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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about baseball and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the baseball urban legends featured so far.

BASEBALL URBAN LEGEND: Wade Boggs once drank 64 cans of Miller Lite on a cross-country flight.

Wade Boggs was one of the best third baseman in Major League Baseball history and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2005.

Boggs also happened to be quite a drinker.

Boggs played for the New York Yankees for a number of years (even winning the World Series with the Yankees in 1996)…

While there he played with pitcher Jeff Nelson for a couple of seasons…

Nelson was on a radio show in 2004 when he made some interesting claims about Boggs’ drinking habits…

Nelson: Oh, I’d say, on a typical road trip, east coast to west coast, say a road game to Seattle……Wade would drink anywhere between 50 and 60 beers.

Show’s Host: NO WAY!! 50 or 60 beers. That is impossible.

Nelson: No, I know…I know how crazy that sounds, and I wouldn’t believe it myself unless I saw him do it…..numerous times. And he drank nothing but Miller Lite.

Host: How in the hell did he have time to drink that many beers. For God’s sake, how many times did he have to go to the bathroom?

Nelson: I’m not kidding you Steve. Seriously. Wade was the kind of guy who was always the first one at the club house. So he’d get to the clubhouse, and he’d bring a six pack with him. He’d be there drinking a beer when someone showed up, and as we were all packing our stuff up out of our lockers and getting our bags ready for the trip, Wade would sit there and drink that whole six pack.

Now, at the time, we were flying out of New Jersey, so it was somewhat of a drive from Yankee stadium to the airport in New Jersey. Wade would drink another couple of beers on the bus to the airport. At the time, we were flying this older airplane, it couldn’t make it across the country without refueling, and it wasn’t the fastest airplane in the sky. So we would stop in North Dakota or something. Wade would drink about a half rack between New Jersey and North Dakota, and it would take about a half-hour to an hour to refuel once we got there, so he’d have a few more beers while we were grounded in North Dakota.

Once we got back up in the air, Wade would drink another 10, 11, 12 beers on the way out to the west coast. The whole flight from coast to coast ususally took us well over 7 hours. We’d touch down at Sea-Tac, hop on the bus headed to the Kingdome, and Wade would have another beer or two on the bus. Then, all of us would get to the Kingdome and unpack our bags and sit around and BS with eachother, and Wade would have a beer in his hand the entire time. He was always one of the last people to leave the club house too. So I’d say that all in all, he drank over 50 beers on the trip, and this wasn’t just an isolated incident, he did that almost every time.

Boggs finished his career on the Tampa Bay Devil Rays…

and while there, he played with Paul Sorrento…

who also had played with Nelson in Seattle.

So Nelson called up Sorrento to verify his tale…

Nelson: Yeah, alright Paul, I need you to answer one question for me, truthfully now….How many beers would Wade Boggs drink on an east coast to west coast road trip?

Sorrento: Oh, jeez, (exhaling like a flat tire) I don’t know, like 70.

Boggs was asked about the story on Pardon the Interruption soon after his election in 2005, and he denied it. He admitted that he would drink a lot of beers, but not nearly that many.

So let’s take a look into seeing if this story is legit…
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about baseball and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the baseball urban legends featured so far.

BASEBALL URBAN LEGEND: The Atlanta Braves had a night celebrating a gay group.

In August of 2001, before a game against the Houston Astros, the Atlanta Braves celebrated The Atlanta Games Inc. Night. The Atlanta Games Inc. was a group designed to attempt to draw the Gay Games to Atlanta for the 2006 Gay Games (which did not work, as Chicago got the Games that year).

The Atlanta Gay Men’s Chorus sang the national anthem.

And, as you might imagine, certain groups of people were quite distraught at this turn of events.

However, while it is true that the Braves DID have The Atlanta Games Inc. Night, those apoplectic fans failed to realize that it was simply a matter of the Atlanta Games Inc. taking advantage of a Braves’ promotional offer.
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about tennis and whether they are true or false.

TENNIS URBAN LEGEND: Bohdan Ulihrach was suspended for taking a banned substance that was supplied by…the Association of Tennis Professionals!

In 2002, Czech tennis player Bohdan Ulihrach (who was ranked as high as 22nd in the world in 1997) was suspended by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for using a banned substance.

The substance was Nandrolone, an anabolic steroid.

Ulihrach had traces of the drug in his system and he was banned for two years, fined over $40,000 and lost 100 points from his world ranking.

However, in 2003, the ATP discovered that their own trainers had been giving players a supplement that contained trace elements of Nandrolone!
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about tennis and whether they are true or false.

TENNIS URBAN LEGEND: Frank Sedgman’s hometown had a collection to raise money to keep Sedgman from becoming a professional.

It’s hard sometimes to fully appreciate what professional tennis was like in the days before professionals competed in the major tournaments.

Nowadays, if you are a fan of a professional tennis player, you can follow him and her their whole career in the same tournaments year after year as they compete against the best of the best, so you can see guys like Roger Federer strive to win the career Grand Slam of Tennis.

That was not the case in the old days – the major tennis tournaments like the US Open and Wimbledon were amateur only.

If you became a professional, what you would do would go on tour with other professionals and just play each other, basically as an exhibition.

It’s really sort of amazing to see how long this business model lasted.

In any event, Melbourne, Australia native Frank Sedgman is one of the greatest tennis players to ever live, and in late 1951, after dominating the amateur ranks for a couple of years, decided it was time for him to turn professional.

However, his fans were distraught at the idea of losing him to professional tours, so led by Harry Hopman, a tennis journalist at the Melbourne Herald (and a devout hater of professional tennis), fans raised enough funds to purchase a gas station, then gave it to Sedgman’s fiancee!!!
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about tennis and whether they are true or false.

TENNIS URBAN LEGEND: René Lacoste created a line of sport apparel using a crocodile for a logo.

René Lacoste was a legendary French tennis player of the 1920s and 1930s, but however great of a tennis player he was, he was an even greater innovator of the game.

Lacoste invented the tubular tennis racket, which replaced wooden tennis rackets as the racket of choice for tennis players in the 1960s and ever since (although, of course, modern technology has replaced the original steel tubing with various other material, such as aluminum or graphite).

But Lacoste is best known as something that is fairly odd for a professional athlete to be known for (especially one such as Lacoste, who won the French Open three times, the British Open twice and Wimbledon twice – this guy was a major player) – he is known as a fashion icon!

Lacoste had developed a shirt that he wore when he was playing tennis, and his tennis shirt soon became popular enough that Lacoste co-founded a company, La Société Chemise Lacoste, just to create his tennis shirts.

Lacoste shirts are known for the logo that is sewn onto the breast of the shirt…

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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about football and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the football urban legends featured so far.

FOOTBALL URBAN LEGEND: The Super Bowl is named after the Super Ball.

In the late 1960s, the National Football League and the American Football League began working on a merger of the two leagues. The merger would go slowly but surely, but would begin with the two leagues competing in a championship game at the end of the season similar to the World Series (which pits the American League against the National League) in baseball.

The first championship game took place on January 15, 1967, where the Green Bay Packers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs. The game, at the time, was not called the Super Bowl, but simply the AFL–NFL World Championship Game.

During merger meetings that went on at the time (as the two leagues were still finalizing plans for the merger – the merger had only been agreed on six months earlier), there was debate over what they should call the championship game. Baseball had the “World Series,” so what should football have?

NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle wanted to call it “The Big One.”

However, it was a term coined by Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt that ended up sticking (here’s Hunt alongside legendary Chiefs coach Hank Stram – Hunt is on the left)…

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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about football and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the football urban legends featured so far.

FOOTBALL URBAN LEGEND: The Steelers and the Eagles combined teams for a season.

During World War II, the National Football League was having trouble with keeping their rosters afloat. The military draft had a number of deferments, but even with those deferments, rosters were decimated (and forgot about a draft – any graduated college players went right into the military).

In 1943, Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney saw his team’s roster dwindle down to six active players.

Looking across the state to the Philadelphia Eagles, whose owner Alexis Thompson had 16 players, Rooney had a crazy idea.
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about football and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the football urban legends featured so far.

FOOTBALL URBAN LEGEND: Ryan Fitzpatrick scored a perfect 50 on his Wonderlic test.

Ryan Fitzpatrick was drafted by the St. Louis Rams in the seventh round of the 2005 NFL Draft. He played college football at Harvard University.

Fitzpatrick has been a quarterback in the NFL ever since 2005, first as a back-up for the Rams then a back-up for the Bengals and currently as the staring quarterback for the Buffalo Bills.

Fitzpatrick made headlines in 2005 when news leaked about his performance on the Wonderlic test.

The Wonderlic test is a standard aptitude test that many professions give prospective employees, but it has gained most of its fame from the fact that the NFL gives it to players eligible to be drafted.

Here are some sample questions (courtesy of the Professor Money website):

1. Look at the row of numbers below. What number should come next? ___________

8 4 2 1 1/2 1/4 ?

2. Assume the first two statements are true.

1. The boy plays baseball.
2. All baseball players wear hats.
3. The boy wears a hat

Is the final one:
True
False
Not Certain

3. Paper sells for 21 cents per pad. What will four pads cost? ___________

4. How many of the five pairs listed below are exact duplicates? ___________

Nieman, K. M. / Neiman, K. M.

Thomas, G. K. / Thomas, C. K.

Hoff, J. P. / Hoff, J. P.

Pino, L. R. / Pina, L. R.

Warner, T. S. / Wanner, T. S.

5. PRESENT/RESERVE, Do these words:

have similar meanings;
have contradictory meaning;
mean neither the same nor opposite?

While they might not be the most difficult questions in the world, there IS a speed element to the test – it is how many questions you can answer in twelve minutes. Since there are 50 questions, that’s not a lot of time, even if the questions are simple.

As a result, very few players ever score perfect scores. A very smart person wouldn’t automatically score a perfect 50.

When Fitzpatrick was drafted, a report on the NFL’s website said that he had scored a perfect 50.

Is that true?
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about baseball and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the baseball urban legends featured so far.

BASEBALL URBAN LEGEND: Joel Youngblood got a hit for two different baseball teams in two different cities all in a single day!

Joel Youngblood was a popular member of the New York Mets in the early 1980s, when the team was pretty dreadful.

A Jack-of-all-trades, Youngblood began his career as a sort of super substitute, as he could play many different positions, including catcher! As he went on, though, he became more of an everyday player.

In fact, in 1981, he was actually leading the National League in Batting Average when the season was cut short in June due to a player’s strike. When the season picked up again in August with the All-Star Game, Youngblood was a member of the team. Sadly for him, even though he actually RAISED his average in the days following the return to play, an injury took the rest of the season from him and he was not even eligible for the batting title (and had he been eligible, he WOULD have had the highest batting average in the league).

The next year, though, after his return from the injury, the Mets traded him to the Montreal Expos on August 4, 1984.

He was traded after the Mets defeated the Chicago Cubs in an afternoon game at Wrigley Field, 7-4. Youngblood batted 3rd, played center field and got a hit and drove in what proved to be the go-ahead runs for the Mets in the third.

After the game, Youngblood decided to join his new team, the Expos, who were playing the Philadelphia Phillies in Philadelphia later that night. Youngblood flew to Philadelphia and arrived to the Stadium midway through the game.

The new addition asked to be let into play, and before the bottom of the 6th, he took over from right fielder Jerry White and batted second in the lineup. He came up in the 7th inning and hit a single (his new team would lose, however, 5-4).

So Joel Youngblood managed to get a hit for two different teams in two different cities all on the same day!!

Pretty darn cool, huh?

Youngblood would sign with the San Francisco Giants after the season, and he would spent about six more seasons as a super sub in San Francisco.

An amusing sidenote to Youngblood’s adventures is WHO he got the hits off of – both the Cubs pitcher, Ferguson Jenkins, and the Phillies pitcher, Steve Carlton, are Hall of Famers!

So Joel Youngblood managed to get a hit for two different teams in two different cities off of two different Hall of Fame pitchers all on the same day!!

Hard to beat that…

The legend is…

STATUS: True

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future urban legends columns! My e-mail address is bcronin@legendsrevealed.com

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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about baseball and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the baseball urban legends featured so far.

BASEBALL URBAN LEGEND: Dock Ellis was banned from wearing hair curlers on the field.

Dock Ellis was a strange star baseball player.

As a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1968-1975, Ellis had a lot of highs, but also a lot of lows.

One of his highs was winning 19 games for the Pirates in 1971, in a season that the Pirates won the World Series and Ellis was the starting pitcher for the National League in the All Star Game.

Another high was in 1970, when Ellis throw a no-hitter against the Padres (Ellis later claimed he was on LSD during the game).

But Ellis had his low points, too, like the 1974 game against the Cincinnati Reds, where Ellis attempted to hit every batter in the Reds lineup (he hit the first three, tried to hit the fourth, Tony Perez, who managed to avoid the pitches and draw a walk, and after the first pitch went past Johnny Bench’s head, Ellis was removed from the game).

Or when he was maced by a Reds security guard in 1972 after failing to give identification and for making “menacing gestures” with his fist (Ellis later pointed out that he was trying to show his World Series ring to show he was a member of the Pirates).

However, perhaps the oddest low point in Ellis’ career was when he was banned from wearing hair curlers on the field!
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