Boggs is the 17th Hall of Famer whose career was played primarily with Boston, the ``immortal'' 17 acknowledged by Red Sox Nation as one of its own in the hallowed hall.

There are 13 others in Cooperstown's Hall (as opposed to the very clear distinction in Boston between that Hall and the Red Sox Hall of Fame) who wore the Red Sox uniform at some point in their careers, not to mention two executives and seven other men who were strictly managers.

Yet, Boggs insists that even after his 11 seasons with the Red Sox - during which he won five American League batting championships, made eight All-Star teams, batted .338 and became the only player in major-league history with seven consecutive seasons of 200 hits and 100 runs scored - even after all of that, he was not Hall-worthy.

``Oh God, no,'' he said. ``Aug. 7, 1999, put me into the Hall of Fame.''

That's the date of hit No. 3,000, a home run for the Devil Rays against the Indians at Tropicana Field. It was the final piece of the puzzle, he said, the final stop of a three- pronged major-league career that began April 10, 1982, and kicked into gear June 25 of that year, when he replaced injured Carney Lansford at third base.

It was in Boston that Boggs developed into an eventual Hall of Famer. It was in Boston, too, that Boggs became a 1980s sports icon known as much for his off-field adventures and his idiosyncratic personality as for his amazing ability to hit a baseball.

Unhappy Ending

Inevitably, things ended in Boston on something of a sour note for Boggs. In 1993, he signed with the hated Yankees, incurring the wrath of Red Sox Nation after contract negotiations broke down in spring training 1992.

``They've run out a lot of good players,'' Boggs said. ``They ran Dennis Eckersley out of town, they ran Bob Stanley basically out of town, consistently booed Jim Rice because of the double plays that he hit into in the end of his career and [Roger] Clemens and [Mike] Greenwell and Freddie Lynn.

``You have to understand that the ownership had a way of presenting ... these players [as villains] with the media. They would portray them through the media a little bit different than the fans would [perceive] the way they were on the field. ... Just the little innuendos that they would say, commenting on how negotiations are going. They negotiated through the media.''

But even though the Sox would not give him the long- term contract he wanted in 1992, he says now he was treated fairly in Boston.

``Yes, to a certain degree,'' he said. ``I'm not going to get into the lynch-mob mentality that was sort of there. But I enjoyed it. It was the organization that I started in as a 17- year-old kid and matured into this Hall of Fame-caliber player through the building years of getting back to the playoffs and World Series.''

Deal Was Done, But Then ...

If the death of Boggs' mother, Sue, in 1986 was the defining moment of his years in Boston, it was the death in February 1992 of another prominent woman in his life - Red Sox owner Jean Yawkey - that led to his eventual departure.

``It was just disappointing that Mrs. Yawkey died when she did, because there was a contract on the table for a five-year deal,'' Boggs said. ``And when she died, they pulled it off the table. She told [Boggs' wife] Debbie in the parking lot that, `We want Wade to follow in the footsteps of Captain Carl [Yastrzemski] and Jim Rice and Ted Williams. We want Wade to play and finish his career in a Boston uniform.'

``Well, she fell in her apartment and died that winter. They pulled it off the table and basically wouldn't negotiate with my agent, Alan Nero, and I in spring training. They just ho-hummed around and that was the year that I just tried to do too much. I had 10 straight seasons of hitting over .300 and then that was my blip on the radar screen: 1992. And then they didn't pick up my option that year in the offseason, and I had to go someplace and find a ring.''

That someplace else was New York in 1996.

Last year, shortly after Boston's first World Series title in 86 years, Boggs was inducted into the Red Sox Hall of Fame. It was his official welcome back to the Red Sox family, a family he thought a lot about when the Sox finally won it all.

``The people that I was happy for were the fans of New England,'' Boggs said. ``I had a lot of elderly people there that would say, `I'll die before the Red Sox win the World Series.' I was watching it in bed with my wife, Debbie, and we were just happy for all the people that we knew when we were in Boston that it had finally happened.''

2,000th Hit

Wade Boggs collected his 2,000th major-league hit on May 17, 1992, against Mark Langston at Fenway Park in Boston.

The hit, a single to second in the eighth inning, came in his final at-bat of the game, a 3-1 loss to the California Angels. Boggs went 1-for-3.

Wade Proved He Could Hit Homers

In 1987, Wade Boggs' sixth season with the Red Sox, he collected 200 hits, batted .363, walked 105 times, hit 40 doubles with six triples.

Yawn. What else was new? It was the fifth of his major- league-record seven consecutive 200-hit seasons, and the fourth of his five American League batting titles.

Anything less would have been a disappointment to the Fenway Faithful and Boggs himself.

The difference? As he did all that - reaching the hallowed 200-hit plateau despite missing the final 12 games of the year with a left knee injury - Boggs confounded his critics by slugging a career-high 24 home runs.

In his first five major-league seasons, Boggs' total of 32 home runs earned him a justifiable and double-edged reputation as perhaps the best singles hitter of his generation. Not satisfied with batting titles and an astronomical on- base percentage, Red Sox fans and reporters began to wonder aloud if Boggs, at 6-foot-2 and 197 pounds, was even capable of flexing his run-producing muscle.

He did, for one season, adding a career-high 89 RBIs. It was as if he used that one-year power surge to prove a point, because he reached double figures only once again in his career - 11 homers in 1994 with the Yankees. - Carter Gaddis

AL Batting Titles

Wade Boggs won five American League batting titles while playing with the Boston Red Sox. 1983
Player, Team Avg.
Wade Boggs, Boston .361
Rod Carew, California .339
Lou Whitaker, Detroit .320

1985
Wade Boggs, Boston .368
George Brett, Kansas City .335
Don Mattingly, New York .324

1986
Wade Boggs, Boston .357
Don Mattingly, New York .352
Kirby Puckett, Minnesota .328

1987
Wade Boggs, Boston .363
Paul Molitor, Milwaukee .353
Alan Trammell, Detroit .343

1988
Wade Boggs, Boston .366
Kirby Puckett, Minnesota .356
Mike Greenwell, Boston .325

He Said It

''If he wanted to hit home runs, he could have. He did what he had to do. That guy was a great player. The difference between a good player and a great player, a great player shows up every day. I saw that in him. It makes everybody around him better.'' - DWIGHT GOODEN, Yankees teammate in 1996 and '97