guy to do it that way for a while because he wants to benefit, but in the end, he is going to go back to being who he is. And that's a person that you're going to talk to with respect, you're going to talk to like a man. These are the things my race demands. So, if you're equally good as this Latin player, guess who's going to get sent home? I know a lot of players that are home now can outplay a lot of these guys."

So in other words, teams choose Latin players over black players because Latinos are stupid and can be controlled.

I wonder how Sheff's teammates are going to respond to this, seeing as how there are a lot of those "controllable" Latinos on the Tigers roster. Actually, according to Sheffield, it's easy to figure out how guys like Magglio Ordonez and Carlos Guillen will respond. However they're told to apparently.

It's pretty ironic that a man who's long been publicly critical of the way that African-Americans are treated and viewed would make such sweeping generalizations of an entire people himself.

Of course, I'm sure it's not Sheffield's fault. It's probably just another one of those darn conspiracies out to get him.

Previously at The Fanhouse:
Gary Sheffield Suspended, Blames Conspiracy Theory
Elijah Dukes Needs To Call Uncle Sheffield

Photo Credit: Getty Images