An All-Too-Familiar Scene : Accident: Glenn Bonar is used to hearing the screech of tires in front of his house, but this time the car belonged to a rich man and the faces beneath the blood were famous.

For about the eighth time in the last 24 months, somebody wrecked a car in front of Glenn Bonar’s house on Darby-Paoli Road.

This time, when Bonar awakened early last Monday morning and hurried to the scene, he found: a badly wrecked $93,000 Mercedes-Benz facing the wrong way on the right side of the road; two men, one of them lying in the middle of the road with his face covered by blood and dirt; two unidentified young women who had been driving behind the Mercedes, and, according to Bonar’s wife, Krista, “a bunch of crumpled $100 bills” scattered on the floor of the back seat like candy wrappers.

The men were Lenny Dykstra and Darren Daulton, players for the Phillies. Police say they had been drinking. Neither Bonar nor his wife, Krista, knew who they were.

“But I’ll tell you,” Krista Bonar said, “even if you knew who they were, you probably would not have recognized them because their faces were covered with blood.”

Radnor Township police officer Martha L. Gurney, an expert in accident reconstruction, estimated that Dykstra and Daulton came within four feet of death. The Mercedes, after a 180-degree spin, initially hit a tree with its left front side. Gurney said if the car had hit the tree with either door, “one or both of them would be dead right now.”

Dykstra suffered a broken right collarbone, a broken right cheekbone, a bruised chest and a cracked rib on his right side, which punctured his right lung. He is being treated at Bryn Mawr Hospital, where he is expected to remain for several days. Daulton, who suffered a scratched left cornea and broken left eye socket, was released Wednesday.

The accident has provoked gossip and controversy in this quiet, affluent town about what happened that night, and the Bonars are spending more time than they like on the telephone, talking about what they know.

Thursday, Krista Bonar said she was getting threatening calls from someone saying she was “spreading lies about Dykstra.” She said the caller didn’t say what lies.

She also said another caller identified himself as a “New York Daily Times” reporter who turned abusive when she refused to talk. There is a New York Times and a Daily News, but no Daily Times.

Dykstra, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, is not talking and is feeling deeply depressed.

What is known is that the accident occurred on an infamous stretch of pavement that has brought ruin to many automobiles. Krista Bonar said she has counted at least eight accidents there in the last two years. Based on police and bystander accounts, this is what happened early Monday morning:

Dykstra, along with several teammates, attended an informal bachelor party for teammate John Kruk at Smokey Joe’s, a sports bar and restaurant in Wayne, Pa., about two miles from the accident site. After about three or four hours, Dykstra and Daulton left the bar. It was about 12:55 a.m.

“Lenny looked fine,” said Pat Ryan, owner of Smokey Joe’s. “I’ve seen people a lot worse. He wasn’t falling-down drunk.”

Dykstra was driving Daulton to his Bryn Mawr home. Dykstra, driving a Mercedes with only 350 miles on it, turned eastbound onto Darby-Paoli Drive, a road without curbs that rises and falls, twists and turns through this pastoral Main Line town.

The speed limit is 35 m.p.h., though it drops frequently--at virtually every curve--to 25 m.p.h. Gurney estimated that Dykstra was driving between 47 and 53 m.p.h. when he came upon one of those curves and lost control.

The car veered off the right side of the road, narrowly missing two trees. It swerved back onto the road, then began “spinning like a top,” Gurney said. It crossed over the road and hit one tree with the front left side, forcing the back end to spin around and strike an adjacent tree. The car then bounced so hard that it nearly re-crossed the road. The front end wound up off the right side of the road, facing the wrong direction.

Neither player was wearing a seat belt. They were thrown about inside the car, with Daulton being ejected. Dykstra suffered right-side injuries when he was tossed onto the car’s middle console.

Krista Bonar said: “When they got up, all they were saying was, ‘We’re fine. Call a tow truck.’ I think they didn’t want to go to the hospital because of the alcohol.”

Krista Bonar called the police. It was 1:06 a.m. Just then one of two women whose car had been traveling behind the Mercedes knocked on Bonar’s door and asked her to call for help.

The players, apparently not thinking their injuries were serious, chose to be taken to the police station rather than the hospital. It was only during questioning, when Daulton began to bleed through his nose and Dykstra complained of pain in his shoulder, that they were taken to Bryn Mawr Hospital.

Dykstra was found to have a blood-alcohol content of 0.179--the legal limit in Pennsylvania is 0.10--and charged with driving while under the influence of alcohol, reckless driving and driving at an unsafe speed.

“It happens all the time here,” Bonar said. “It’s gotten to the point where we’re used to the screeching tires. They weren’t the only ones. But they should know better. They have a public image. They know that.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story.