Surely, Wade Boggs would be the one to predict it.

He’d done it all, and always had an opinion, and was willing to share it.

So why not this matchup in this unusual setting? 

Boggs, the Baseball of Hall of Famer who grew up in the Bayshore Little League, and the Plant High School program, where the baseball field is named for him, and should be, and who ended his career with the then-new St. Petersburg Rays at unusual Tropicana Field, would make comments. 

I got him on his cell getting his gear ready for snook, trout, redfish and perhaps small tarpon fishing a bit south of us.

The Rays and Boston Red Sox would be playing their second game of the American League playoffs at the Trop later Saturday night. Boggs’ great batting champ mostly at third base for Boston (1982-92), New York Yankees (1993-1997) and Tampa Rays (1998-1999), one of the sport’s purest hitters, is hall of fame fisherman as well, said Boggs, “I don’t pick outcomes. . . but, what I always do is take the team that is behind. Gives me reason, a purpose. So, the Red Sox won the first game, 2-0, so, I take the Rays.’’

Figures he’d have his own way. When he was in the bigs, he only ate chicken, like those cows do in their television commercial. And, he was always an athlete of don’t change, or, superstition. There was a time when he, the Chicken Man, as Jim Rice called him, woke up at the same time every morning, took 150 balls in workout at 5:17, ran sprints at 7:17, and always took the same route to and from his position from dugout to third (or first). Wife Debbie endured the tiresome diet and all the other special activities of the needs of the chicken man all of those years.

But, he was one heckua ball player—five times a batting champion, a rookie hitter of .349, seven seasons of 200 or more hits, and six seasons with 200 hits, 100 runs scored, and over 40 doubles. He also was a Golden Glover at third base. He played on two great baseball stages, Fenway and Yankee Stadium. Who will forget the night he borrowed a police officer’s horse for a victory ride around the diamond after the Yankees won their first World Series in 18 years. Boggs was elected to Cooperstown Hall of Fame in 2005 on the first ballot with 91.9 per cent of the vote. His batting eye was considered comparable to that of Ted Williams, an admirer.

These Rays have done “one great job. The guys—Shields, Crawford, Longoria, Navarra, Gross, Upton, Gomes, Perez, Kazmir, Marza…gosh, there are young guys coming through on this team,’’ said Boggs. “The manager, Joe Maddon, special, I think. 

“What the men in charge have done, Stewart Steinberg and the Rays executives, is go get some experience but concentrate on going after the young, talented players out there and sign the top ones to long range contracts, now. Getting ready for the future. Smart. And, while doing that Maddon and his staff may be getting early results. I mean, I know they are. Look at the standings. I love it.  I love it.’’

Then, he drifted into the past. 

It was not always so, “like when I came here in 1998, well, I knew then it would take a while, and it has. We were a bunch of misfits and playing in that dome. Some one called it the world’s largest pinball machine, when the baseball hits the rafters and rattles around. I know I was over there with the engineers who looked up and said no one would hit a baseball that high. I took a fungo bat and knocked a ball up into the rafters and they saw it rattle around like I said it would. But, you make do. We did.  This team has. But, now, we all deserve better,’’ fan Wade Boggs.

“We need a covered dome with a retractable roof and without the bells and whistles hanging down.  Now, we got a team that can say they deserve it more. And enough proven fans to tell everybody our place will support it.  I always knew they would.’’

And the Boggs family lives in Northeast Tampa. Put him on the committee.