Players on the Hall of Fame ballot must be named on at least 75 percent of the ballots submitted by the eligible members of the Baseball Writers Association of America. As it turned out, Boggs had absolutely nothing to worry about.
Boggs, who won five batting titles with the Red Sox in the 1980s and finished his career with 3,010 hits and a .328 batting average, sailed into the Hall of Fame with a resounding 91.9 percent of the vote. Only 18 other Hall of Famers have received a larger percentage of the vote and only two other players—Nolan Ryan and George Brett—received more votes than Boggs, who was named on 474 of the 516 ballots cast by the BBWAA.
Boggs, the 41st player to earn induction into the Hall of Fame during his first year of eligibility, will be enshrined in Cooperstown, N.Y. July 31 along with Ryne Sandberg, the Cubs second baseman who earned 76.2 percent of the vote during his fourth year on the ballot. Ex-teammate Jim Rice, in his 11th year on the ballot, finished fourth with 59.5 percent of the vote.
Though Boggs left Boston on bad terms following the 1992 season, the fact he spent the 11 most productive years of his 18-year career with the Sox likely ensures he’ll sport a Red Sox cap on his Hall of Fame plaque. “In my opinion, if the Hall of Fame were to pick my Little League hat, I would have been very happy with that,” Boggs said during an afternoon conference call with reporters.
The convincing margin by which Boggs earned induction surprised Boggs and voters alike. “That’s the thing I’m so grateful for—from what I’ve been told, I was the third-highest [vote-getter] ever,” Boggs said. “It’s mind-boggling, to be put in the same category as a Nolan Ryan or a George Brett.”
Boggs, a famous creature of habit—as every Sox fan knows, he ate chicken before and after every game, took batting practice at the same time every day and ran his wind sprints at exactly 7:17 p.m.—tried to maintain some semblance of normalcy before the midday call from BBWAA Secretary Jack O’Connell. Boggs got up at 7 a.m., drove his youngest son Brett to school and worked out for about 90 minutes “…to release some stress and some anticipation that [the] 12 o’clock [call] was going to entail.”
Boggs was besieged with phone calls from well-wishers all morning, and when the actual call from O’Connell came at 12:26 p.m., Boggs thought it was a joke. Even after speaking to O’Connell and Hall of Fame Chairman of the Board Jane Forbes Clark, Boggs wondered if a friend was pulling his leg. Then Jeff Idelson, the Hall of Fame’s head spokesman and an ex-Yankee spokesman who befriended Boggs during the latter’s five-year stay in New York, got on the phone.
“I recognized his voice,” Boggs said. “He said ‘Boggsy, it’s official. You’re in.’ And that’s when it sunk in.”
The remarkable plurality Boggs earned in the balloting belies the roundabout route he took to baseball immortality. Drafted out of high school in 1976, Boggs—who spent his first year of professional ball in Elmira, about an hour from Cooperstown—was buried in the Sox’ minor league system for six years even though he hit .300 or better in the last five of those seasons.
Boggs’ defense at third and first base was questioned and the Sox were apparently reluctant to entrust a power position to someone who hit just nine homers in six minor league seasons. But after hitting .372 in winter ball following the 1981 season and impressing the Sox with his bat and his defense during spring training in 1982, manager Ralph Houk had no choice but to bring the nearly 24-year-old Boggs north with the big club.
“Ralph Houk congratulated me and said ‘Well, we knew you could hit, but we didn’t think you were [that] good in the field, but you made the club because you were good on defense and you’ll be our utility infielder and pinch-hitter off the bench,’” Boggs said. “I said ‘Skip, I’m honored just to make the club.’ And that was basically where it all began.”
Boggs became a regular later that year after third baseman Carney Lansford suffered an ankle injury. Boggs went on to hit .349, which would have led the AL had Boggs had enough plate appearances, and by the start of the 1983 season, Lansford was in Oakland and Boggs was entrenched as the Sox’ third baseman.
Boggs’ pursuit of 3,000 hits and Cooperstown kicked into high gear in 1983, when he won the first of his five batting crowns and began a remarkable string of seven consecutive 200-hit seasons. Boggs hit .352 in the 1980s, the highest single-decade mark since the 1920s.
He also led the AL in on-base percentage six times in seven years between 1983-89 and led the league in runs scored and walks in both 1988 and 1989. He had his last 200-hit season in 1989, but he hit .300 or better six times between 1990 and 1996—the one hiccup occurred in 1992, when Boggs hit .259 and was allowed to leave via free agency in favor of prospect Scott Cooper.
Boggs, who was captured by cameras weeping on the Sox bench following the stunning seven-game loss to the Mets in the 1986 World Series, went to the Yankees in 1993 and won the World Series with the Sox’ bitter rivals in 1996. The most memorable image from the Yankees’ celebration is that of Boggs and a police officer riding around Yankee Stadium on a horse as Boggs held his index finger aloft.
“I think every player wants that on his resume: To be a World Series champion,” Boggs said. “I think that drive I had from ’86 to get back to the World Series made [1996] that much more special.”
Even in his final three seasons, when Boggs was nowhere near the hitter he once was, he still hit .290 for the Yankees and Devil Rays, and he hit .301 for the Rays in his final season in 1999. Boggs cemented his Hall of Fame legacy Aug. 7, 1999, when he homered off the Indians’ Chris Haney for his 3,000th hit. Boggs, the only player to ever homer for his 3,000th hit, pointed to the sky throughout his trot and kissed home plate.
A case could be made Boggs reached 3,000 hits in a shorter period of time than anyone else in baseball history. He was 24 years old for most of his rookie season—no one else in the 3,000-hit club made his debut later than his 23rd birthday—and Boggs played in 2,439 games, the second-fewest of any player with 3,000 hits. Boggs played in six more games than Roberto Clemente, whose life was tragically cut short when he was killed in a plane crash in 1972.
Despite his late start, though, Boggs was always confident he’d be able to play long enough to reach 3,000 hits. “I knew [falling short of 3,000 hits] was never going to be an option, I knew longevity was on my side,” Boggs said. “My father [Win] played fast-pitch softball until he was 47. I knew as well as I felt at 35, 36, 37 that I could continue to play and play at a level that I could still produce.”
And now, Boggs is looking forward to the life-altering reality of earning membership into the most elite club in sports. Today, he and Sandberg begin their six-month coronation process with a press conference in Manhattan.
“To be classified with 258 other players that are in the Hall of Fame and to have that by your name speaks volumes,” Boggs said. “I don’t know how [much life will] change. I’m sure that in the coming months I’ll sit down with George Brett and various other players that I know and find out from them first-hand on what to expect.
“I’m just riding the wave out and hoping the beach doesn’t come too soon.”
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