Red Sox To Retire Wade Boggs’ Number 26

Twenty-two years after leaving for the Yankees, Wade Boggs will finally have another day in the Fenway Park spotlight. The Red Sox will retire the third baseman’s number 26 in May.

During the 1980s, Boggs was a virtually unparalleled hitter; he won the A.L Batting Title five times and was an eight-time Silver Slugger. Between 1982 and 1991, Boggs batted over .325 nine times. Soon after those years, however, Boggs left Boston for the Bronx and joined the hated Yankees. To make matters worse, he won the 1996 World Series in New York while the Red Sox were still suffering through the Curse of the Bambino. Boggs would later spend the final two seasons of his career with the Tampa Bay Rays, who have already retired his number.  

Off the field, Boggs famously appeared in the Simpsons episode “Homer at the Bat;” in which he and several other major leaguers played themselves as ringers for the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant’s softball team, only to be struck down in a series of increasingly unlikely circumstances. Boggs, for example, was unable to play after being knocked out in a fight over who England’s greatest prime minister was; Boggs supported Pitt the Elder while Barney Gumble favored Lord Palmerston

Photo: Wade Boggs #26 of the Boston Red Sox swings at a pitch during an MLB game against the Oakland A’s circa 1990 at the Oakland Alameda County Stadium in Oakland, California . (Photo by Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images)