Laughing at the naysayers
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COOPERSTOWN, N.Y.—Wade Boggs will join the world’s most exclusive fraternity this afternoon, 29 years and less than 150 miles from where his career nearly ended in the most anonymous fashion possible.
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Boggs hit .263 for Class-A Elmira in the summer of 1976 and did nothing to convince his manager, Dick Berardino, that he had a future in the game. “He had made a recommendation in the middle of August to send me home,” Boggs said.
Clearly, Boggs believes in forgiving, if not forgetting. Berardino will be one of Boggs’ guests today at the Clark Sports Center, where Boggs and Ryne Sandberg will become the 226th and 227th players in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. But Boggs made it clear throughout Saturday’s pre-induction press conference Saturday how much he’s enjoyed proving people wrong over the past three decades.
In Berardino’s defense, he wasn’t the only one to underestimate Boggs. After his inauspicious debut at Elmira, Boggs hit .300 or better in each of the next five seasons but could not catch the eye of the Sox or the other 25 big league teams.
During Boggs’ last season at Pawtucket in 1981, Peter Gammons—the former Boston Globe writer and current ESPN baseball insider who will be inducted into the writer’s wing Sunday—told Boggs he couldn’t believe he was still toiling at Triple-A. Gammons remembered telling Boggs he was shocked this was “…the [fifth] consecutive year you will have hit .300 in the minor leagues and you still have not been on the [40-man] roster and you’ve gone through the Rule 5 draft two or three times.
“He didn’t get upset about it,” Gammons said at his press conference Saturday. “He just looked at me and said ‘My success will be judged in terms of my ability to overcome adversity. And right now, I’m overcoming this adversity.’”
Boggs finally made the Sox as a utility infielder out of spring training in 1982 and overcame the adversity in historic fashion. Boggs hit over .300 in each of his first 10 big league seasons, during which time he won five batting titles (1983 and 1985-1988), led the league in on-base percentage six times (1983 and 1985-1989), led the league in runs, doubles and walks twice apiece and set an AL record by collecting 200 or more hits in seven straight seasons (1983-1989).
“I was labeled too slow, no power, can’t throw, below-average fielder,” said Boggs, who also won two Gold Gloves with the Yankees in 1993 and 1994. “And [he won the Gold Gloves] through hard work and dedication to my craft and taking all the ground balls from [Red Sox coach] Johnny Pesky. Gene Michael from the Yankees timed me [running to] first base at 3.76 [seconds] one day and [ex-Royals speedster] Willie Wilson was 3.73 [seconds].
“So if you want me and Willie Wilson to have a footrace, granted, he’d beat me by a hundred yards in a 50-yard dash. But if I smelled a hit, every once in a while I could get down to first pretty fast.”
Nobody made up for lost time quite like Boggs. Of the 26 men in the 3,000-hit club, no one was older when he got his first big league hit than Boggs, who was 23 when he notched the first of his 3,010 hits. In addition, Gammons said he figured out last week that no member of the Hall of Fame made his big league debut at a more advanced age than Boggs.
His legacy secure, Boggs is worried about just one thing today: Getting through his acceptance speech. Bill Mazeroski set the standard for emotional acceptance speeches in 2001, when he prepared a 12-page speech but was so overcome he left the podium after getting through just 219 words in less than three minutes.
“I just hope I get one word out of my mouth before I start crying,” Boggs said. “I don’t want to pull a Bill Mazeroski and sit there and cry the whole time and sit down.
“I would rather face Nolan Ryan and [Randy] Johnson everyday of the week. It won’t even compare. This is probably the most difficult thing I will ever have to do in my life.”
Diehard managing editor Jerry Beach can be reached at diehardmag@yahoo.com. To receive a free issue of Diehard, call 888-979-0979.
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