Oil Can Boyd Says He Pitched Under The Use Of Cocaine
Dock Ellis Is Not Impressed
Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd said in a recent interview with Jonny Miller on WBZ NewsRadio 1030 in Fort Myers that he used cocaine before many of the games he played in during his professional career.
“Oh yeah, at every ballpark,” Boyd said. “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.”
According to Boyd, he used the drug prior to at least two thirds of his games during his professional career. Boyd also reveals to Miller that he was never asked to take a drug test during his career and that many teammates knew of his cocaine habit.
“All of them knew and the ones that cared came to me,” Boyd recalled. “The Dwight Evans and Bill Buckners… It was the veteran ball players. Some guys lived it. They knew what you were doing, and the only way they knew was they had to have tried it too.”
That Boyd had a taste for the nightlife should hardly be a surprise. After all, his nickname is inspired by fact that “oil” is slang for beer in his homestate of Mississippi. Boyd started 207 games over 10 seasons in the majors, the majority of which he spent with the Boston Red Sox.
