Boggs Says He Wanted to End Affair : Tried to Leave Adams for Two Years, Deposition Claims

Wade Boggs delayed ending an extramarital affair with Margo Adams despite pressure from his agent and his own feelings of frustration, the Boston Red Sox star said in a sworn declaration he recently gave in Irvine.

“The feeling was totally different the last two years than the first two years,” Boggs, 30, said in a deposition given May 16 as part of Margo Adams’ lawsuit against him. “The only way I can describe it is like a volcano getting ready to erupt. Tones in her voice, conversations, arguments that we would have, these kinds of things just led me to believe that this was not a utopia situation.”

That slow realization, Boggs said, culminated in a frantic few days in April 1988, in which he sought out Red Sox officials, teammates who had had affairs and eventually the FBI for guidance in ending his strained relationship with Adams.

Boggs’ 555 pages of deposition statements, obtained by The Times, offer the most detailed account to date of his version of the affair with Adams, 33, of Costa Mesa.

In a pending lawsuit in Orange County Superior Court, Adams will seek to use his statements in an effort to collect a large sum that could be more than $100,000, money that she says Boggs promised her as compensation for accompanying him on team trips from 1984 to 1988. She claims that Boggs persuaded her to quit a job as a mortgage broker to make the trips.

Boggs, 30, has declined with few exceptions to talk about details of the affair publicly. Instead, he concentrated on baseball in the face of speculation that the controversy has affected the play of the five-time American League batting champion, who got off to a slow start this season. Howeever, Boggs, averaging .333, is now tied for third among American League hitters.

Boggs was required to discuss the case during the three deposition statements that he has given so far to Adams’ attorney--two in Florida in February and one in Irvine last month.

In the deposition, Boggs acknowledged that he paid for the travel and accommodations of his “mistress” during their rendezvous, and offered to help Adams out of financial problems that she said the frequent travels caused her.

He said that early in their affair, he encouraged Adams to quit her job and find one that would make it “easier to travel” with him.

But he adamantly denied Adams’ assertion that, for the duration of their relationship, he paid her $2,000 a month in cash and also agreed to compensate her more fully later for lost income.

“I wouldn’t stand for that,” he said. “I felt that that’s paying for her to be a mistress. I felt that reimbursing her on her plane flights and whatever expenses she incurred in the city that she was at was sufficient enough.”

Struck by “an infatuation” with a woman he first spotted wearing a pink miniskirt in an Anaheim bar, Boggs said: “In the beginning . . . if I could have seen her every day of the year, it would have been great.”

But Boggs said the passion gradually dimmed, and about halfway through the relationship, he began to think about ending it.

Boggs was concerned that his wife, Debbie, might discover the affair.

Debbie, married to Boggs since 1976, had learned about previous short-lived relationships with other women--including one in Ohio whom Boggs said he had gotten pregnant--but that his wife had never left him, he said.

But Boggs said he feared his wife would view the Adams relationship differently if she found out. “One-night stands are acceptable, but two-year affairs are not,” he said in the deposition.

And so, even though the affair was common knowledge among many Red Sox players and team officials, Boggs said, he went to great lengths to conceal it from his wife.

Boggs said he was concerned that Adams might tell his wife and make good on her alleged threat that: “If you break up with me, I’m going to make your life living hell.”