Day 33/365 Blogging Every Day - You Don't Get The Nickname "Oil Can" By Being Normal

You don't get the nickname "Oil Can" by being an ordinary person. This proved to be true when Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd came into the league. He got his nickname from his love of beer, often being called an oil can for how much he could drink at a time. Alcohol would be the least of Oil Can's concerns throughout his life. Cocaine would also not be Oil Can's biggest concern, but boy was he ever good at doing it. Oil Can's personality would be his biggest issue, but first lets dig into why Oil Can was one of the best to ever do it... in terms of coke.

Oil Can Boyd's drug problems started as a young child. In an interview one time Oil Can said that he smoked weed before every single game he played from little league all the way through college where he played at Jackson State University in Mississippi. He would get drafted by the Boston Red Sox in 1980 in the 16th round and he would put down the pre game weed for a little bit, but still kept that passion for getting more drunk than a frat boy on a Friday night.

1985 and 1986 were Oil Can's best years as a Red Sox. Before that, he worked his way up to the majors pretty quickly making his debut in 1982, a year after he was introduced to cocaine. His 1986 year was his best year by far when he went 16-10 with a 3.78 ERA. His secret to his success? Smoking crack everyday. Before the 86' season began, Oil Can was hospitalized due to doing to much crack, but he had a cover up story that he had hepatitis. His 1986 year would probably be one of the craziest years a human being has ever lived.

As stated earlier, before spring training started, Oil Can was hospitalized for doing too much coke. His year started out very well as he was 11-6 with a 3.7 ERA before the all-star break, but he was not selected to be an all-star. When Oil Can found out that he was not an all-star, he destroyed the Red Sox clubhouse and was suspended by the team for 3 days. The Red Sox sent Oil Can to a hospital to do some psychiatric and emotional testing as Oil Can was only 26 at the time and they wanted his arm to be attached to a fully functional human so he could have a good baseball career. This proved to be a failure as just a few weeks later Oil Can was pulled over by cops and had his car searched for drugs. The cops found no drugs in his car, but Oil Can may have assaulted one of the officers. The Red Sox let Oil Can have some away time from the team in the back half of the year to let him figure out some of his personal issues. Boyd came back at the end of the year to help the Boston Red Sox win a pennant and move on to the 1986 World Series against the New York Mets.

Now remember that Oil Can was still doing cocaine every day during this whole time. The 1986 World Series did not treat Oil Can well. He started game 3 and gave up 6 runs in 7 innings which gave the Met's their first win of the series. Oil Can was scheduled to pitch game 7 of the World Series to give the Red Sox a title and to break the curse of the bambino. Every kid's dream, but not Oil Can's. There was rumors that Oil Can would not start due to his bad performance in game 3 so Oil Can did what Oil Can does. No, not coke, but drink enough alcohol to kill a horse. He showed up to the club house for game 7 of the World Series piss drunk and the Red Sox Coaching staff locked him in an office until the game was over. They lost 8-5. This however was greatly overshadowed by the error that Bill Buckner made in the 9th Inning of game 6.

Boyd would struggle for his next few years with the Red Sox never returning to his 1986 form. He would find himself in some minor shenanigans in these years. Most notably in 1987 when he was asked a question about his long list of overdue movie rentals. What movies was the great Oil Can interested in? Porn, it was all pornos. This would be known as "Can's film festival" which is objectively hilarious. Also in 1987 Boyd was arrested, big shocker I know, and he stated that the police "wrenched my arm up" and he was in pain at all times, even when not playing. The wrenching up of the arm happened before spring training, and it was discovered in August that when the police "wrenched up" Oil Can's arm, that they broke it. Oil Can pitched in only a few games that year before his surgery. After his surgery, the next 2 years he struggled greatly as he had blood clots in his arm.

Becoming a free agent in 1989, Oil Can signed with the Montreal Expos and he said that it was the best decision he ever made. His stats showed that when he went 10-6 with a career low 2.93 ERA. His stats in 1991 were not as good and he was traded to the Texas Rangers halfway through the season. Oil Can did not like the Rangers at all and he had a 6.68 ERA in the few games that he played. He would never play in the Major Leagues again.

In 1992, Oil Can played in the Mexican League as a closer where during one stretch of the season he had 11 saves in 11 days. Probably all on crack too, don't see that too often now a days. Another thing that happened to Oil Can that would really only ever happen to a man named Oil Can, was that he wanted to build homes for the lower class people in his hometown of Meridian, Mississippi. He donated a lot of money to his foundation for these homes, but he lost it all when none of the families interested could get financing from the local banks. All of his planning and donations were spoiled. In the early 2000's Boyd was on record saying to his mistress that he would "beat her ass" because his mistress threatened to burn his belongings. Boyd would be arrested by the FBI and put into prison for 4 months due to the threats of his comments. Oil Can would get out of prison in 2005 and pitch one more time for the Brockton Rox of the Canadian American Association of Baseball where he did pretty well for a 45 year old fresh out of prison.

Oil Can Boyd is still kicking it in Rhode Island where he gives lessons to young students of the game. He is also trying to bring a Minor League team to his hometown in Meridian. For more information you can read Oil Can's autobiography titled They Call Me Oil Can. Share with a fellow crack addict turned baseball player turned criminal, or if you can't find one, maybe a friend would work too.

And that is Today's Tea, with T