If you are in the business of believing people who admit that they are high on marijuana and possibly cocaine while doing an interview, you may now consider Wade Boggs to be a racist. During an interview with WEEI in Boston earlier this week to promote his new book, “They Call Me Oil Can,” Oil Can Boyd called Boggs a bigot and said he used to use the n-word on a regular basis around the Red Sox clubhouse. Oil Can is also an admitted drug addict, which is why Boggs insists he has no idea what he is talking about.
“Absolutely, positively, 100 million percent, I am not a racist, I am not a bigot,” Boggs said during his own interview with WEEI on Thursday. “You have a delusional drug addict who let not only his family down, but his team, the city of Boston, Red Sox Nation when it counted most. Now he wants the good people of Boston to go out and spend money on this garbage to support his habit. I find that extremely amusing.
“I have never, ever in my history of being alive on this planet, 53 years, never, ever said that in the clubhouse. You can take Jim Rice and Don Baylor and Steve Henderson and everybody, ask them and ask anybody on that team if I ever did. Absolutely not. It infuriates me to have this alleged nonsense brought up, and to be put in print, to ruin my character. It hurts me to the core. … For someone to be labeled one of those words is extreme character assassination.”
Boggs also said that he and Boyd were close friends when they played together, so he has no idea where the accusation comes from. Wade’s wife, Debbie, also jumped on the line to say that she has never once heard her husband or his father — whom Boyd claimed taught Boggs to be racist — use that type of language in public or in private.
In reality, we will never know exactly what was said in the Boston clubhouse 30 years ago. What we do know is that Oil Can hasn’t exactly established himself as the most credible character witness.
