"Oil Can" Boyd On Toucher & Rich: Fits, Drugs And Anger From The Past
Former Red Sox starting pitcher Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd joined Toucher & Rich to discuss his new book "They Call Me Oil Can: Baseball, Drugs, and Life on the Edge."
Peter Gammons wrote the forward for the book and mentions interviewing Boyd's father. Boyd discusses his father with Fred and what made him into the man he is today.
They moved on to talk about the baseball writers and the reverence they have for the game. Do people take the game too seriously?
Fred brought up instances where Boyd would get so upset about a poor performance that he'd become very demonstrative on the mound. There is a story from Boyd's past where he got so upset during a game that he took off his uniform on the mound. Was he ever embarrassed after a fit when he looked back at how he acted?
"I wouldn't say so because the game was so personal to me, so when you talk about what I did as an adult you should have seen me in little league," said Boyd. "You should have seen me at 9, 10, 11 and 12. I mean I had fits; break bats, you know, throw the catching equipment over in the bushes. I'm talking about if I lost a ball game, my teammates was afraid of me in little league."
They went on to discuss former teammate Jim Rice and how "Oil Can" questions whether he should be in the Hall Of Fame. Rice was not voted in until his 15th and final year of eligibility. Does "Can" feel there's something fraudulent about Rice, meaning that he's one way to your face and another to media and outsiders?
They went on to discuss his admitted drug use during his playing days and how the Red Sox addressed it, or as he claims, didn't.
"I would say indirectly they condoned it you know, because I was a really good ball player. But see, I was also a really good person and I was very intelligent, so the thing was that and then I was high-strung,' he said. "They really didn't know how to take me, even though I wasn't going to fight back like they might have thought I would. I would be negative toward what they were saying. Nah, nah, nah the thing about it is I never gave them a reason."
Plus "Oil Can" gets heated when Fred brings up former teammate Wade Boggs, and Boyd discussed the way Boggs hurt him in the past.
