Reasonable Doubt: I Find Him Awesome by a Preponderance of the Evidence

On Monday, Lauren linked to the list of famous alcohol abstainers. Trying to squeeze blood from the stone, she did her thing over on the LMNOP (which looks very festive, I must say), and found the link of famous drinkers from wikipedia. 

(Sorry for all the mid-sentence links.  You all caught up?  Good.)

I browsed the drinkers, and noticed one glaring omission from the sports list, whom I then added:

Wade Boggs - American baseball player. It is rumored that Boggs once drank 64 beers on a cross-country flight.

Now hold the phone, you might say.  (No you wouldn't.  Nobody says hold the phone.  They say "What the hell?".) 

Well, what the hell?  How did this get started?

Jeff Nelson, a teammate of Boggs' when they were on the Yankees together, was talking to radio host Steve Sandmeyer.  It began about a year ago, and the story is found on tastybooze.com, and it's is pretty damn hilarious.  A excerpt:

Sandy:  Who would you say drank the most beer out of everyone you ever played with?

Nelson:  Easy, Wade Boggs…..easy

Sandy: (laughing)  Really!?  Wade Boggs?

Nelson:  Oh, yeah, without a doubt.  I’ve never seen anyone drink as much beer as he did in my life:

Sandy:  (laughing) Get outta here, alright, give me an example, like how much did he drink?

Nelson: Oh, I’d say, on a typical road trip, east coast to west coast, say a road game to Seattle……Wade would drink anywhere between 50 and 60 beers.

Sandy:  NO WAY!!  50 or 60 beers.  That is impossible.

Nelson: No, I know…I know how crazy that sounds, and I wouldn’t believe it myself unless I saw him do it…..numerous times. And he drank nothing but Miller Lite.

Then they call up one of Nelson's teammates to try to corroborate the story.  They get Paul Sorrento on the phone, and have this exchange.

Nelly:  Alright Paul, we’ve been talking about Wade Boggs up here today in Seattle.

Sorrento:  (laughing) Yeah, ole Wade huh. 

Nelly: Yeah, alright Paul, I need you to answer one question for me, truthfully now….How many beers would Wade Boggs drink on an east coast to west coast road trip?

Sorrento:  Oh, jeez, (exhaling like a flat tire) I don’t know, like 70.

If I would have heard this over the car radio while driving, I'm quite sure I would have crashed.

Then, drunken college football fans held up a sign that said "Did you know... Wade Boggs drank 64 beers on a cross country flight?"

Screen grab here:

This prompted PTI to ask him about it.

Did that sound like a firm denial to anyone? 

I didn't think so.

Wade Boggs refuses to admit just how many beers he drank, and Tony sums it up best: "We're going to pretend for the rest of our lives it was 64."

So here's to you, Wade Boggs.  Whatever the number really was, know that I'm cracking a Miller Lite to you right now.

D.C. writes "Reasonable Doubt" for The Bathtub on Thursday mornings.  You can e-mail him at dc.bathtub@gmail.com.

Comments

[Bridget]

Liar! You and I both know you don't drink miller lite.

[EmGusk]

i'm still not sure that's possible...but it's funny

[laurenmc18]

Damnnnnnnn

[Andrea]

You edited a Wikipedia entry? DOOOOORK.

[Former O.O.]

Who cares about Boggs after reading that bit about Andre the Giant downing 119 beers in 6 hours? Even if you assume that a cross country flight is about an hour shorter, Andre the Giant still would have had him beat by about 35 beers in that time period.

[D.C.]

Yeah, but HE'S A GIANT! When I hear that a giant drinks a lot, I'm picturing that old Mickey Mouse cartoon where the dude is picking up entire distilleries and downing them.

When I hear Wade Boggs drinking up to 3 cases of beer on a cross country flight, I'm much more impressed.

[Tori]

I can't really put my finger on why this story makes me so happy. But it does. Really, really, preposterously happy.

[Gulliver P. Thistlewhistle]

For me, it's not just that he drank an incredible amount in a relatively short time, something than usually takes at least some effort, so much as that he did so because he was "bored" and "had to do Something on a cross-country flight". I usually read Skymall and go to sleep, but that's just me.

[D.C.]

What about this:

"So I’d say that all in all, he drank over 50 beers on the trip, and this wasn’t just an isolated incident, he did that almost every time."

I mean, Jesus. I'm with Tori, I'm just so happy knowing this.