And you thought Bill Buckner’s fielding was the ugliest thing to come out of the ‘86 World Series.
Former Met Lenny Dykstra took a legal bat to ex-teammate Ron Darling Tuesday — filing a lawsuit that claims the pitching star lied in a new book about Dykstra hurling racist taunts during the Amazin’s magical win over the Boston Red Sox.
The Manhattan Supreme Court suit says Darling “maliciously portrayed Plaintiff as a racist, an irremovable stain and permanent cloud which will forever diminish Mr. Dykstra,’’ in his best-selling tome.
“Apparent from the book’s title and content is Darling’s blatant attempt to sell his latest publication through a strategy of sensationalizing and shocking his audience, at the expense of no less than Mr. Dykstra, who Darling apparently considered an easy target due to his past,’’ the court papers state.
“Darling seeks to prop himself up, while destroying Mr. Dykstra.”
Dykstra has previously been convicted of fraud and money-laundering, done prison time and faced a hoard of other unsavory allegations ranging from sex harassment to theft and drug possession.
“This lawsuit sends a loud, clear message to anyone that you can’t just make up lies about people — he literally made up a story,’’ Dykstra fumed to The Post of Darling on Tuesday.
“You can’t do that when you have millions of people listening to you, like Mr. Perfect does as a broadcaster,’’ he said, referring to Darling’s current career as a TV baseball commentator.
Matthew Blit, the former centerfielder’s high-powered lawyer, added, “It’s pathetic — Darling and his co-defendants knew Lenny is down and intentionally, maliciously and unlawfully stuck a dagger of lies into his heart.”
Also named in the suit are Darling’s publishers, St. Martin’s Press and Macmillan Publishing Group.
In his tome, “108 Stitches: Loose Threads, Ripping Yarns, and the Darndest Characters from My Time in the Game,’’ Darling accused Dykstra of shouting racial slurs at black then-Red Sox pitcher Dennis Ray “Oil Can” Boyd from the on-deck circle during the 1986 World Series.
Darling wrote that the taunts that came out of Dykstra’s mouth were so horrific they were unprintable, “foul, racist, hateful, hurtful stuff … the worst collection of taunts and insults I’d ever heard.
“You know how there always seems to be a guy in every organization, in every walk of life, who gets away with murder — murder being a figurative term in this case? That was Lenny,’’ Darling raged in an excerpt exclusively revealed in The Post.
But Blit noted that former Met Wally Backman has said he was within spitting distance of Dkystra at the time and denied the alleged incident ever went down.
“Moreover, other esteemed former teammates of the author, including the accomplished African American ballplayers Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden and Kevin Mitchell, have also all publicly stated that Darling’s account is false, and that Mr. Dyktra made no such racist statements to Mr. Boyd,’’ the suit says.
Dykstra said that while his lawsuit doesn’t specify how much dough he is seeking.
St. Martin’s had no comment. Neither Macmillan nor Darling’s agent responded to requests for comment.