Via Hardball Talk, Oil Can Boyd talks about his cocaine use in advance of his soon to be released biography:

“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 told WBZ NewsRadio 1030’s Jonny Miller in Fort Myers, Fla. “It’s not like you have time to go do it while in the game, which I had done that.

“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,” said Boyd, who spent eight of his 10 major league seasons with the Red Sox. “If I had went to bed, I would have won 150 ballgames in the time span that I played. 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.”

I don’t know about that. Dennis’s nickname came from the amount of beer he drank (a beer can was known as an oil can), and predates his entrance into baseball at age 20. So the drug may have been new, but the addictive behavior wasn’t.

It’s disappointing that Boyd blames race for his disappearance from baseball. He only posted one good season in his last five in the majors. As Craig Calcaterra says:

Indeed, while he name-checks Strawberry and Gooden, there are two facts beyond their relative lack of “outspokenness” that makes them different cases than Boyd: (1) they at least attempted rehab on multiple occasions; and (2) to put it bluntly, they were way better players who were worth the greater risk. Right or wrong, it’s totally understandable for a team to sign a drug addict who could win an MVP or Cy Young award if clean — especially if they have at least tried rehab — than it is to take a chance on an unrepentant mid-rotation guy like Boyd.

I did see Boyd pitch in an independent league in 2005, but unfortunately the video disappeared when the server went away. We were watching him warm up, and saw him sneak under the stands to smoke a cigarette between sessions. That said, I loved watching him pitch, and wished his career had been more successful.