Top 106 Baseball Players: #93 - Wade Boggs

Wade Boggs

Wade Boggs was one of the best hitters of the past 40 years, and was always in contention for the league batting title throughout the 1980's. He was never a power hitter, but he still always struck fear in the hearts of opposing pitchers.

He reached the majors in 1982, and as a rookie he hit .349, which would have won him his first batting title, but he did not have enough plate appearances to be included on the leaderboard.

Over the next 9 seasons, he finished in the top 5 in batting average every year, including 5 batting titles, and 4 in a row from 1985-1988, making him one of 5 players in history to accomplish that, joining Tony Gwynn, Rod Carew, Ty Cobb, and Rogers Hornsby. He also reached 200 hits in 7 consecutive seasons, which was the AL record until Ichiro Suzuki broke it. He had a peak of 240 hits in 1985, the highest total for any player since 1930.

Even though it was well known that he wasn't a power hitter (he only reached double digits in home runs twice in his career), he nevertheless led the league in intentional walks 6 straight times from 1987 to 1992, which shows that pitchers feared him even knowing that he wouldn't hit it out of the park.

He reached the playoffs 6 times in his career, advancing to the World Series twice. With the Red Sox in 1986, he hit .262 in the playoffs, well below his career average, and they lost to the Mets in 7 games. When he returned a decade later with the Yankees, he hit only .158 through the playoffs, but still received a World Series ring. In his other 4 playoff seasons, he hit .364, but his teams lost the Divisional Series each time.

In his final season, while playing for Tampa Bay, he became the 23rd to reach 3000 career hits, and was the first one to reach 3000 on a home run, which was extra special considering that only 118 of his career hits were homers. He retired at the end of that season, and is among the top 35 all time in hits, doubles, walks, batting average, and on base percentage.

Boggs was one of the best ever at both making contact and getting on base, and despite his relative lack of playoff success, he will long be remembered as a tough out and one of the best to ever play the game.