My Favorite Red Sox Players 31-26

 

31. Rickey Henderson

This year I'm doing a countdown of my all-time Top 31 Favorite Boston Red Sox players. Note: these are players that I consciously remember seeing play. So Ted Williams, Yaz, Luis Tiant, Fred Lynn, Moe Berg aren't on the list.

Kicking off the list is one of my top five favorite baseball players of all time. He didn't contribute a lot to the Boston club, though he did have his moments. He was old, but still funny as hell. And it was awesome just to watch him get into his crouch and hit.

I'm talking about the one and only Rickey Henderson. When I was a kid, my brother and I worshipped Rickey. We thought that he was the absolute pinnacle of speed and power and cool. Having him on the Red Sox, even if he was a shadow of himself, was a dream come true.

Rickey is Rickey is Rickey now matter how old he was.

30. Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd

Number 30 on the list of my All-Time Favorite Red Sox players is one Mr. Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd. He was temperamental, a little crazy but loved to pitched. He kept going well into his 40s in different pro and semi pro leagues.

If he made the All-Star team in 1986 (and he probably should have), could things have been different for him and the Sox that year? Maybe he wouldn't have gotten blasted the night before Game 7 of the World Series and be counted on to pitch instead of Al Nipper? Who knows? But that was the Can.

I have a feeling that if Boyd pitched a generation later, he'd have been something. There was a lot of bullshit that he had to deal with that had he had a more sympathetic front office or supporting system, it may have benefited him greatly. Even in this burst of a career, he shown brightly.

29. Mike Boddicker

Boddicker may no longer be a widely remembered name in Boston but when the Sox got him in 1988 (for minor leaguers Curt Schilling and Brady Anderson) he was the perfect number three starter (behind Clemens and Hurst).

A control pitcher with a dominating hook, Boddicker was quietly component and was the pitcher that you depended on most in the ensuing years. Yes, even more than the combustible Roger Clemens.

I liked watching him pitch because he was thinking out there, seemingly a step or two ahead of the hitter. You could do worse with a staff that had Mike Boddicker at the two or three position. Had the Sox kept Bruce Hurst after the 1988 season and they had a starting staff of Clemens, Hurst and Boddicker; they could have done some stuff during that time. Maybe, just maybe, they could've have slid past the A's one year--provided one of these guys got hot.

28. John Marzano

Number 28 in the list of my favorite Red Sox is a guy who’s every one’s Olympic hero. Yes, I’m talking about John Marzano.

Part of the stacked 1984 Olympic team Marzano was drafted by the Sox, given very opportunity to win a job and ended up as the team’s backup catcher. He had his moments and he was a part of the wave of exciting rookies that made their debuts in 1987.

Marzano was the classic, if he was on a great team, then he must be great too type of players. That 1984 Olympic team was legendary by the time Marzano hit the scene: Barry Larkin, Will Clark, Mark McGwire, BJ Surhoff; if Marzano was on that team, he had to be great, right? It doesn't always work out that way. Marzano made the majors, which is awesome. He hung around for a bunch of years, also awesome. But he was never really a star.

However, for a little while he held the hope of being the next star.

But what I like most about John Marzano is his takes on the Red Sox message board Sons of Sam Horn. Whoever that person is, they know their stuff. This entry is a salute to that guy (or gal)!

27. Lee Smith

The day the Sox got Lee Smith, I was truly shocked. It may have been the first time the Sox have shocked me in a good way. And it was for Calvin Schiraldi and Al Nipper. Smith’s first game was tough, he blew an Opening Day save against the Tigers, but he was nails for 1988 and 89.

For some reason GM Lou Gorman signed Jeff Reardon in the 89 offseason and so the Sox had two really great closers on the roster at once. The idea was that Gorman was going to trade Smith despite the promise that "both men will share the closing duties", which even back then seemed like the biggest pile of shit ever. In May Smith was sent to St. Louis for Tom Brunansky, who was fine. And that was it for Lee Arthur in Boston.

All in all, I'd rather have saved the Reardon money, kept Smith and not had Brunansky. Gorman was so weird because by the early-90s, it seemed that he was trying to recapture the glory of the 1987 Minnesota Twins with Reardon, Brunansky and Frank Viola all on the roster. I mean they did win the World Series, but they really shouldn't have; both the Tigers (and Blue Jays) and Cards were so much better than them.

I never understood why Gorman spent the money on Reardon. No one has ever explained it either other than Gorman like Reardon better. But that was Lou Gorman in a nutshell, sometimes he could make a brilliant move (like getting Lee Smith for nothing) and then he could turn around and make a dumb move (like signing Reardon when Smith is already on your roster).

26. Wade Boggs

He’s number 26 on your scorecard and number 26 on this list. Of course I’m talking about the guy who literally can drink the most beers—and not some fabrication your dumbest friend in college made up—Wade Boggs.

When Boggs was on the Sox I never liked him very much. I mean, I liked that he was on the team and got a ton of hits and peppered the wall with a billion doubles but I focused more on what he didn’t do. Namely hit home runs.

Getting on base, working his ass off to be play a good third base, walking. That was stuff for wimps. I wanted one-dimensional homerun hitters on my team. I wanted guys who were fast and athletic. And when he did decide to hit home runs, like he did in 1987 (a years everyone did, incidentally) I used that against him.

Boggs was a strange dude that I never appreciated but I should have. All he did was hit. And hit. And hit. That’s not easy at all. In fact it’s probably more difficult than swinging from your heals every at bat.

A lot of people hold it against him that he went to the Yankees but the Sox released him and New York offered him a job, what else was he suppose to do? Not only that but Boston let him languish in the minors for years despite him being ready for prime time.

I’d have probably told the Sox to pound sand too.

Mike Boddicker 1989 Topps

Sometime in the last year or so I received this card but I'm not sure if it was from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

On July 29, 1988; Lou Gorman made a trade that worked out well for both teams sending Red Sox prospects Brady Anderson and Curt Schilling to the Baltimore Orioles for veteran right hander Mike Boddicker. Anderson was a big time prospect and broke camp with the big-league at the beginning of the year and was sent back to Pawtucket by May. Schilling was a wild righty with good stuff, but a five-cent brain. At the time, no one really expected Schilling to do anything but Boston fans were nervous about losing Anderson. 

Anderson didn't have his breakout year until four season later in 1992 and became a three-time All Star with O's for the rest of the 1990s. Curt Schilling has a very good shot of making the Hall of Fame (if he can shut his mouth for more than five minutes) but didn't reach his potential until after the Houston Astros (who acquired him from an exasperated Orioles club) sent him to Philadelphia. In the City of Brotherly Love and with the Arizona Diamondbacks and back to the Red Sox, Schilling took off and became a perennial All-Star as well as one of the more dominant pitchers for the next 15 years. He lead his teams to four World Series, winning three of them -- including two all timers in 2001 and 2004. 

Mike Boddicker played with the Sox for two-and-a-half seasons compiling a 39-22 record before signing a free agent deal with the Kansas City Royals in the winter of 1990 and played for the Brewers in his last season. 

Why did this deal work out for both teams? The Orioles received two players that had they used patience with BOTH former Sox prospects would have seen a better return on their investment. But they only stuck with Anderson and he proved to be a player to wait for. Anderson had one of the strangest home run years in 1996 when he 50 round trippers, he never hit more than 24 before or after that year. When the O's began a mini renaissance in the Charm City, Anderson was one of their better players. 

Boddicker was the perfect fit for the Sox needs from 1988 through 1990. In July of 1988, the Sox were hot as hell flushed with Morgan Magic. They had Roger Clemens and Bruce Hurst to lead them, but after that, the pitching staff was pretty bleak. Gorman got Boddicker and he was the perfect third man in the rotation, going 7-3 with a 2.63 ERA for his new team. Not too bad. 

And with Hurst departing for San Diego that winter, he fit in nicely behind Clemens as the number two man on the staff winning 15 and 17 games in the next two seasons before taking off to KC. 

The reason why this trade works out for both teams is because where they were at at the time. The Sox were in the middle of a pennant race and couldn't afford to waste time on players that might be good in two, three or in Schilling and Anderson's case, four to five seasons down the road. Baltimore, on the other hand, had nothing but time. That year they started 0-22 and were in the midst of a full-fledged rebuild--wasting Cal Ripken's prime in the mean time--they had nothing else to do but see if the kids they had in their minor league system would hit. And some did. 

Most of the time, baseball trades aren't that big of a deal, they really don't change a team too much. Every once in awhile there will be a steal of a deal (like when Gorman sent Jeff Bagwell to the Astros for Larry Andersen in 1990) but those are few and far between. Even more rarer are the trades that help both teams, like this one. 

Brady Anderson 1988 Topps Traded

On May 23, 2016, I received the above card. Here is what I wrote about it on Facebook:

“After taking the weekend off the Baseball Card Bandit strikes (Ha! Baseball pun!) again. 

Good old Brady Anderson he lasted a little bit with the Red Sox, a little bit on steroids (allegedly) and a lot in our hearts. 

Kudos BCB.”

At the beginning of the 1988 season, the Boston Red Sox were floundering. Most of the rookies that were inserted during the previous season were experiencing sophomore slumps and the leftover veterans weren’t doing much better. For a young squad, they were a dead-ass team and they were going nowhere, fast.

In the middle of the season General Manager Lou Gorman knew a change was needed, so he fired field manager John McNamara and replaced him with Joe Morgan. At the time, the Sox were nine games behind the Detroit Tigers and the Morgan hire was supposed to last long enough for Gorman and Cardinals pitching coach Mike Roarke to work out a deal bringing him to Boston.

The Red Sox won Joe Morgan’s first game as a manager and proceeded to win 12 in a row. They also set a Major League record by winning 24 straight home games in a row too. For a team that was buried at the All-Star break, a month later the Red Sox were sitting on top of the American League East standings. Walpole Joe wasn’t going anywhere and Roarke never got a chance to manage in the bigs.

Now Gorman had to change direction and build for a playoff run. He sent Anderson, who played in 41 uninspiring games with the Sox at the beginning of the season, to the Baltimore Orioles for starting pitcher Mike Boddicker. The Sox sweetened the deal by adding Curt Schilling to the transaction too.

There are times when you’re over a barrel and you have to do something, and for Gorman this was one of those times (though it wouldn’t be the first time he got fleeced by an opposing GM). Boddicker pitched very well for the Red Sox for the next few years and in 1988 he was slotted behind Roger Clemens and Bruce Hurst as Boston’s number three pitcher. The Sox stumbled a bit in September, but held on to get crushed by the Oakland Athletics in four straight games in the American League Championship series.

Brady Anderson started slowly with the Orioles, this was the Orioles team that opened the season with 21 straight losses, so there wasn’t a lot of pressure on anyone to win right now. Anderson played a decent centerfield but didn’t hit over .231 or slug more than four home runs in the ensuing three seasons. In 1992, Anderson turned it on becoming an All-Star for the first time and jacking up his counting stats. He launched homers (21), stole bases (53) and went from being good-field, no-hit to good-field, good-hit. The Orioles found themselves a weapon.

The next two years, his numbers stayed about the same: mid-300s on base and mid-400s for slugging. But in 1996, Anderson went bananas, slamming 50 home runs on the season. It was a magical season for him, but it also brought a lot of eyeballs and suspicion.

His previous nine seasons, Anderson never came close to 30 home runs (21 was his high), never mind 50. Where did this power surge come from? When people talk about the Steroid Era, after you get past the Mark McGwires, Sammy Sosas and Barry Bondses, Brady Anderson’s name is usually the next one to be brought up. And I admit that it does look a little fishy. Brady Anderson was a speedy centerfielder type. He ran well, hit in the mid .260s and showed flashes of power. How did he hit 50 home runs?

I don’t know. All I know is that he did. If he did take steroids why did he only do so for one year? He wasn’t a free agent that season, he couldn’t shop his talent around until after the 1997 season – and he slumped big time then, only hitting 18 homers and seeing his slugging percentage tumble by 150 points. Wouldn’t it make sense to keep the juice going for one more year to quiet the nay-sayers and get an even bigger payday? It’s not like Major League Baseball even tested for steroids or anything, he could cycle whenever he felt like he needed a boost and goose his numbers higher and higher.

I don’t know and I think that’s why I’m not comfortable tossing him on the steroids pyre with the rest of the known steroids guys. Baseball is a funny game, every once in a while, players come along and outperform their career norms and then the next season they turn into a pumpkin. Before he gained fame as the manager who led the Mets to their last World Series victory, Davey Johnson hit 43 Ding Dong Johnsons for the Atlanta Braves in 1973. The following year he hit 15 and the year after that he hit zero. Prior to 1973, the second baseman’s career high was 18.

Things happen, sometimes the lightening you catch in the bottle lasts for the full season. Maybe that’s what happened to Brady Anderson.

The closest Anderson came to matching his career high in bombs was during the 1999 season when he hit 24. He was out of baseball three seasons later.

Did the Sox make the right move trading Anderson (and Schilling) for Boddicker? I say yes. Anderson was never going to be allowed to develop for four seasons in Boston. Fans would have been calling for his head by the end of the 1990 season. Plus, the Red Sox needed Mike Boddicker in 1988 and 1990. The Athletics lost to two huge underdogs the year that they crushed the Sox, so even though they looked infallible, they obviously weren’t unbeatable. Maybe if Clemens got Orel Hershiser or Jose Rijo hot, they could have snuck passed the A’s and played in the Series.

As far as Schilling goes, he got lit up in his stints with the Orioles and later the Astros, before he got his shit together with the Phillies. The Sox share the blame in not recognizing the talent of Schilling with Baltimore and Houston, but a lion’s share falls on Schilling’s shoulders too.

The story is, Schilling was messing around in a Houston gym during the winter when Roger Clemens was working out. Clemens saw what Schilling was doing and reamed him out and said that he was too good to be that bad. Schilling took the advice to heart and began to dedicate himself to pitching and all of the things that go along with it. The following year, he led the Phillies to the 1993 World Series.

Two quick thoughts:

The Red Sox did a pretty good job of scouting in the early 1980s: Mike Greenwell, Ellis Burks, Jody Reed, Todd Benzinger, Sam Horn, John Marzano, Brady Anderson, Jeff Bagwell, two-time All Star Scott Cooper, Tim Naehring, Mo Vaughn, John Valentin, Phil Plantier and John Flaherty all made the bigs and experienced a bunch sort of success. Schilling was about the only pitcher the Sox signed during this time that did anything.

I wonder how that compares to the late 60s/early 70s run of developed players: Jim Rice, Fred Lynn, Dwight Evans, Carlton Fisk, Ben Oglive, Cecil Cooper, Juan Beniquez, Ernie Whitt and Butch Hobson. Again, not a lot of pitchers in the mix here. But man, do the Sox scouts know how to pick hitters or what? Damn.

My parents brought my brother and I to a Sox/Orioles game in September 1988 and both of us were obsessed with getting autographs. We got to the park early and were trying to get someone, anyone to sign. My brother being smaller and more adventurous than me climbed on the Orioles dugout and stuck his head down and gave his and my baseball to someone for an autograph, who passed it along to some other guys before giving it back to my brother. I was excited about one signature: Brady Anderson, nonplussed about another: Joe Orsulak and upset with my brother for the third: Curt Schilling.

“Why did you get Schilling,” I asked. “He sucks. I’m glad you got Anderson because he’s going to the Hall of Fame, but we wasted a good spot on the ball for Schilling.”

Then, as now, I was a bit of a dick AND I act like I do, but I know nothing about baseball.