Wade Anthony Boggs (born June 15, 1958), nicknamed "Chicken Man", is an American former professional baseball third baseman.

He also played for the New York Yankees (1993–1997), winning the 1996 World Series with them, and finished his career with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays (1998–1999).

Born in Omaha, Nebraska,[3] the youngest of three sons of Winfield Kennedy Boggs Jr. and Sue Nell Graham, Wade had a regimented military upbringing.

[4][5] The Boggs family lived in several different places (including Puerto Rico and Savannah, Georgia) before settling in Tampa, Florida when Wade was 11 years old.

Boggs played quarterback until his senior year when he switched positions to avoid injury and thereby protect his baseball career.

[4] He graduated from Plant High School in 1976 and was selected by the Boston Red Sox in the seventh round of the 1976 MLB draft on the advice of veteran scout George Digby.

In the series' fourth game which saw the Yankees rally from six runs down to tie it, Boggs was called on to pinch hit in the tenth inning.

Using the batting eye he was known for throughout his career, he drew a bases-loaded walk out of Steve Avery, forcing in the go-ahead run and ultimately win 8–6, evening the series.

They joined Lou Brock and Rod Carew as the only players whose careers ended after World War II who finished with 3,000 hits and fewer than 160 home runs.

[23] His own style included mental preparedness techniques, which consisted of visualizing four at-bats each evening before a game and imagining himself successfully getting four hits.

[26] The Boston Red Sox inducted Boggs into the team's Hall of Fame in 2004[27] and his number 26 was retired during a pre-game ceremony on May 26, 2016.

[31] Boggs garnered non-baseball-related media attention in 1989 for his four-year extramarital affair with Margo Adams, a California mortgage broker.

After Boggs ended the relationship in 1988, Adams filed a $12 million lawsuit for emotional distress and breach of oral contract.

[34] While acknowledging the affair, Boggs went on the offensive in order to combat the wave of negative press, denying many of the claims made by Adams.

Boggs' rebuttal included an appearance on the ABC program 20/20 in which he presented his side of the story to Barbara Walters.

[35] In February 1989, an appeals court threw out $11.5 million of the initial lawsuit, ruling that Adams could not seek compensation for emotional distress.

[40] Wade Boggs was named one of the "Top 10 Most Superstitious Athletes" by Men's Fitness for his well known superstitions about baseball, including his habit of eating chicken before every game and practicing at only specific times of day.

The two remained good friends afterward; 15 years later, in 2007, Boggs inducted the late Perfect into the WWE Hall of Fame.

[43] He also made a guest appearance on the December 13, 1999 episode of WWF Raw Is War where he was involved in a brief segment with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

[44] Boggs was one of the baseball players featured in The Simpsons episode "Homer at the Bat," in which he was recruited as a ringer by Mr. Burns for the Power Plant's softball team, only to later be knocked out in a bar fight by Barney Gumble.

)[45] In Seinfeld's "The Chaperone," George convinces the Yankees to switch to cotton uniforms, assuring manager Buck Showalter that the Bombers would be "five degrees cooler than the other team."

[47] In 2011, he appeared in the Psych episode "Dead Man's Curveball", in which he tells Danny Glover's character that the real number was 73.

In 2015, he guest starred in the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia season 10 premiere "The Gang Beats Boggs", in which the characters try to drink more than 70 beers while flying across country.

[47][49] In August 2017, Boggs served as a fill-in color commentator for some Red Sox games played in Tampa Bay and broadcast on New England Sports Network (NESN), working with play-by-play announcer Dave O'Brien.