Oil Can Boyd Admits to Pitching ‘Two-Thirds’ of His Games Under the Influence of Cocaine

Boyd, who is one of Red Sox Nation and Independent Ball’s favorite sons due to his longevity and outspokenness, revealed just how intense his cocaine use was during his playing days. Not shockingly, this comes mere months before the release of his book.

Boyd told WBZ Radio:

“There wasn’t one ballpark that I probably didn’t stay up all night, until four or five in the morning, and the same thing is still in your system. It’s not like you have time to go do it while in the game, which I had done that.

“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. I feel like my career was cut short for a lot of reasons, but I wasn’t doing anything that hundreds of ball players weren’t doing at the time; because that’s how I learned it.”

A player named after beer happened to party too hard during the halcyon days of cocaine abuse? Color me shocked. Throw in how quickly his career fell apart and this is not shocking information.

While I’m not naive enough to think that drug use and abuse doesn’t exist in the Major Leagues, baseball players are just people and people use and abuse drugs, I don’t think behavior like this would fly in a modern clubhouse. Sports science and player contracts have grown too large for players or their teammates to accept a player showing up to 66% of their games either high or coming down off a bender.

I do wonder if flu-like symptoms is now used to cover a variety of abuses other than the occasional Sunday hangover.