Earlier today I started reading this article about the frosty relationship between Roger Clemens and Wade Boggs when they were teammates. I didn’t even make it to the third paragraph.
As I often do when reading about baseball players, Hall of Famers in particular, I immediately decided to check out Wade Boggs’ Baseball Reference page. I love looking at the stats of old-time players in a perpetual personal process of putting everyone in the proper historical context in my own mind.
For some reason today something jumped out at me about Boggs’ stats that never had before the other times I’ve visited his Baseball Ref page (and, yes, there have been other times). What jumped out at me was the number 24, as in the 24 home runs that Boggs hit in 1987. Certainly this does not sound like a lot for a guy in the Hall of Fame, but it does when you look at the rest of the Boggs’ season totals and realize his next highest total was 11; and never in the four years before or after his 24 home run season did Boggs ever hit more than 8.
Think about this in the context of today: in 1987, coming off of a season in which he hit 8 home runs, Wade Boggs slugged 24 long ones, or three times as many. Think a jump like that might arouse a little water cooler PED discussion in 2011? Ask Jose Bautista. Yet I’ve never heard Boggs’ name bandied about with righteous indignation by doubters of his preposterous (by his own standards) 1987 explosion.
No, Boggs isn’t…Brady Anderson.
