Former Red Sox third baseman Wade Boggs chimed in on the reignited Dennis Eckersley-David Price feud Saturday, defending Eckersley in an interview with Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe.
“This is ridiculous. Everybody in the game loves Eck,” Boggs told Shaughnessy." He was a great teammate. And Price? Please. He should ask me what it used to be like to play in Boston. These guys today don’t hear any noise compared to the stuff that was aimed at us. I mean, seriously. 'Yuck?’ Give me a break.’’
Boggs and Eckersley-- both Hall of Famers-- played together in Boston from 1982-84. Eckersley’s reputation among teammates was called into question earlier in the week, when Price erroneously claimed a MLB Network documentary profiling Eckersley included zero interviews with former teammates.
That documentary actually includes more than 20 clips featuring six of Eckersley’s former teammates speaking highly of Eckersley and his character. Boggs, speaking to Shaughnessy during the annual Hall of Fame induction weekend in Cooperstown, seems to agree.
The 2017 feud between Price and Eckersley was reignited this week when, as part of an in-depth profile in the Globe that ran Tuesday, Eckersley said he didn’t plan on seeing or speaking to Price anytime soon. Price responded a day later by calling Eckersley’s comments “trash” and claiming the lack of teammates featured in the documentary spoke to Eckersley’s character.
“The one thing that stood out to me was that he had zero former teammates in that interview,” Price said Wednesday. “Not one talking about him. It was him talking about himself. If anybody ever does a special on me after baseball, I won’t need to go on that interview. I will have former teammates. I will have former coaches. They can all vouch for me. He didn’t have that. To me, that is all you need to know. That tells the entire story right there.”