Boyd had more than oil in his system
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Former Boston Red Sox pitcher Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd has a tell-all book coming out later this year. He's already telling quite a bit.
Boyd this week revealed he pitched about two-thirds of his games under the influence of cocaine. In a radio interview with WBZ's Jon Miller on Wednesday, Boyd spoke openly of his regular cocaine use.
"There wasn't one ballpark that I probably didn't stay up all night, until 4 or 5 in the morning, and the same thing is still in your system," Boyd said. "It's not like you have time to go do it while in the game, which I had done that.
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"Some of the best games I've ever, ever pitched in the major leagues, I stayed up all night. I'd say two-thirds of them. If I had went to bed, I would have won 150 ballgames in the time span that I played."
Boyd, now 52, won 43 games for the Red Sox from 1984-86 but tailed off dramatically after Boston's World Series loss to the New York Mets in 1986. He lasted 10 years in the majors and posted a 78-77 record and 4.04 ERA.
"I feel like my career was cut short for a lot of reasons," he said on WBZ, "but I wasn't doing anything that hundreds of ballplayers weren't doing at the time; because that's how I learned it."
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The Boston Globe reported Boyd's book -- "They Call Me Oil Can: My Life in Baseball" -- will be in bookstores in June.
Boyd said in the radio interview that he never was asked to take a drug test.
"I never had a drug test as long as I played baseball,'' he said. "I was told that, yeah, if you don't stop doing this we're going to put you into rehab, and I told them . . . I'm going to do what I have to do, I have to win ballgames. We'll talk about that in the offseason; right now, I have to win ballgames.''
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Boyd contends drug use alone is not the reason his career ultimately fell shot of his potential.
"The reason I caught the deep end to it is because I'm black," Boyd said. "The bottom line is the game carries a lot of bigotry, and that was an easy way for them to do it.
"If I wasn't outspoken and a so-called proud black man, maybe I would have gotten the empathy and sympathy like other ballplayers got that I didn't get -- like Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden, Steve Howe. I can name 50 people that got third and fourth chances all because they weren't outspoken black individuals.''
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Boyd remains as outspoken as ever. Don't expect the book to be an extended apology or mea culpa. He expressed no regrets in the radio interview.
"It was something that I had to deal with personally and I succumbed," he said. "I lived through my life, and I feel good about myself. I have no regrets about what I did or said about anything that I said or did. I'm a stand-up person, and I came from a quality background of people.''