Yankees star – and Hall of Famer – announces prostate cancer diagnosis

Many Yankees fans have never forgotten the memory of third baseman Wade Boggs riding a horse through Yankee Stadium after winning the 1996 World Series.

After telling his social media followers on Saturday that he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, Boggs vows he will be remembered for something else – as the man who beat cancer.

“I've never been a goal-oriented person, but with the strength and support of my family and my faith in God,” Boggs wrote on X/Twitter, “I'm going to ring that damn bell.”

SIGN UP FOR OUR FREE YANKEES NEWSLETTER:

Restoring glory

Boggs, who played primarily for the Red Sox during his career, played five seasons with the Yankees. He brought his power to the Bronx, getting 702 hits in 601 games with a .313 batting average and helping them go from being the laughing stock of the city to becoming perennial champions.

In 2005, the Chicken Man was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame with 91.5% of the vote. In 18 major league seasons, Boggs had 3,010 hits (30th in MLB history) and achieved a career batting average of .328.

Boggs recently admitted that he rarely watches the game anymore. One big reason for this is the new baseball rules.

“I like some aspects of the game. But all the new rules? I'm not a fan,” he said in 2023, via Matthew Vautor of MassLive. “If you have a ghost runner in the 10th inning for extra innings and you lose the game, I think they missed the boat.”

Boggs isn't a fan of advanced statistics either. That's funny considering this is a player who is a sabermetrician's dream come true. In analytics, a hitter's job is to score runs, and in his prime, no one was better at that than Mr. Boggs. In his first eight major league seasons, he boasted a wRC+ of 151.

From 1982 to 1989, he had the best results in the MLB with a wOBA of .409 and an OBP of .443, giving him the highest fWAR of 60 in baseball. The next best hitter, Rickey Henderson, had an fWAR of 53.3 during that time, almost seven full points behind.