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‘Chicken Man‘ Wade Boggs and baseball’s greatest superstitions
There are few athletes in the world more superstitious than baseball players.
From Babe Ruth to today’s stars, many ballplayers are downright fanatical about their pregame or in-game rituals.
The Babe always stepped on second base when jogging in from the outfield. He never, ever let a teammate use one of his bats. And he even wore women’s stockings sometimes to prevent batting slumps.
Hall of Famer Richie Ashburn slept with his bats.
Hall of Fame manager Jim Leyland smoked a cigar every day during a winning streak. He also wore the same, unwashed underwear and socks.
Jason Giambi wore a gold thong under his uniform to prevent hitting slumps.
Moises Alou famously peed on his hands to prevent callouses.
Catcher Mike Redmond sometimes took batting practice while nude to break out of a slump.
Satchel Paige rubbed axle grease on his pitching elbow to keep it loose. It must have worked. The Negro League star and Hall of Famer threw more than 1,700 innings during a 22-year career that spanned five decades.
Roger Clemens rubbed Icy Hot on places where it ought not be rubbed to make him uncomfortable on the mound.
Pitcher Max Scherzer is so superstitious that his biggest superstition is that he is superstitious about his superstitions, so he doesn’t talk about them.
But few players were more notoriously superstitious than Hall of Famer Wade Boggs, a 12-time All-Star who won five batting titles, collected more than 3,000 hits and finished his 18-year career with a .328 average.
Boggs had a bunch of oddball routines. He took batting practice every day at 5:17 p.m. He ran sprints at 7:17, and took 150 groundballs before every game.
Before an at-bat he drew the word “Chai” (the Hebrew word for “life”) in the dirt before stepping to the plate.
But his most famous superstition was eating chicken before every game, earning himself the nickname “Chicken Man.”
Boggs ate all kinds of chicken—grilled chicken, beer-can chicken, Italian chicken, or his wife’s popular fried chicken.
Boggs began eating chicken in 1983, the year he won his first batting title. Every time he ate chicken before a game, the hits just kept coming, and the ritual turned into a superstition. His pregame routine became so famous that 40 years later, his X (formerly Twitter) handle combines his nickname and his number of career hits—@ChickenMan3010
I can confirm that Boggs was indeed fanatical about poultry.
In 1989, my wife and I traveled to New York City for a Yankees-Red Sox game at Yankee Stadium. After purchasing tickets for that night’s game, we took the subway to Central Park to have lunch at Mickey Mantle’s famous Manhattan restaurant.
When we arrived, we were discouraged to see a crowd of sharp-dressed businessmen waiting in line. Wearing T-shirts and jeans, we feared we couldn’t get in—until two casually-dressed guys also wearing T-shirts and jeans walked right to the front of the line.
Encouraged, we waited our turn. “If they can get in, we can too,” I recall thinking.
Once inside, I was shocked to discover that the two T-shirt-wearing guys ahead of us were Boggs and Red Sox backup outfielder Randy Kutcher.
Intrigued, I was suddenly on a mission—I had to find out what Boggs was having for lunch. I walked by his table, nodded a greeting and noticed that, sure enough, he was eating grilled chicken and vegetables. (For the record, the Southern Fried Chicken and mashed potatoes were pretty good, too.)
After witnessing his pregame meal, I couldn’t wait to see what the “Chicken Man” would do against the rival Yankees. Mantle’s poultry was indeed powerful as Boggs went 4-for-6 with two RBI in a 14-8 win. I don’t know if Boggs ate at Mantle’s before every game that week, but he went 11-for-22 with five RBI in the four-game series, so someone served him some tasty yardbird.
A few years ago, Boggs revealed that his chicken-eating habit actually started when a friend who owned a Tampa restaurant suggested he write a cookbook with his favorite chicken recipes from his mother, grandmother and wife. The cookbook, “Fowl Tips,” only added to the “Chicken Man” mystique.
His pregame routine might have started with a cookbook, but when the hits kept coming, it turned into one of baseball’s most famous superstitions.
— Jeff Owens is the editor of SCD. You can reach him at jowens@aimmedia.com.
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Jeff Owens is the editor of SCD.
