Mr. Right--A Left-Handed Fenway Hitter

The things Wade Anthony Boggs does with a baseball bat, you get the idea that’s not a real ballplayer out there at all, that it’s Robert Redford. Playing Roy Hobbs. He’s not a natural, he’s unnatural.

In the first place, his lifetime average is .351. It may be higher after this season. Now, nobody in this day and age hits .351 lifetime. Hardly anybody in any age does. Two guys, if you want to be picky. Ty Cobb hit .367 and Rogers Hornsby .359. Well, there was Shoeless Joe Jackson at .356, if you don’t take the tack that he disenfranchised himself by helping throw the 1919 World Series.

Listen! What’s the best pitch in baseball? The fastball? Nope. The curve? Uh-uh. The change? Split-finger fastball?

No. The best pitch in baseball is the pop-up. Even the great players hit thousands of these in their careers. The pop-up with the bases loaded is the greatest pitch you can throw.

Except, you can’t get Wade Boggs on it. He takes it right away from you. You have to throw him something else. Because, you know how many pop-ups Wade Boggs hit last year? Three, as in a-one, a-two, a-three.

Think about it. It’s uncanny. three pop-ups in 758 plate appearances. Some players have that many by the fifth inning. Some players hardly ever hit anything but. I mean, Babe Ruth popped up.

His name should be Wade Boggle. It’s what he does to the mind.

Boggs got 240 hits last season, the most in the league since 1928. He hit safely in 135 games, breaking a league record set by Al Simmons in 1925. If he keeps hitting this way, Cooperstown may come to him. He hit .368 last year to lead the league again for the second time in only four years in the majors.

Gene Mauch says Boggs is the best two-strike hitter in history: “Lots of guys can hit the first pitch. Lots of guys can hit the 3-and-1 pitch. Very few can hit the two-strike pitch consistently. I sometimes think Wade Boggs waits for it.

“Some guys are sitting on a fastball. He’s sitting on two strikes. To hit in the big leagues, you have to be able to hit the two-strike pitch because you’re going to have two strikes on you a lot of the time.”

Boggs got 56% of his hits on two-strike counts and led the league last year, for the third straight time, in on-base percentage, reaching safely 340 times. Only three players in history have reached first more often than that.

What three? Are you ready? Only Babe Ruth, Ted Williams and Lou Gehrig.

Seventy-two times last year, Boggs got two or more hits in a game. Nineteen times he got four in a game.

You can see why you would study Boggs’ stats and would look around and expect to hear a director yelling, “Cut!” through a megaphone and a camera whirring. You might want to check him for wires and a battery.

What’s his secret? A lot of people in baseball would like to know.

I think I do.

I approached this virtuoso, this paragon of baseball excellence, in the dugout at Anaheim Stadium the other day with a request. I wanted to know what Wade Boggs thought it would take to make a .400 hitter. Baseball hasn’t had one since 1941.

Years ago, when I approached the late great Roberto Clemente with a similar request to profile the ideal .400 hitter, he immediately listed all the things he was not.

The hitter he projected would have to be:

--Left-handed.

--Walked a lot. Roberto was a bad-ball hitter who walked as few as 26 times a year.

--On a team that wasn’t necessarily in contention so he could do the little selfish things a guy had to do for his own average.

Clemente also pointed out that night games were bad for a hitter and that the ballpark had to be tailored to his side of the plate at bat.

I put the same proposition to Wade Boggs. The difference in attitude was interesting.

Boggs is a left-handed batter. In a ballpark where the left-field fence is 315 feet away--and the right-field fence is 380 feet away. Terrible handicap, right?

Not to Wade Boggle.

“That’s the way I hit the ball,” he said. “I hit to the opposite field. I like that wall there.”

Well, are night games a roadblock?

Not to hitter Boggs. “You can see better at night,” he said, surprisingly. “You eyes aren’t dilated and more light gets to the retina. You squint in the daytime. It shuts out light. I like to bat in the nighttime.”

Well, surely, Boggs would rather be on a team that plays home games on artificial turf. Fenway Park has grass, but a hitter likes artificial surfaces, right?

Wrong.

“I prefer grass,” said Boggs. “I would like to play all 162 games on grass. A fielder can get to a ball quicker on artificial surface and can play deeper.”

But, surely, grass cuts down on the speed of the ground ball, doesn’t it?

“The slow ground ball is a tough chance for an infielder on grass. It’s an out on artificial surface. You don’t get leg hits on artificial turf.”

Well, wouldn’t he rather have more speed himself?

“I have above average speed,” Boggs said. “I was third-fastest on the team getting down to first base.”

It is considered axiomatic in baseball that, to get 200 hits, you cannot walk too many times, but to hit .400 you have to walk once a game. Pete Rose walked only 36 times one year, 37 another, and got 200 hits almost every season. Ted Williams, the last man to hit .400, walked 2,018 times in his career, 162 times in two different seasons, and never got 200 hits. Boggs shrugged. “You can get 200 hits and 100 walks,” he said. “I’ve done it three times in a row.” In the seasons he had 210, 203 and 240 hits, he also had 92, 89 and 96 walks.

There is the person who always thinks the glass is half full, rather than half empty, and there is the boy who is positive there’s a pony underneath that mess some place.

That’s Wade Boggs.

The grass is greener in his yard. He picks up the cards he’s dealt and thinks, “Boy, can I play these!” The grass is green, the lights are bright and you get three strikes, don’t you?

It may be what makes him a great hitter. But can he hit .400?

Well, thinks Wade Boggs, why not? After all, the last guy who did it was a left-hander in Fenway Park, too, now, wasn’t he?