Boyd: I pitched while high

In a new book, former Boston Red Sox and Montreal Expos pitcher Dennis (Oil Can) Boyd admits he was under the influence of cocaine two-thirds of the time he was on the mound.

The book, "They Call Me Oil Can: My Life in Baseball," hits bookstores in June.

On Wednesday, Boyd told Jon Miller of Fort Myers radio station WBZ late night cocaine binges were commonplace for him during the 1980s.

"Oh yeah, at every ballpark," said Boyd. "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. It’s not like you have time to go do it while in the game, which I had done that."

Boyd pitched for the Red Sox from 1982 through 1989 and was a key starter on the team’s 1986 American League championship squad.

He later spent parts of two seasons with the Montreal Expos before finishing his career with the Texas Rangers in 1991.

Boyd finished with a career mark of 78-77 and a 4.04 ERA in 214 games.

"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," he said, adding he was never tested for the drug by MLB. "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 ballplayers weren’t doing at the time; because that’s how I learned it.

"It was something that I had to deal with personally and I succumbed. I lived through my life and I feel good about myself. I have no regrets about what I did or said about anything that I said or did. I’m a stand-up person and I came from a quality background of people."

Boyd said his cocaine abuse wasn’t and issue with most of former Red Sox teammates, with the exception of Dwight Evans and Bill Buckner, who tried to get him some help.

"All of them knew and the ones that cared came to me," he explained. "The Dwight Evanses and Bill Buckners ... it was the veteran ballplayers. Some guys lived it; they knew what you were doing, and the only way they knew was they had to have tried it, too." Boyd also alleges he was blackballed from baseball because he was an outspoken black man.

"The reason I caught the deep end to it is because I’m black. The bottom line is the game carries a lot of bigotry, and that was an easy way for them to do it," he said. "If I wasn’t outspoken and a so-called ‘proud black man,’ maybe I would have gotten the empathy and sympathy like other ballplayers got that I didn’t get; like Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden, Steve Howe. I can name 50 people that got third and fourth chances all because they weren’t outspoken black individuals."