Former Boston Red Sox pitcher Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd admitted Wednesday in an interview with WBZ NewsRadio 1030 in Fort Myers, Florida that approximately two-thirds of the time he was pitching, he was doing so under the influence of cocaine. Boyd goes on to say, “Oh yeah, at every ballpark. There wasn’t one ballpark that I probably didn’t stay up all night, until four or five in the morning, and the same thing is still in your system.” Boyd is certainly not the first former major leaguer to have issues with cocaine, with Dwight Gooden, Steve Howe and Darryl Strawberry, who played around the same time as Boyd, immediately coming to mind.
While drug abuse was rampant during this era of baseball, probably no story is more well known than that of Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis, who reportedly pitched a no-hitter while on LSD. The June 20, 1970 game was against the San Diego Padres and Ellis was not originally slated to start that day. He had spent some time with friends the night before and was still high when he showed up at the park and was informed the team need him to pitch. Ellis walked 8 and struck out six in the course of the no hitter. Dock recounts: “I started having a crazy idea in the fourth inning that Richard Nixon was the home plate umpire, and once I thought I was pitching a baseball to Jimi Hendrix, who to me was holding a guitar and swinging it over the plate. They say I had about three to four fielding chances. I remember diving out of the way of a ball I thought was a line drive. I jumped, but the ball wasn’t hit hard and never reached me.” This feat has been immortalized in a number of songs, including “America’s Favorite Pastime” by folk singer Todd Snider.
“Oil Can” also says that he was far from the only big leaguer abusing cocaine at the time. “I feel like my career was cut short for a lot of reasons, but I wasn’t doing anything that hundreds of ball players weren’t doing at the time; because that’s how I learned it.” The thing that I find so interesting is the fact that in his entire career, which spanned from 1982 to 1991, he was never once asked to take a drug test. Boyd says ““I never had a drug test as long as I played baseball, I was told that, yeah, if you don’t stop doing this we’re going to put you into rehab, and I told them (expletive) that (expletive). I’m going to do what I have to do, I have to win ball games. We’ll talk about that in the offseason, right now I have to win ball games.” That mind boggling statement is indicative of the systematic drug abuse that was occurring in baseball at the time, and the fact that team and league executives simply turned a blind eye to the goings-on.
During his career, “Oil Can” played for the Red Sox, Expos and Rangers and went 78-77 with 799 career strike outs with a 4.04 ERA. Boyd says, however, that if he would’ve slept at night during his career instead of staying up all night using cocaine, he could’ve won 150 games. Add Boyd to the ever increasing list of Red Sox players who were instrumental in the success of the club and have been proven to take, or have been closely associated with illicit substances. Boyd was a big part of the Sox success in 1986 and two key members of the World Series Championship teams have been closely associated with steroids: Manny Ramirez has been suspended multiple times for being juiced and Roger Clemens has all but been proven to have used steroids, as well.
Coincidentally, this interview and admission by Boyd comes just before his book “They Call Me Oil Can” goes into publication in June.
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