Chris CrockettOde To The "Chicken Man"--Wade Boggs
June 2nd 2009 01:39
OK, for those of you that I’m lucky enough to have reading my blog so far out there that don’t know me personally--that man above was my boyhood baseball idol--bar none!! The “Chicken Man” himself, Wade Boggs. Boggsie or Donny Mattingly--who'd you rather have--was the big debate at the time back in those days. I would defend Boggsie through thick and thin, it didn’t matter the subject. I’d defend him to people who’d say he was a selfish ballplayer. I’d defend him to people who knocked him over his sex addiction (poor guy, cmon people it’s an addiction, don’t make fun!). ha...I’d defend him to people who knocked his taste in women. (“if you’re gonna cheat on your wife, can’t you do it with someone a little hotter than Margo Adams?”) Didn’t matter to me, I was 14 and Wade Boggs was the man. I remember if I was going somewhere with my family and we were in the car and I was wondering how to compute his average in my head and my father saying “Chuckie, at this point in the season it’s usually up two points for a hit and down one point for an out”.. ha. You have to remember this was still back in the Curse of the Bambino days when all we knew in Boston as far as baseball was concerned were stats. We sure as hell weren’t going to win anything like a championship. Christ we hadn’t won one since the Titanic sank. What else did we have other than hoping Boggsie would beat out Mattingly or George Brett for the batting title? Big Schill’s bloody sock and Big Papi were still years away.
The bat control that Boggs possessed was second to none. His knowledge of the strike zone was uncanny. The closest modern day player that I know of that even comes close to Boggs’ knowledge of the strike zone is Kevin Youkilis--but Boggs' knowledge of the zone was superior. I can remember playing on my Little League Yankee teams in Allston, MA and when I’d get two strikes on me--no worries. Boggsie made it cool to hit with two strikes on you. Foul a few off, adjust your cup, get a nice spit of Big League Chew out, and step back in the box and wait until you got something you liked and hit it into a gap for a double. No sweat. Boggsie made it cool to like lemon chicken (his gameday dish EVERY DAY). Other than the fact I played shortstop and pitched until I moved to third base late in High School, I wanted to be Boggs when I was a kid. I always found it hilarious that a guy who got 200 hits in seven consecutive seasons and would routinely hit in the .350’s and .360’s was disliked by some because he had a slight reputation of a “selfish” ballplayer. Huh? Baseball is what I’ve always referred to as an individual team sport. You have to win your battle with the pitcher one on one in order to get on base and help your team win from an offensive standpoint. Nobody is going to help you. In football, a running back depends on a pulling guard to flatten someone and bust open a hole or a punishing block from his fullback to open a hole for him. In basketball you set picks and screens for each other. Are there team aspects to baseball? Yes of course. Unselfish acts like moving the runner over, communicating on defense, breaking up a double play etc.. but if you don’t win your one on one battles in baseball, you and your team are doomed. Call him selfish if you want but I’ll take a guy who gets over 200 hits a year and has a lifetime on base percentage of .415 any day if I’m building a winning team. If he’s a little selfish, so be it. If he’s getting his rear end on base 2 or 3 times night, that's what was of most importance.
I was watching Boggs on the Tim McCarver show the other night and that is what led me to think of him and write this post. I was laughing--Boggs said that because he had such great bat control, he could often play with defenders in the infield. If the shortstop shifts to his left, Boggs would slap one in the hole between short and third. If the shortstop shifts to his right, Boggs would single up the middle. It was a running joke on how to align your defense to at least attempt to slow him down. He said that one time, Ray Miller, who was managing the Minnesota Twins at the time, walked up to him before a game and said, “I’ve got the perfect defense that I’m using tonight that will get you out.” Boggs asked him what it was and of course Miller told him he’d find out when the game started. Miller had his second baseman and shortstop line up one behind the other over the second base bag and then Miller had them sprint to where he wanted them positioned so Boggs wouldn’t know their positioning ahead of time, once the pitcher started his windup. Well, Boggs went 5 for 5 that night and said the off-beat defensive alignment didn’t affect him at all because, “whoever was slower getting to their position out of the two of them once they started sprinting, is the side I hit it toward.”
That was good ole #26, he had the vision, the bat control, and the tremendous work ethic which enabled him to be an example for all kids trying to play ball and make it, mixed with a slight sexual addiction problem on the side, to entertain the adults and the Barbara Walters crowd. All that was missing from his time in Boston was a ring. Goddamn Mookie Wilson!
(Thanks to 131774 on Flickr.com for the closeup shot of the Boggs HOF plaque)
Chuck Hanf
Two Cents From Beantown @ Sportramble.com
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