Player knowledge
Wade Boggs
3B 1982–1999 Hall of Fame
- Born
- June 15, 1958, in Omaha, Nebraska
- Bats / Throws
- L/R
- Height / Weight
- 6'2", 190 lbs
- Hometown
- Tampa, Florida
- High School
- H. B. Plant High School
- Full Name
- Wade Anthony Boggs
- Nicknames
- Chicken Man
- MLB Debut
- April 10, 1982, at Baltimore (Memorial Stadium)
- Final Game
- August 27, 1999, at Cleveland
- Uniform
- No. 26 with Boston (retired 2016); No. 12 with New York and Tampa Bay (retired by the Rays in 2000)
- 3,000th Hit
- A home run off Cleveland’s Chris Haney, August 7, 1999
- Batting Titles
- Five: 1983 and 1985–1988
- Hall of Fame
- Class of 2005, 91.9% of the vote on the first ballot
The story
Bio
Wade Boggs could put a baseball almost anywhere he wanted, and what he usually wanted was a line drive to left field, off the Green Monster, for a single or a double. Scouts said he was too slow, had no power, and couldn’t field. He answered with five batting titles, seven straight 200-hit seasons, and 3,010 hits, the milestone one coming on a swing that cleared the fence.
Wade Anthony Boggs was a military kid who loved routine, and he built a Hall of Fame career on it. He spent six years in the minors, won the American League batting title in his first full season, ate chicken before every game, and became the most reliable hitter of the 1980s. He wept in the Shea Stadium dugout in 1986, crossed over to the Yankees and celebrated a championship on horseback in 1996, and went home to Tampa to finish the job.
Here is the whole story, from Omaha and Tampa to the Red Sox, the Yankees, the hometown Devil Rays, and Cooperstown. When you’re done, see how much stuck with the Wade Boggs Red Sox quiz.
Wade Boggs
A Military Kid in Tampa
Boggs was born June 15, 1958, in Omaha, Nebraska, the third child of Winfield “Win” Boggs and Sue Graham. Both parents served in World War II: Win as a Marine, Sue as a pilot flying mail planes. Win stayed in uniform and flew for the Air Force during the Korean War, so the family moved often before settling in Tampa, Florida, in the late 1960s. Wade loved the order of military life, with set things done at set times. He never lost the taste for it.
A family story holds that Ted Williams once looked at a photo of 18-month-old Wade with a bat and announced, “That kid’s got a hell of a stance!” Whether or not that happened, Williams shaped him anyway. At H. B. Plant High School, Boggs hit .522 as a junior, and pitchers stopped giving him anything to hit. When he started chasing bad pitches, his father handed him Williams’s book The Science of Hitting. Boggs took its central rule to heart, swinging only at strikes, and pitchers had to come to him again.
He was also an All-State football player. He switched from quarterback to kicker and punter to protect his body for baseball, and the University of South Carolina offered him a football scholarship.
Wade Boggs
The Nonprospect
Most scouts were unimpressed. Boggs was slow, had little range, and showed almost no power, and the Major League Scouting Bureau labeled him a nonprospect. Red Sox scout George Digby didn’t care. “I scout bats,” he said later. Boston took Boggs in the seventh round of the 1976 draft and offered $7,500. His father told him he had to choose between college football and pro baseball. It was not a hard choice.
The climb took six years. Boggs hit .263 at Elmira in 1976, then .332 at Winston-Salem in 1977, already walking more than he struck out. The reports kept repeating the same knocks: no power, no speed, no future at third base. He spent 1978 and 1979 in Double-A at Bristol, Connecticut, and 1980 and 1981 in Triple-A at Pawtucket. In December 1976, after his first pro summer, he married Debbie Bertucelli, whom he had known since high school.
Wade Boggs
Thirty-Three Innings
On April 18, 1981, Boggs’s Pawtucket Red Sox hosted the Rochester Red Wings, whose lineup included a young Cal Ripken Jr. The game was suspended in the early hours of Easter morning, still tied after 32 innings, and finished on June 23, when Pawtucket won in the 33rd. It remains the longest game in professional baseball history. Boggs had doubled in the tying run in the 21st. “I didn’t know if the guys wanted to hug me or slug me,” he joked.
That season he won the International League batting title at .335 and still didn’t get a September call-up. Pawtucket manager Joe Morgan suggested he learn first base in winter ball. In Puerto Rico, injuries pushed him back to third, he hit .354, and Boston finally added him to the 40-man roster.
Wade Boggs
Waiting on Lansford
In 1982 the Red Sox already had the reigning AL batting champion at third base, Carney Lansford, so manager Ralph Houk kept Boggs as a utility man. He debuted on April 10, 1982, in the second game of a doubleheader at Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium, playing first base and batting ninth. He went 0-for-4. “I hit four dribblers in the infield, all off changeups,” he remembered. His first hit came later that month in Chicago, a leadoff single off the White Sox’s Richard Dotson.
On June 23, Lansford sprained his ankle in a home-plate collision with Detroit catcher Lance Parrish. “We’ll find out about Boggs,” Houk said. They found out. Boggs played in 89 of Boston’s last 96 games and hit .358 in that stretch. He finished at .349, better than the league’s batting champion, but at 381 plate appearances he was 121 short of qualifying. He placed third in Rookie of the Year voting, behind Cal Ripken Jr. and Kent Hrbek. That winter Boston traded Lansford to Oakland, and third base belonged to Boggs for the next decade.
Wade Boggs
The Batting Champion
As the everyday third baseman in 1983, Boggs batted leadoff, fifth, and second, and hit everywhere. He batted .361 with 210 hits to win his first batting title by 22 points over Rod Carew, and his .444 on-base percentage led the majors. At Fenway Park he hit .397, slapping outside pitches off the Green Monster.
After a .325 season in 1984, he went on a run few hitters have ever matched. In 1985 he hit .368, the best mark by a Red Sox hitter since Ted Williams’s .388 in 1957, and collected 240 hits, the most by any major leaguer since Bill Terry’s 254 in 1930. He won again in 1986 (.357), 1987 (.363), and 1988 (.366): four straight batting titles and five in six years. From 1983 through 1989 he strung together seven straight 200-hit seasons, an American League record until Ichiro Suzuki came along.
Williams became a believer. After the 1985 season he called Boggs as smart a hitter as he had ever seen and predicted greatness if he kept it up. That summer Boggs had made the first of 12 straight All-Star teams.
Wade Boggs
Chicken Man
Boggs ran his life on a schedule. He ate chicken before every game, which led teammate Jim Rice to call him “Chicken Man,” and in 1984 he published a cookbook of chicken recipes, Fowl Tips. He woke up at the same time every day, fielded exactly 150 ground balls in practice, and ran his pregame sprints at 7:17 p.m. His path to and from third base wore a track to the dugout. Before each at-bat he traced the Hebrew word chai, meaning “life,” in the dirt of the batter’s box, though he is not Jewish.
He prepared in his head, too, picturing four at-bats and four hits the night before a game. His Hall of Fame plaque ends with the words “Legendary for his superstitions,” and he never apologized for them. “Believe me, I have a few superstitions,” he said in his induction speech, “and they work.”
Wade Boggs
1986
The 1986 Red Sox, carried by a young Roger Clemens, took over first place in mid-May and never gave it back. Then, on June 17, Boggs’s mother, Sue, was killed in Tampa when the driver of a cement truck ran a red light. Boggs was devastated. He returned to the lineup six days later and leaned on his routines to get through the summer. He hit .357 for his third batting title and led the league with 105 walks.
In the ALCS, Boston trailed the Angels three games to one and was one strike from elimination in Game 5 before Dave Henderson’s home run saved the season. The Red Sox won the pennant in seven. Against the Mets in the World Series, Boggs hit .290. In the 10th inning of Game 6 at Shea Stadium he doubled and scored on Marty Barrett’s single to make it 5–3, and Boston was one out from its first title since 1918. Then the Mets rallied, and Mookie Wilson’s grounder rolled through Bill Buckner’s legs. “The ball could’ve easily been hit to me,” Boggs said later. “It’s fate.”
In Game 7 his two-out single in the second inning made it 3–0, but the Mets came back again. Cameras caught Boggs crying in the dugout. He later explained that it wasn’t only the loss: baseball had held his grief at bay, and now the season was over and his mother would not be home. He thought seriously about retiring that winter. His father talked him out of it.
Wade Boggs
Power on Demand
People always wondered whether Boggs could hit for power if he tried. In 1987 he seemed to prove it, with 24 home runs, 89 RBI, and a .588 slugging percentage, all career highs. He never hit more than 11 in any other season and went right back to spraying line drives. In 1988 he won his fifth batting title at .366 and led the league in runs (128), doubles (45), walks (125), and on-base percentage (.476). He led the AL in on-base percentage six times and in intentional walks six years running, from 1987 through 1992.
Boston won the AL East in 1988 and 1990, and both times Oakland swept the Red Sox in the ALCS. Boggs hit .385 in the first series and .438 in the second, with his only Red Sox postseason home run. It wasn’t enough for a single win.
Wade Boggs
Headlines and a Fenway Farewell
Off the field, Boggs became tabloid material. After his four-year extramarital affair with Margo Adams, a California mortgage broker, ended in 1988, Adams sued him for $12 million, claiming he had promised to make up for income she lost while traveling with him on road trips. She told her story to Penthouse. Boggs acknowledged the affair, disputed many of her claims, and gave his side to Barbara Walters on 20/20. In February 1989 an appeals court threw out $11.5 million of the claim, and the rest was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. His wife, Debbie, stayed with him.
His fame took friendlier turns too. In February 1992 he voiced himself in The Simpsons episode “Homer at the Bat,” as one of the big-league ringers Mr. Burns recruits for the power plant softball team, until Barney Gumble knocks him out in a barroom argument over Britain’s greatest prime minister. He also appeared as himself on Cheers.
On the field, 1992 was the worst year of his career: .259, the first time he had finished below .300. Boggs later said longtime owner Jean Yawkey had promised him a five-year deal so he could finish in Boston like Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski, but she died early that year and the new management offered far less. After 11 seasons, a .338 average, and 2,098 hits in a Red Sox uniform, he became a free agent.
Wade Boggs
Pinstripes and a Police Horse
In December 1992, Boggs did the unthinkable for a Red Sox star: he signed a three-year, $11 million contract with the New York Yankees, who beat out the Dodgers by adding the third year. Fenway crowds booed him. He tuned them out and hit over .300 in each of his first four seasons in New York, including .342 in the strike-shortened 1994 season. He also became a polished defender and won Gold Gloves in 1994 and 1995; according to the Hall of Fame, at 36 he was the oldest first-time winner among non-pitchers.
The 1995 Yankees reached the postseason for the first time in 14 years, and Boggs homered in the Division Series, but Seattle won Game 5 on Edgar Martínez’s 11th-inning double. A year later he finally got his ring, though he slumped that October, hit .158, and lost starts to Charlie Hayes. In Game 4 of the World Series in Atlanta, after the Yankees had rallied from a 6–0 deficit, manager Joe Torre sent Boggs up to pinch-hit in the 10th inning with the bases loaded and two outs. He worked a walk off Steve Avery to force in the go-ahead run, and New York won 8–6. Two games later the Yankees clinched their first title since 1978, and Boggs, by his own account afraid of horses, climbed onto the back of an NYPD horse and rode around Yankee Stadium with one finger in the air.
In 1997 he split third base with Hayes and hit .292. On August 19 at Anaheim, with the Yankees losing big, he took the mound and threw a scoreless inning, mostly knuckleballs, with a strikeout. After New York lost the Division Series to Cleveland, his Yankees years were over.
Wade Boggs
Home to Tampa
Boggs signed with the expansion Tampa Bay Devil Rays for their first season, 1998, a chance to play in the city where he grew up. In the franchise’s first game, on March 31, 1998, against Detroit at Tropicana Field, he hit the first home run in Devil Rays history, in the sixth inning. He was 39, and he hit .280 that year.
He came back at 41 with one more goal. On August 7, 1999, at Tropicana Field, he drove a pitch from Cleveland’s Chris Haney over the right-field fence. Hit No. 3,000 was a home run, the first time anyone had reached the milestone that way. Boggs circled the bases, then knelt and kissed home plate. He was the 23rd player in history to reach 3,000.
Three days later he pitched again, working 1⅓ innings in a 17–1 loss to Baltimore. A knee injury soon ended his season, and his career. He played his last game on August 27, 1999, at Cleveland, going 0-for-3 with a walk, and retired with 3,010 hits and a .328 career average.
Wade Boggs
Cooperstown
Boggs stayed with the Devil Rays, working in the front office in 2000 and as their hitting coach in 2001. On April 7, 2000, the club retired his No. 12, and no other Rays player has ever worn it.
Late in his career, newspaper reports claimed the Devil Rays had paid him to choose their cap for his Hall of Fame plaque. Boggs denied that it was part of his contract. In 2001 the Hall changed its policy and took the final say on plaque logos for itself. In 2005, his first year on the ballot, Boggs was elected with 91.9% of the vote (474 of 516 ballots), alongside Ryne Sandberg, and his plaque shows a Red Sox cap. The other great contact hitter of his generation, San Diego’s Tony Gwynn, had debuted the same year, 1982, and won eight National League batting titles.
Boston welcomed him back for good. He entered the Red Sox Hall of Fame in 2004, and on May 26, 2016, the club retired his No. 26. In retirement he coached his son Brett’s high school team, and in 2007 he inducted his friend Curt “Mr. Perfect” Hennig into the WWE Hall of Fame. In September 2024 he revealed he was being treated for prostate cancer; in February 2025 he announced he was cancer-free.
Wade Boggs
Records and Honors
- 3,010 hits: the 23rd player to reach 3,000, and the first to get there with a home run
- .328 career batting average and .415 on-base percentage, with 1,412 walks against just 745 strikeouts
- Five AL batting titles: 1983, plus four straight from 1985 to 1988
- Seven straight 200-hit seasons (1983–1989), including 240 hits in 1985
- Six AL on-base percentage titles, peaking at .476 in 1988
- 578 doubles and 91.4 career WAR, per Baseball-Reference
- 12 straight All-Star selections (1985–1996), eight Silver Slugger Awards, and two Gold Gloves (1994, 1995)
- 1996 World Series champion with the Yankees
- Hall of Fame (2005), Red Sox Hall of Fame (2004), No. 12 retired by Tampa Bay (2000), and No. 26 retired by Boston (2016)
Wade Boggs
Chicken Man Fun Facts
- He named his son Brett after George Brett, the Royals’ Hall of Fame third baseman.
- He hit the first home run in Devil Rays history and the first 3,000th hit ever to clear the fence, both at Tropicana Field.
- He pitched twice in the majors, in 1997 and 1999, for a career ERA of 3.86 in 2⅓ innings.
- He walked more than he struck out in 17 of his 18 seasons. The exception was 1998, at age 40.
- He asked Fenway Park announcer Sherm Feller to stop saying his uniform number after he broke out of a slump on a day Feller forgot to announce it.
- Boggs has credited wrestler Curt Hennig with saving his life, carrying him to help after he badly cut his leg on a barbed-wire fence during a hunting trip.
- A popular legend says he once drank 64 beers on a cross-country flight. Boggs has denied that number, while joking in TV cameos that the real total was higher.
Think you can hit .328 on Boggs trivia? Take all ten quizzes in the Wade Boggs collection, try the Wade Boggs Red Sox quiz, meet his high school hitting guru on the Ted Williams page and his batting-title rival on the Tony Gwynn page, see why his son is named Brett on the George Brett page, or browse the full Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, and Tampa Bay Rays quiz collections.
The postseason
October Accolades
| Year | Series | Result | G | H-AB | BA | HR | RBI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1986 | ALCS | Red Sox def. Angels, 4–3 Boston rallied from a 3–1 series deficit after coming within one strike of elimination in Game 5 | 7 | 7-30 | .233 | 0 | 2 |
| 1986 | World Series | Mets def. Red Sox, 4–3 Doubled and scored in the 10th inning of Game 6 for a 5–3 lead that slipped away | 7 | 9-31 | .290 | 0 | 3 |
| 1988 | ALCS | Athletics def. Red Sox, 4–0 Hit .385 with three walks, but Oakland swept | 4 | 5-13 | .385 | 0 | 3 |
| 1990 | ALCS | Athletics def. Red Sox, 4–0 Went 7-for-16 with his only Red Sox postseason homer; swept again | 4 | 7-16 | .438 | 1 | 1 |
| 1995 | ALDS | Mariners def. Yankees, 3–2 Homered once; Seattle won Game 5 on Edgar Martínez’s 11th-inning double | 4 | 5-19 | .263 | 1 | 3 |
| 1996 | ALDS | Yankees def. Rangers, 3–1 Managed one hit, a double, in 12 at-bats | 3 | 1-12 | .083 | 0 | 0 |
| 1996 | ALCS | Yankees def. Orioles, 4–1 Played three of the five games as New York won its first pennant since 1981 | 3 | 2-15 | .133 | 0 | 0 |
| 1996 | World Series | Yankees def. Braves, 4–2 Drew a bases-loaded pinch-hit walk in the 10th inning of Game 4, then rode a police horse after Game 6 | 4 | 3-11 | .273 | 0 | 2 |
| 1997 | ALDS | Indians def. Yankees, 3–2 Went 3-for-7 in his final postseason series | 3 | 3-7 | .429 | 0 | 2 |
| Postseason | 9 series | 39 | 42-154 | .273 | 2 | 16 | |
The clubs
Teams
-
Boston Red Sox
1982–1992
Five batting titles, seven straight 200-hit seasons, and a .338 average over 11 years
-
New York Yankees
1993–1997
Four straight .300 seasons, two Gold Gloves, and the 1996 World Series title
-
Tampa Bay Rays
1998–1999
Hometown finale with the Devil Rays: the franchise’s first home run and a 3,000th hit that cleared the fence
The numbers
Season Stats
| Season | Team | League | WAR | Games | PA | AB | Runs | Hits | RBI | 2B | 3B | HR | SB | BB | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1982 | Boston Red Sox | AL | 3.9 | 104 | 381 | 338 | 51 | 118 | 44 | 14 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 35 | .349 | .406 | .441 | .847 |
| 1983 | Boston Red Sox | AL | 7.8 | 153 | 685 | 582 | 100 | 210 | 74 | 44 | 7 | 5 | 3 | 92 | .361 | .444 | .486 | .931 |
| 1984 | Boston Red Sox | AL | 6.3 | 158 | 726 | 625 | 109 | 203 | 55 | 31 | 4 | 6 | 3 | 89 | .325 | .407 | .416 | .823 |
| 1985 | Boston Red Sox | AL | 9.1 | 161 | 758 | 653 | 107 | 240 | 78 | 42 | 3 | 8 | 2 | 96 | .368 | .450 | .478 | .928 |
| 1986 | Boston Red Sox | AL | 8.1 | 149 | 693 | 580 | 107 | 207 | 71 | 47 | 2 | 8 | 0 | 105 | .357 | .453 | .486 | .939 |
| 1987 | Boston Red Sox | AL | 8.3 | 147 | 667 | 551 | 108 | 200 | 89 | 40 | 6 | 24 | 1 | 105 | .363 | .461 | .588 | 1.049 |
| 1988 | Boston Red Sox | AL | 8.3 | 155 | 719 | 584 | 128 | 214 | 58 | 45 | 6 | 5 | 2 | 125 | .366 | .476 | .490 | .965 |
| 1989 | Boston Red Sox | AL | 8.4 | 156 | 742 | 621 | 113 | 205 | 54 | 51 | 7 | 3 | 2 | 107 | .330 | .430 | .449 | .879 |
| 1990 | Boston Red Sox | AL | 3.2 | 155 | 713 | 619 | 89 | 187 | 63 | 44 | 5 | 6 | 0 | 87 | .302 | .386 | .418 | .804 |
| 1991 | Boston Red Sox | AL | 6.4 | 144 | 641 | 546 | 93 | 181 | 51 | 42 | 2 | 8 | 1 | 89 | .332 | .421 | .460 | .881 |
| 1992 | Boston Red Sox | AL | 2.2 | 143 | 598 | 514 | 62 | 133 | 50 | 22 | 4 | 7 | 1 | 74 | .259 | .353 | .358 | .711 |
| 1993 | New York Yankees | AL | 4.3 | 143 | 644 | 560 | 83 | 169 | 59 | 26 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 74 | .302 | .378 | .363 | .740 |
| 1994 | New York Yankees | AL | 4.5 | 97 | 434 | 366 | 61 | 125 | 55 | 19 | 1 | 11 | 2 | 61 | .342 | .433 | .489 | .922 |
| 1995 | New York Yankees | AL | 4.2 | 126 | 541 | 460 | 76 | 149 | 63 | 22 | 4 | 5 | 1 | 74 | .324 | .412 | .422 | .834 |
| 1996 | New York Yankees | AL | 3.4 | 132 | 574 | 501 | 80 | 156 | 41 | 29 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 67 | .311 | .389 | .389 | .778 |
| 1997 | New York Yankees | AL | 2.0 | 103 | 407 | 353 | 55 | 103 | 28 | 23 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 48 | .292 | .373 | .397 | .769 |
| 1998 | Tampa Bay Devil Rays | AL | 1.4 | 123 | 483 | 435 | 51 | 122 | 52 | 23 | 4 | 7 | 3 | 46 | .280 | .348 | .400 | .748 |
| 1999 | Tampa Bay Devil Rays | AL | -0.3 | 90 | 334 | 292 | 40 | 88 | 29 | 14 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 38 | .301 | .377 | .377 | .754 |
| Career | 18 seasons | AL | 91.5 | 2,439 | 10,740 | 9,180 | 1,513 | 3,010 | 1,014 | 578 | 61 | 118 | 24 | 1,412 | .328 | .415 | .443 | .858 |