Am I the only one to see the stories flying around lately about Wade Boggs?
The rumors were that he once drank 64 beers during a cross country flight. This would absolutely kill just about any average human being. I am not a massive drinker, but in my absolute top drinking experience, I don’t think I’ve ever even approached such a massive number. Or even the equivalent in another kind of alcohol. I once got trashed(accidentally, actually) on Chinese alcohol that was 78% ABV. I might have had 20+ beers worth of alcohol in 2-3 hours, but that was ludicrous and death was not all that far off. I swore off all hard alcohol after that night.
Do you believe these stories? How can any man drink this many beers? If I had 10 beers in 3-4 hours, I’d be laid out on the floor. If I pounded back 15 somehow, I’d be puking, heaving, and wishing for the sweet relief of death.
Have you ever heard of anyone getting even close to 64 beers in one stretch? Or 100? Could this be even possible?
For one thing, it’s only “about 50” beers and it’s basically the entire trip from stadium-to-plane-to-stadium. It also sounds like they were flying some sort of charter plane that had to stop for gas in North Dakota so the flight itself took 7 hours plus figure a couple hours on either end. Plus Wade’s drink of choice is Miller Light which is 4.2% abv versus a “normal” beer which is 5%.
So, you’re talking about 600 ounces of Lite (hope the plane had a bathroom!) which works out to about 25 ounces of ethanol which is only 42 standard 0.6oz alcoholic beverages. Over 12 hours that’s only 3.5 drinks per hour so I think totally doable without becoming dead. I can’t imagine I’d want to play a ballgame the next day, though.
I’m not saying he’s not exaggerating, but, well, the person doing the math apparently didn’t take into account that people do piss. I don’t know what a reasonable believable high number is, but 20 seems a good bit low to me. The story I’ve seen about the 50+ beers includes 7 hours of flight time (with a stopover in North Dakota) plus the time in the clubhouse to the airport before the flight (sounds like it could be about 2 hours, if not more), plus the bus to the hotel (probably at least another hour). So that’s 10 hours, being generous, probably more like 11 or 12. Still, quite a lot, but 20 is nothing for a serious drinker for that type of time period.
I weigh roughly 190 lbs and I have personally imbibed in excess of a case of beer* (24) in about 10 hours. For the majority of the day, I would say I was drunk, but I didn’t get stumbling drunk at any point.
*The only reason I know this is that I was the only one drinking Lite that day and the case started full and ended empty. After it was gone, I had some unknown number of Bud Lights. If I had to guess I’d say I had around 30 beers in that time frame. Then I switched to liquor and made it another 2 hours or so (but at that point I was stumbling).
Wow, the plane trip in Always Sunny also included a stopover in North Dakota on their ostensible PHL-LAX journey. I didn’t realize they put that in because the fabled Sox charter actually did stop in North Dakota.
Wade Boggs’ weight is listed at 190# during his playing career. Drinking 50 lite beers in 12 hours would have given him a blood alcohol concentration of 0.545. Anything over 0.5 is life threatening, and anyone other than a hardcore alcoholic would certainly have passed out long before reaching that point. I can only conclude that these stories are exaggerated to some extent, and that Boggs had a serious drinking problem if they are anywhere even close to true.
There are tons of Wade Boggs beer drinking stories, including many of him having his own cooler under the table when he attends banquettes. None of the beer stories come close to his claim that he once “willed himself invisible” to get away from a mugger with a knife.
One also wonders how he’d stay at 190 pounds if he drank that much beer. 54 beers is ~8000 calories in one day just in the beer. Granted, this is a high water mark, but someone drinking to excess will always have difficulty keeping the weight off.
