Hall of Famer Wade Boggs talks collecting, MLB rules changes and state of the game

Of all the Major League Baseball players whose career took place after World War II, Wade Boggs currently owns the highest lifetime batting average (.328 or .3278) of any living player with at least 1,000 at-bats and 1,000 games.

Boggs, Hall of Fame Class of 2005, beats fellow Cooperstown inductee Rod Carew in this category by about the width of a stitch on a baseball (.3277).

Boggs first appeared in the big leagues in 1982 with the Boston Red Sox, hitting .349 in just over a hundred games and placing third in American League Rookie of the Year voting. The next season he won his first of five AL batting titles, hitting .361 and handily thwarting Carew’s second-place average of .339.

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At last summer’s Chantilly, Va. sports memorabilia show Boggs was a popular autograph guest and took some time to chat with SCD contributor Doug Koztoski.

In 1983 you had your first mainstream baseball cards, with individual rookie cards from Donruss (#586), Fleer (#179) and Topps (#498). Which of those three is your favorite?

Probably the one swinging (Donruss); you always like an action shot. I always wanted an action shot on my bubble-gum card. I wasn’t one of the guys [at] Spring Training where they go around taking pictures. You pose for that, because they get everybody to pose and their day is done; they [the photographers] don’t have to work the game.

1983 Donruss Wade Boggs rookie card. eBay

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Of the mainstream cards that came out during your career, which ones do you like the most?

I think there is a card with an American flag on it, from the All-Star game in Texas. I believe I was with the Yankees at the time. That’s probably one of my favorites because it’s got the American flag on it. (Some of the attraction to the 1997 Bowman Chrome International Refractor is likely due to Boggs’ dad serving in both the Marines in WWII and the Air Force in Korea).

1997 Bowman Chrome International Wade Boggs Refractor. eBay

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Did you collect cards as a kid?

Oh, I had a bunch of cards on the spokes of my bicycle where it made it sound like “vroom, vroom, vroom,” one of those things, but no, not really. Back then you ate the bubble gum and if you got a Mickey Mantle card you just didn’t do anything with it. We didn’t know at the time, collecting wasn’t a big thing back then when I was growing up.

Who was your favorite player or team growing up?

I was a huge Oakland A’s fan back in the early ’70s. I loved Reggie Jackson. I grew up in the ’60s in Brunswick, Ga., so I followed the Braves a lot. I liked Phil Niekro, Rico Carty, Hank Aaron and all of those guys. Once I started playing high school baseball and all of that, the guys to watch were Pete Rose and Reggie Jackson.

Wade Boggs and Reggie Jackson prior to a game at Fenway Park in 1982. Focus on Sport/Getty Images

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Did you keep anything from your career, signed baseballs, photographs and the like?

Oh yeah, I’ve got various bats of guys that were around at the time, but other than that I wasn’t a guy who would go hound another guy in the clubhouse and say, “Hey, would you mind signing this for me?”

MLB instituted several rule changes for the 2023 season. What are your thoughts on the pitch clock?

Baseball is such a unique sport that it didn’t have a time on it and now they add a time element to where they want to speed up the game and, in my opinion, the simplicity of the game is something that makes it unique. You don’t have to worry about 15-minute periods, you don’t have to worry about this or that, it goes at its own pace.

Well now, Major League Baseball says that people are getting bored with baseball and we want to speed the game up so they can get home sooner and so that is what they are basically doing with the pitch clock and, coincidentally, sales are down for concessions and now the owners are complaining about that. So, where do you draw that fine line of a game lasting an hour and 50 minutes to two hours now and their concessions are way down.

When a game lasted three hours, beer sales were at a high and hot dogs and all of that, they made a lot of money. Well, now, they’re going to have charge extra for parking.

What about MLB essentially doing away with, or at least heavily limiting, defensive shifts?

Well if you are stupid enough to hit into a shift you deserve to make an out, that’s the bottom line. These are professional athletes that perform at a high level, and with that said, you ought to be able to hit the ball the other way with nobody standing there.

They talk a lot about the big pitching arms in MLB these days. Both starters and out of the bullpen, there are so many more of them compared to years ago. How do you feel about that and who were some of the biggest arms that you battled?

What I have to say with that is the calibrations on the Jugs [speed] gun now are [measured] out of the hand. So, that’s where they’re reading it. When I played, the speed was measured at home plate, so the discrepancy between the hand and home plate deducts about five miles an hour. So in my day, if a guy threw 97 (mph), he was throwing 102 out of the hand. So nowadays guys are 101,102 out of the hand, at home plate it’s about 96, 97 miles an hour, so there’s no difference in guys throwing hard now versus when I played.

Even out of the bullpen?

If you go back and take one of the old Jugs guns and get it on one of these guys nowadays, he’ll read like Nolan Ryan used to, 97, 98 miles an hour.

You faced Nolan Ryan several times in your career, what was that experience like?

Intimidating.

And what do you remember about how you did against Nolan Ryan?

Around .300. (He was 4-for-19 for a .286 average with a double, a triple, plus five walks and six strikeouts)

What do you remember about getting your 3,000th hit?

It was a home run. I was the first guy to do it. It was monumental and it was sort of like the first guy that walks on the moon, nobody can take that away from you. I know [Derek] Jeter and A-Rod also did it, but I was the first.

Wade Boggs bats for the Red Sox in 1986 at Fenway Park. Focus on Sport/Getty Images

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Do you follow big-league baseball much these days?

No, it’s hard to watch.

Because?

The rule changes. A guy can strike out without even swinging the bat [due to a pitch clock violation/delay of game]. That’s a joke. What I’m hoping for is bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, World Series, and it’s 3-and-2 and the guy does not get into the batter’s box [in time] and they ring him up [called out on strikes], and he doesn’t get to hit and the World Series is over. I hope that happens and that will put a black eye on baseball and they will have to make an adjustment.

Rod Carew might just second that.

Wade Boggs won five batting titles from 1983-88. Ronald C. Modra/Getty Images