The Mysterious Wade Boggs

Wade Boggs had his number retired over the weekend—no, not in Boston or New York, but in Tampa Bay. Boggs had some illustrious years with the D-Rays. In 1998, he batted .280. In 1999, he played in 90 games and retired. Thus, Boggs had left a legacy on a franchise that no one would ever forget. Believe it or not, however, Boggs did play for two other organizations over the course of his career, establishing himself the alpha male in every single clubhouse.

Boggs had 2098 hits with the Boston Red Sox, never dropping his on-base-percentage below .386, except for his “troubled” last year in Beantown, where it dropped to .353 in 1992. He also managed to squeeze in five batting titles during this time. Yet, throughout it all, Boggs always had something going on the side, besides baseball. It’s rumored that he once told a flight attendant that he would “kick her fat lips in,” if she didn’t serve him a final beer before the plane landed. In another incident in 1988, not of rumor, a woman named Margo Adams said she had been Boggs’ mistress for the past couple years, and tried to file a suit of $6/million dollars against the star slugger. Boggs settled out of court. What makes Boggs’ situation even more unsettling is that he admitted to being a “sex addict,” somehow believing this would excuse his adulterous crime in the eyes of the public. While I praise his audacity in speech, any terms learned from the Geraldo Rivera show should never be mistaken for fact or used in real life.

Besides sex, Boggs also loved chicken. As many people know, Boggs ate chicken before every game. What people may not know is that he woke up at the same time every day, took exactly 150 ground balls, took batting practice at 5:17 PM, ran sprints at 7:17 PM, and, most puzzlingly, wrote the Hebrew word “Chai,” meaning life, in the batter’s box before every at-bat. Boggs isn’t Jewish.

After establishing himself officially insane in 1992, Boggs decided that it was time to move on from Boston. But where to go? Naturally, Boggs chose to go to the Red Sox arch nemesis—the New York Yankees. This move proved wise after the Yanks won the 1996 World Series, finally giving Boggs a championship. We can all remember Boggs circling the stadium on a central park horse.

And then Boggs signed a contract with the Devil Rays in 1998 where he agreed to enter Cooperstown as a Devil Ray. This odd stipulation in his contract was eventually made illegal by the Hall of Fame committee, and Boggs was forced to enter as a Red Sock. Recently, in an interview with PTI, Boggs was asked if it was true: Did he really drink 64 beers on a cross-country plane ride? Boggs admitted it was a lot, but probably no where near 64. The answer was ambiguous enough for me to believe that Boggs did in fact complete the feat.

Boggs’ number 12 will now hang in the rafters of Tropicana Field—to some a Devil Ray, to others a Red Sock or Yankee, and to others, like myself, a psychopathic sex crazed drinking legend who was really fucking good at baseball.