Boggs keeps his distance from team

By MARC TOPKIN
Published May 8, 2005

ST. PETERSBURG - Wade Boggs couldn't be more excited about being inducted into the Hall of Fame on July31.

But from what he said during last week's visit to Cooperstown, he wouldn't have minded waiting another year or two either.

Boggs' view is he was ready, willing and able to keep playing after the 1999 season. But the Rays decided he was done at age 41, and he didn't want to go anywhere else.

"That was their decision not to renew my option," Boggs said after his Hall orientation tour. "I had various other offers, but I felt I was so spoiled playing at home those last two years.

"To go away and try and move my family again and get the house or apartment and pack everything up again, I was better off just retiring and going out my way rather than holding on and having people remember you running after a ball and falling down or coming out of the box tripping and falling and having those lasting memories."

Boggs says now he believes the Rays made the wrong decision, especially because they went on to bring in Vinny Castilla and the rest of the high-priced/low-production Hit Show.

"In retrospect, looking at that decision and the players they brought in after they let me go ... I was a bargain," he said.

Hearing from Rays general manager Chuck LaMar that he couldn't play anymore was like being hit with a sledgehammer, Boggs said at the time. But after missing the final month of the season with a knee injury, he said at his news conference he retired with no regrets.

Does that mean the five years away changed his mind? Or is it just a product of the less-than-cozy relationship between him and his hometown team?

Boggs played two seasons with the Rays, giving them what today is still, arguably, their most exciting moment (though there aren't a lot of choices), homering for his 3,000th hit Aug.7, 1999. He spent one year in a specially created, though not necessarily comfortable, job as a special assistant to LaMar then the next season as major-league hitting coach before resigning to spend more time with his family, specifically coaching his son, Brett, who was starting high school.

Brett is headed to USF now, but don't expect Boggs to rejoin the Rays or get back in the pro game, any time soon. He has a good relationship with some Rays officials and agreed to be honored at the Trop the weekend before his induction but is not particularly close with others and doesn't come around the team as retired stars do elsewhere.

"I've had fun away from (the game)," Boggs said. "I never say "never,' but I don't miss it. The game has changed. I'll just enjoy watching Brett play, fishing and the various other things I enjoy while I'm retired and not getting back into that grind again."

RAYS RUMBLINGS: The Rays will at least consider offers for Aubrey Huff and Danys Baez but probably not until mid June. They'll seek to get back elite, Scott Kazmir-type, near-ready prospects. ... TV play-by-play man Dewayne Staats rates 67th in a new book, Voices of Summer, that ranks baseball's 101 all-time best announcers using criteria such as longevity, popularity, knowledge and voice. Partner Joe Magrane didn't make the list. ... Top draft pick Jeff Niemann should be promoted soon to Double-A Montgomery and could join the Rays by midsummer. ... Rays officials were smartly silent but certainly not disappointed that the Marlins' stadium bid failed and speculation began about leaving for Las Vegas.

ZIMMER SIMMER: Having spent eight years with the Yankees before a falling out with George Steinbrenner led to his departure, Rays senior adviser Don Zimmer knows how things work.

And, he told the New York Times, if things continue to go bad, Steinbrenner will make changes.

"He's got to have a fall guy," Zimmer said. "Who it's going to be, I don't know. If someone should be the fall guy, it should be him. When it's going good, he takes the credit. But when it's going bad, it's someone else's fault."

[Last modified May 8, 2005, 00:46:16]