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Boggs All Talked Out After Irvine Session With Lawyers, Adams

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Times Staff Writer

It had been a brutally long morning of talking--about soured affairs, about jilted lovers, about disputed promises--and Wade Boggs did not feel like taking his cuts at any more questions.

While cameras flashed, the Boston Red Sox baseball star dashed toward an elevator in silence, leaving behind a pack of media people, a plush office suite filled with lawyers and a woman who says Boggs deceived her.

“Go Red Sox,” Boggs muttered flatly as he left the Irvine office building where he had answered questions at a deposition for 3 1/2 hours about his extramarital relationship with Margo Adams of Costa Mesa.

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But talk of baseball seemed out of place on this day as Boggs and Adams began the local stretch of their extra-inning contest over a splintered affair, an affair that has splashed their names in headlines nationwide and has landed Boggs in court.

In town for the first time this year to begin a series against the California Angels, Boggs, together with his lawyer, met with Adams and her lawyer behind closed doors to give a sworn statement in advance of a civil trial of Adams’ claim, which is still many months away.

Adams, a mortgage broker and former Miss Stanton who more recently has graced the pages of Penthouse, is charging that Boggs reneged on promises to compensate her financially for lost income and expenses she incurred while she traveled with him constantly on Red Sox road trips between 1984 and 1988.

Emerging Tuesday from her first meeting with Boggs since he gave a deposition during spring training in Florida 3 months ago, Adams said: “It wasn’t the same as seeing him in Tampa. The feeling just wasn’t the same. . . . He never even looked at me.”

Adams, hinting at what her lawyer called a teamwide “permissiveness” toward personal relationships, added, “He got more into the personal lives of the other players . . . such as paternity lawsuits of other players that were kept quiet.” She declined to elaborate.

‘Case Continues to Improve’

Her attorney, James McGee of Irvine, said the deposition revealed a pattern of inconsistent statements by Boggs that he said showed “a propensity . . . to protect his public image.”

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Pointing, for example, to Boggs’ assertion Tuesday that he never denied having an affair with Adams, the attorney said: “I think that every time I get Wade Boggs into a deposition, our case continues to improve.”

While Boggs refused to discuss the meeting, his attorney blasted the proceeding as “a waste of time.”

“It was just another boring day of depositions,” said attorney Jennifer King of Tustin. With questioning of Boggs left unfinished Tuesday, a fourth meeting is scheduled for next month to continue the deposition.

McGee said the extensive questioning is needed to flesh out the details of the 4-year relationship between Boggs and Adams, but attorney King said the legal tactics are tantamount to harassment.

She said she plans to seek a court order that would prevent McGee from requiring Boggs to appear at any future deposition sessions.

“He’s tired of the intrusion and he’s tired of the harassment,” King said. “They’re trying to make this as expensive and distasteful as they can to Wade to pressure him into giving in to their demands.”

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Adams indicated recently that she would drop the case for $125,000, but Boggs countered with a $20,000 offer that she termed unacceptable, and a settlement now seems out of the question, attorneys say. A trial in Superior Court in Santa Ana may still be 8 months to a year away, King said.

Rice, Evans Subpoenaed

Meanwhile, Red Sox stars Jim Rice and Dwight Evans were served with subpoenas in Anaheim Tuesday, McGee said, compelling them to give statements in Boston in June about their knowledge of the Boggs-Adams affair.

McGee is still seeking to have subpoenas served on several other players who are familiar with the “wifelike duties” that Adams allegedly performed for Boggs during their relationship, the lawyer said.

Also at Tuesday’s deposition, McGee said he was surprised to hear Boggs acknowledge for the first time that he--not his agent or team officials--had initially contacted the FBI last year to charge that Adams was “blackmailing” him over their broken affair.

That complaint led federal agents to question Adams about the alleged extortion attempt, an interrogation that Adams says humiliated and shocked her.

McGee maintained that the acknowledgement may allow him to seek to broaden Adams’ lawsuit to include slander and emotional distress charges against Boggs, even after the 4th District Court of Appeal in February threw out what amounted to the financial bulk of Adams’ $12-million lawsuit.

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On His Game--Wade Boggs insists off-field problems aren’t affecting his play. Sports, Page 8.

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