Wade Boggs is a Hall of Famer. When it comes to his career as a baseball player, that is very much true. You can check him out in Cooperstown as a resident of the Baseball Hall of Fame.
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However, it turns out that Boggs is also a beer-drinking Hall of Famer as well. At least, if the urban legend is to be believed.
Wade Boggs MLB Career
Photo by Focus on Sport/Getty Images
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Before we get to his beer-related exploits, we should really talk about Boggs' MLB career for a bit. Boggs started his career with the Boston Red Sox in 1982, spent a few seasons with their rival, the New York Yankees, and ended his career with a couple seasons on the expansion Tampa Bay Devil Rays.
People used to give Boggs grief for not hitting home runs. Still, modern baseball analysis appreciates just how good he was. The third baseman had one of the best eyes in baseball history—Boggs won five batting titles, knocked in 3,010 hits and retired with a .328 batting average. He also led the majors in on-base percentage six times. That helped him make 12 All-Star Games and the Baseball Hall of Fame.
The Devil Rays even retired his number, which is weird for a guy who spent two seasons in Tampa, but an honor!
If not for his beer drinking, Boggs would be best remembered for his chicken-eating. He infamously was so superstitious that he ate chicken before every game of his career. When he wasn't eating chicken, Boggs would occasionally cameo in the world of pop culture.
A friend of Curt Hennig, AKA Mr. Perfect, Boggs appeared on WWF programming a couple times. He also provided a voice in the iconic "Simpsons" episode "Homer at the Bat," and he was in an episode of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia."
That leads us to the reason we're all here.
Wade Boggs Once Drank 107 Beers
Photo by Mark Cunningham/MLB Photos via Getty Images
Did Wade Boggs love beer as much as chicken? That's the rumor.
The 10th season premiere of "It's Always Sunny" was called "The Gang Beats Boggs." Dennis and company competed to see if they could beat Boggs' beer-drinking record on a road trip. Well, not quite a road trip: they hopped a cross-country flight to Los Angeles while chugging an incredible number of beers. Boggs pops up as himself, naturally.
The "Always Sunny" crew did not invent this story. It circulated for years, with the number of beers changing depending on who was telling the story.
Ah, but it had to just be rumors and innuendo, right? Maybe not.
Charlie Day, who fittingly plays Charlie on the show, talked about the episode with Jimmy Fallon on "The Tonight Show." While Boggs was on the set filming his cameo, Day decided to ask Boggs about the truth. Evidently, the Hall of Famer said that he drank 107 beers in one day.
This, obviously, dropped some jaws. Soon after that, TMZ approached Boggs and decided to ask him directly.
This time, Boggs wasn't as specific as Day's 107 number, but he did say that he had indeed drunk "over 100" beers in one day.
But wait, how did he do it? Surely 107 beers would be enough to kill a man.
"I've got a hollow leg. It goes down there and I just take it off and dump it," Boggs joked to TMZ.
He did not specify what kind of beer (one can only speculate whether it were Miller Lites or Budweisers) or if he was on a plane at the time. If he were, we can assume he did not get off the flight early in North Dakota like Glenn Howerton's Dennis in "The Gang Beats Boggs." That would have really cut into his drinking time.
In his storied career, Boggs won one World Series. We don't know how many drinking contests he won, but we would guess he was undefeated on that front. Cheers to a legendary player and beer drinker.
