] By BOB KLAPISCH NEW YORK -- The voice has thickened from too many cigarettes, and so has his waistline. If you ask Lenny Dykstra what happened to the pesky little center fielder, the real engine of the '86 Mets, and he'll laughingly say, "I've got some mileage on me, dude." Dykstra doesn't mind the self-deprecating humor, not when life is treating him this well. Of all the Mets who'll gather at Shea on Saturday for the 20-year reunion, none has succeeded in such surprising fashion. Didn't we somehow know that the Ivy League-educated Ron Darling and the media-savvy Keith Hernandez would someday end up in the broadcast booth? And who can say they're surprised that Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry are still fighting the darker angels of their souls? But no one could've predicted the gritty -- OK, crude -- Dykstra would end up as a millionaire entrepreneur. He started out with a chain of car-wash franchises in Southern California, but little Lenny is now deep in corporate real estate and stocks. Even more unlikely is that Dykstra has turned into a nationally-renown expert, delivering a weekly financial column for TheStreet.com. His batting average on Wall Street? Even better than when he was batting .400 in 1990 with the Phillies, landing on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Today, Dykstra says more than 90 percent of his stock picks are money-makers. And if you don't believe it, he says with that familiar edge, "go ahead, dude, look it up." "Look, I'm one of the few players who has more money now than when he was in the big leagues, and that's not by coincidence," Dykstra said by telephone Tuesday. "This is my life now, this is what I do, because I made up my mind when I retired I wasn't going to end up broke." Dykstra's passion for business is equal to, or perhaps greater than his obsession with getting on base as a Met. But he hasn't forsaken his roots. Dykstra still loves the Mets and everything they represented in the late '80s -- the winning, the attitude, and the sheer thrill of beating the odds as a 5-foot-8 squirt who should've been too short to make it. Even now, Dykstra loves telling people he had just one friend growing up -- "I needed someone to play catch with" -- and that he didn't attend a single dance in high school. "Even back then, it was all about getting to the big leagues. I've spent my whole life trying to break out of the middle of the pack," Dykstra said. "That's why when I made it, I played so hard, because I knew how lucky I was. "I played to the scoreboard. That's the way it's supposed to be. Anything else, and you're just up there hacking. The thing that I was most proud of was being voted the most-hated player by the opposing teams five years in a row. But my teammates? They knew I'd take a bullet for 'em." Somehow, we can still see Dykstra as a young man, a wad of tobacco as big as a fist stuffed into his cheek, slamming a home run in the ninth inning of Game 3 of the NL Championship Series against the Astros. For all the memories that accompany that magical October, Dykstra's blast off Dave Smith, the one that propelled the Mets to a walk-off 6-5 win, ranks as one of the most powerful. It's arguably the single greatest moment of Dykstra's career at Shea. Then, as now, Lenny lived for the adrenaline, only now it's stocks instead of fastballs that give him a rush. Still, he said, it's all part of a stage that he was born to be on. "I learned at an early age I was in the entertainment business," Dykstra said. "Baseball -- the Wilpon family, Nelson Doubleday -- made it possible for me to be part of that dream. When I come back to New York three or four times a year, every single time someone will come up to me and say, 'Thank you for that great season.' You bet it means a lot to me." Now Dykstra wants to give something back to the sport. He's developed a concept called The Players Club as a way to protect professional athletes against later-in-life financial hardship. While it might be hard for the average laborer to understand (or sympathize) with ballplayers running out of cash after retirement, Dykstra says you'd be surprised how many do. "When you're 23 or 24, you're getting that $500,000 check every other week. You're not thinking about your future," he said. "But when you're 35 and you stop playing, your cash flow doesn't just taper off, it's shut down completely. A lot of players aren't prepared for that." Dykstra made his point to three different ballclubs this spring, encouraging players to fast-forward to their late-30s and 40s. The feedback, he said, was positive enough for him to think about ramping up his concept for the 2007 season. In the meantime, though, Dykstra will step back in time, back to when he was lean and fast and driving the National League beyond the limits of its sanity. For one afternoon, Dykstra will be the billboard of the '86 Mets -- cocky enough to be hated by pitchers, but always good enough to back it up. Does he miss it? Dude, do you even have to ask? E-mail: klapisch@northjersey.com