Red Sox Star Used Coke Throughout His Career

Former Major League baseball star Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd, has admitted to using cocaine throughout his career. The pitcher—who played for the Boston Red Sox, the Montreal Expos and the Texas Rangers—claims he was high on cocaine for two-thirds of the time he was pitching from the mound. “Oh yeah, at every ballpark. 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," Boyd tells WBZ Radio. "It’s not like you have time to go do it while in the game, which I had done that.” He continues, “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." He reflects, "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.”

Back in the '80s Major League players weren't drug tested like today—Boyd was never once approached to take a drug test. However, “I was told that, yeah, if you don’t stop doing this we’re going to put you into rehab, and I told them [expletive] that [expletive]. I’m going to do what I have to do, I have to win ball games.” Boyd has been busy at work on his new biography, They Call Me Oil Can: My Life in Baseball, which comes out in June. Despite his past troubles, he says he has no regrets: “It was something that I had to deal with personally and I succumbed. I lived through my life and I feel good about myself... I’m a stand-up person and I came from a quality background of people.”