There are certain stories in sports that you automatically assume have been exaggerated.
A fisherman catches a six-pound bass. Twenty years later, it weighed twelve.
A high school running back once ran the 40 in 4.3 seconds, but unfortunately nobody had a stopwatch.
Your uncle hit a baseball 500 feet in 1978.
And then there is the Wade Boggs beer story.
I had heard some version of this story for years. Wade Boggs—the Hall of Fame third baseman for the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Devil Rays—supposedly drank an absolutely ridiculous number of beers on a cross-country flight.
Depending on which version you heard, it might have been 50.
Or 60.
Or 64.
At some point, once a story reaches numbers like those, you just smile, nod and file it away under Baseball Stories That Were Probably Better Before Everyone Had a Camera in Their Pocket.
Then I watched the video attached to this article.
And there is Wade Boggs himself essentially saying:
Oh, you think the story was exaggerated?
Actually, you're a little low.
Wade Boggs Is Not Some Random Guy Telling a Bar Story
Before we go any further, we should establish who we're talking about.
Wade Boggs is one of the greatest hitters in baseball history.
He played 18 Major League seasons, collected 3,010 hits, finished with a .328 career batting average and a remarkable .415 on-base percentage, made 12 All-Star teams and won five American League batting titles. He was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2005.
Official MLB records list him at 6-foot-2 and 197 pounds.
So we're not discussing some 340-pound offensive lineman named Moose.
We're discussing a roughly 200-pound third baseman whose primary professional skill was having better hand-eye coordination than practically every human being alive.
Which brings us back to the beer.
According to Wade Boggs: 73 on the Flight
In the video, Boggs recounts the story of traveling from Boston to Los Angeles.
He describes bringing beers for the trip to the airport, getting onto the team flight, playing blackjack with other players and continuing to drink.
And according to Boggs himself, the number consumed during the flight reached:
73 beers.
Not 7.
Not 17.
Seventy-three.
That number has also been reported from other interviews in which Boggs has discussed the story publicly. In one account, Boggs said the total was 73 during the flight and then 107 for the entire day after the drinking continued in California.
I want to be very careful here.
I am not independently claiming Wade Boggs drank 107 beers.
I wasn't there.
I didn't count the cans.
I wasn't the flight attendant.
I don't have a 1980s Boston Red Sox beer receipt sitting in a safe.
I'm saying Wade Boggs says Wade Boggs drank 107 beers.
And frankly, that's fascinating enough.
Let's Just Consider the Logistics
Forget alcohol for a second.
Let's discuss liquid.
If we're talking about standard 12-ounce beers, 73 beers would equal:
876 ounces of beer.
That's 6.84 gallons.
Then there's the reported full-day number:
107 twelve-ounce beers would equal:
1,284 ounces.
That's just over 10 gallons of beer.
Ten.
Gallons.
I have owned vehicles with smaller fuel tanks.
At some point this stops being a drinking story and starts becoming a plumbing problem.
My first question isn't even, "How was he still standing?"
My first question is:
Where did all the liquid go?
There couldn't possibly have been enough time between Boston and Los Angeles to drink 73 beers, play blackjack and make the necessary number of trips to an airplane bathroom without eventually being asked to help clean the lavatory.
Again, I am not disputing Wade Boggs.
I'm just saying I have questions.
Many questions.
Primarily involving kidneys.
And Apparently the Day Wasn't Over
The part that makes this story completely unreasonable—in the best possible baseball-lore sense—is that according to Boggs, they landed in California and the festivities continued.
He has said the number eventually reached 107 beers for the day.
Imagine arriving at beer number 73 and thinking:
You know what? I'm just getting warmed up.
Most people who finish two beers on an airplane start looking for their neck pillow.
Wade Boggs apparently landed and decided there were still 34 beers sitting between him and destiny.
It's worth repeating that these drinking totals are Boggs's own recollection, not something I can independently audit decades later.
But that is also what makes the video so entertaining.
This isn't a former teammate laughing and saying:
"You won't believe what Boggs did once."
It's Boggs telling the story.
Then He Says He Played Baseball
And here is where the whole thing moves from bizarre to legendary.
In accounts of the interview, Boggs says that the next day he faced pitcher Mark Langston and went 2-for-3 with two doubles.
Read that sentence again.
Because if I drank 107 LaCroixs in a day, I'm calling in sick tomorrow.
If I drink too much sweet tea at dinner, there's a decent chance my entire morning schedule has to be reevaluated.
Wade Boggs is describing a day involving a three-digit beer total followed by facing Major League pitching.
Mark Langston, by the way, wasn't some guy they found throwing batting practice behind the hotel.
He was a major-league pitcher who became a four-time All-Star during his career.
Again, the specific connection between this legendary drinking day and Boggs's next-day performance comes from Boggs's recollection of the event. I'm not presenting the beer tally as a laboratory-certified historical record.
I'm simply listening to the man tell the story.
And staring at my computer.
The Best Part Is That Wade Boggs Doesn't Need This Story
This may be my favorite thing about the whole situation.
Wade Boggs does not need a drinking legend to make his life interesting.
He has 3,010 Major League hits.
He hit .328 for his career.
He won five batting titles.
He made 12 All-Star teams.
He won a World Series with the Yankees.
He's in Cooperstown.
If I accomplished one of those things, you'd hear about it every time we met.
"Good morning."
"Morning. Did you know I have 3,000 Major League hits?"
"Yes, Clay. You told me yesterday."
"Just checking."
Boggs already had one of those baseball careers that would sound fictional if we didn't have statistics proving it happened.
And somehow we're sitting here talking about beer.
So Did Wade Boggs Really Drink 107 Beers?
Here is my carefully researched conclusion:
Wade Boggs says he did.
That's as far as I'm willing to take it.
I'm not going to call the man a liar.
I'm also not going to pretend I have forensic evidence from an airplane flight decades ago proving beer number 106 was followed by beer number 107.
What I can verify is that the story isn't merely something the internet invented and attached to his name.
Boggs has publicly discussed it himself, including the figure of 73 beers on the flight and 107 during the broader day.
That changes the story for me.
Before watching the video, I thought:
"There's no way Wade Boggs drank that many beers. Somebody has exaggerated this story over the years."
After watching Wade Boggs explain it himself, my position has changed to:
"Apparently Wade Boggs would like us to know that if anything, we've been underselling him."
And that may be the most Wade Boggs thing imaginable.
Watch the video.
Listen to the man tell it himself.
Then somebody please explain to me how you put away what would amount to gallons upon gallons of beer and wake up the next day prepared to hit a Major League fastball.
Because I have spent entirely too much time thinking about this now.
And I still don't understand it.
A Note on the Story
The beer totals discussed in this article are attributed to Wade Boggs's own public recollection of the event. They are not presented here as independently verified measurements of his alcohol consumption. Boggs's career statistics and Hall of Fame accomplishments are documented by Major League Baseball and the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
