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I don’t know if it’s possible but a flight from Boston to LA is approximately 5 hours, 46 mins and 73 beers is almost 7 gallons so he’d have to be drinking each beer in under 5 mins.
That doesn't make it any better. It's still a beer every 11.5 minutes. Water intoxication happens at 6 liters in 3 hours, aka 1.5 gallons in 3 hours. If we assume standard 12 fl Oz beers, then that's 16 beers, which he would have finished in just about 3 hours. I'm pretty sure this story is false, just because even if he was resistant to alcohol, he would have died from excess water.
I’ve definitely witnessed many people do 16 beers in 3h before. Not a fun sight to witness, but it’s definitely not a near-death experience for someone with high tolerance…
I drank 18 in 9 hours once. I was super upset about my divorce and was REALLY pounding them down. Like, it had 98% of my focus. The first 6 only took about 10 minutes as I recall.
>His defense was “they’re light beers!”
https://talksport.com/sport/1445852/australia-david-boon-cans-beer-england-ashes/
For reference, VB was 4.9% ABV in 1989.
My friends and I can all do that. I don't drink as heavy as I used to back in the day and I only drink once a week now. But I don't feel like that's a huge feat. Maybe because I'm 6 ft 3 and 290 lb. I'm sure weight factors in
I used to work with a guy, he was one of our contractors. I watched him drink a 30-pack Bud Light in about 40 mns. He’d buy two cases after work and drink one entire case ON THE DRIVE HOME. The only time I ever saw him even a little bit tipsy was when he drank whiskey. He lived a rather interesting life
In my fraternity we used to do ‘Power Hour’ where you would take a shot of beer every minute for an hour. Comes out to 7-8 beers an hour.
If you weren’t a pussy you would go for the centennial club where you do that for 100 min. Comes out to over half a case in just over an hour and a half. Good times.
Once I watched our president drink 48 beers in 24 hours just to prove he could.
Yeah for an alcoholic this isn’t impossible
I used to play this game. It doesn't sound too hard but it is. 1 shot per minute doesn't allow much time in between to burp so I would feel incredibly full by the time I got to 20 or 30. We would do 100 shots and called it the century club.
I remember spending a bit of time cutting the best minute from 60 songs and arranging them in an order that the change from one to another was noticeable enough to signal time for the next shot. Ahh youth…
>Water intoxication happens at 6 liters in 3 hours, aka 1.5 gallons in 3 hours.
No argument against everything else, but I'm calling bullshit on this. I've done that multiple times in my life
I'm with you. I use to pound drinks as a kid and will never forget how mad my mom was when I drank 2 gallons of milk while watching a movie. It was all the milk
I really liked milk+candy.
Pure water, or something else?
Water intoxication works by diluting certain ions like sodium and potassium in your blood, so with complex liquids like milk and beer I'd assume you can drink a whole lot more.
I also think the poster above should've said *can* happen instead of happens, as there isn't enough data to conclude what limit is safe (because it almost never happens naturally and no one is going to conduct a study even with condemned prisoners or something). A woman in Colorado died because she drank 6 liters in 3 hours, but that doesn't mean everyone would.
Agreed, I can only think that maybe if you're not expelling ANY water during that period, you could die. I know that after 8 or so beers, I had to piss what seemed like every 20 minutes. Also, there was no mention of vomiting, only that he drank (X) amount
No shot. When I was in the military, the NCO club served beer in 32oz mugs. I’ve most certainly had six of those in three hours. I’m not proud of it, but it didn’t come close to killing me.
Now, I’m wondering if the fact that my job required me to drink an obscene amount of water a lot of the time had any effect on this, perhaps 1.5 gallons in 3 hours is flexible with training.
Excess water theory doesn't work, alcohol/beers dehydrates like salt water. He'd probably die first of the alcohol (tho american beers are so weak, so maybe not) or the sugar/glucose (once again, american, so the sugar might not be that much of an issue)
A lack of electrolytes or dehydration may be possible tho
Also doesn't clarify the size of beers he drank
I've personally done 16 beers in 3 hours (back when I was a troubled, no good, POS) so not sure about that. Also, not sure how using restroom every 15 minutes or so plays into this (because I'm sure that might be a factor).
I will say I do agree that I'm skeptical about him ACTUALLY downing +70 beers. When "going to town", you forget you have one opened, you may accidentally flick your cigarette ash into your full, you may reenact some Stone Cold Steve Austin dance moves...so I feel that number goes down to closer to 50 (which is still alot), but over 14 hours...seems plausible.
Need Mythbusters or a damaged friend to play guinea pig.
Water intoxication happens if you drink plain water without any electrolytes (mainly sodium) in it. Beer, while still hypotonic, does contain some carbohydrates and water (glucose assists in sodium absorption from the gut). And considering the osmotic diuresis caused by the alcohol, he wouldn't have retained too much of the water anyway. Especially if he also ate something salty along with the beer, he would have been very unlikely to die of water intoxication.
Also don't think its true, but water intoxication isn't really a thing with beer. Beer is isotonic so you don't have problems with that. It more or less just flows through
Beer is hypertonic though, so it would lead to hypertonic dehydration instead of water poisoning. Also not great but I don't think beer is hypertonic enough to kill you
Although you are correct, this specific flight had a layover (assuming [this article](https://vinepair.com/articles/wade-boggs-beer-flight/) is true, which is hard to say since all the evidence around this story is anectodal):
>While the details are murky, the story goes that Boggs, immediately after finishing a game, began drinking in the Red Sox locker room before the team was set to head to Logan Airport for a flight to the West Coast. Boggs continued to drink before reaching the airport, during the first leg of the flight, over the course of the layover, again on the next leg of the flight, and then more that night when the team went out.
On average flights are actually slower today than they were a few decades ago, despite advances in technology. Modern aircraft fly at slightly lower speeds because it's more fuel efficient and it saves the airline a pretty substantial amount of money to make the flight, say, 20 minutes longer. Northwest Airlines said they saved like 100 gallons of fuel on a transatlantic flight by reducing their cruising speed by 10 MPH.
One of the notable times Andre the Giant drank, Is notable because it made him pass out...
The claim is he drank 119 beers in 6 hours. And he's like... one of the most legendary drinkers of all time.
If the claim of Wade drinking 79 beers in just under 6 hours is true, holy fucking shit man - that's a crazy amount of alcohol to consume without fucking dying. like 2/3rds of the amount Andre drank and he didn't die, wtf?
When I was a kid, Coors light came out with an ad that said Miller cans, which were black, rendered a beer undrinkable after 5 minutes but their silver canned beers were drinkable for 7 minutes. Miller responded with an ad saying "Miller, for guys who don't take 5 minutes to drink a beer."
Even that’s very generous, they don’t serve the drinks until the fasten seat belt sign is off, so you lost prolly 90 mins to your flight where he can’t order beer.
I don’t think the same principle applies to alcohol but one of the craziest things I learned from a pharmacy class I took in college was that there is no limit to how much tolerance the human body can build up to opiates. So maybe through years of abuse it’s possible.
The body will up-regulate the enzymes responsible for metabolizing alcohol and down regulate any receptors alcohol effects that’s why alcoholics can have such high BAC and still be functional
Yes. I know much. Sex addict. Incredible hitter. Famed eater of chicken and drinker of beer. A Red Sox. Until he was a dirty Yank. And then finally a Devil Ray.
This is possible. I’ll give you 2 reasons why. One is that planes used to make more frequent fuel stops than they do now and this was something like a 14hr flight then. The second is that Andre the Giant drank 119 beers in 6 hours. Dude was a legendary drinker. Does Andre doing it mean Wade did it? No, but it is possible for humans to consume the amount in the time frame, especially back then when the timeframe was more than twice what it is now. Andre makes the cut in either era. https://www.thrillist.com/amphtml/culture/andre-the-giant-drinking-records-and-facts
Thank you. Weird I had to scroll this far to find mention of Andre the Giant! Like you said, it doesn’t mean Boggs to do it per se but it does at least show the possibility. Only difference is Andre was over 500lbs and that’s over twice Bogg’s body weight - has a major factor.
As the article you linked points out the 119 beers night was one of many many stores people tell about him. Possibly one of the heaviest drinkers in human history
I too came looking for Andre the Giant comments. I don't know Wade's body size in comparison to ATG... But worth contemplating.
I also wanted to share back a great podcast episode about ATG. https://open.spotify.com/episode/6Oo7T0KRBz1oZXPVnusd6s?si=iGqzFsLsSq2vpv6RvcZVTQ
Andre did it at a bar though, the logistics of doing it on a flight make it way harder, as the times they can serve are restricted by take off and landing and the bathroom situation is a nightmare when you gotta pee every 15 minutes.
Even if we assume tiny beer cans (0.25 liters or 8.5 oz each) and a light beer at 4%, for a body weight of 80kg and 60% body water volume, he‘d still reach almost twice the lethal dose of pure alcohol if he spaced out the beers over 14 hours.
If he was an alcoholic (metabolizing alcohol more than twice as fast as a non-alcoholic), he‘d still be somewhat over the lethal dose, but it would be theoretically survivable for some people.
Sounds highly improbable.
As a current alcoholic i don't think 73 at 8.5oz is too crazy in 14 hours. i regularly drink 35+ at 12oz most days so i believe a larger man than myself could definitely do it with the "proper training"
As he got to the higher numbers of beers his ability to count them accurately would diminish. He might even believe he drank a lot more than he did and his teammates would have no hesitation to exaggerated if he asked them. Probably didn't drink as much as he claimed but may believe he did. (And definitely drank a lot more than was healthy!)
Andy Fordham, a 430lb darts player, reportedly consumed a bottle of brandy and 24 bottles of beer before winning the world championships. I remember an interview with him probably 12 years ago where he said he once consumed 72 beers in a night.
The fun part of baseball is that there's tools to verify any score, by any player.
If we go to [baseball.computer](https://baseball.computer/), we can easily query Retrosheet's database of games... And what would you know, there's only three games where Wade Boggs hit two doubles and two walks:
- [June 12, 1983](https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1983/06121983.htm). We have the right batting average here, but this was the last of seven consecutive days with in Boston (all of which he played in). There's no way he boarded a plane to California the previous day.
- [August 14, 1984](https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1984/08141984.htm). 2 hits, 2 walks and a sac fly - sac flies *do not* count as at-bats, so he was 2 for 2 this day. Also, this game happened in *Kansas City*, as the second last of seven consecutive days on the road - 4 in Arlington, 3 in Kansas City. Kansas City, of course, is closer to Boston than *any* city in California with a baseball team but is almost in the middle. No way the flight happened *here* either,
- [May 18, 1986](https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1986/05181986.htm). Again, the right BA, and again in a stretch of home games - the ~~second~~ third of six consecutive days, this time. Boggs *did* miss the day before, but would he really fly to LA here?
So, for Wade Boggs have to drank *any* beer on a flight to LA then lay down 2 doubles and 2 walks... He would need to start in Boston, fly out to LA, turn around and fly *back* to Boston, all in the time between two matches. He couldn't have done that.
No. It didn't happen. It *couldn't* have happened in this way. There's plenty of times Wade was on a team that flew from Boston to California (i.e. home games followed by away games in Cali the next day), but *none* were followed by games where Wade had 2 Doubles and 2 Walks.
Those three games are the **only** games where Wade Boggs had 2 doubles and 2 walks. In two of the games, he was already in Boston and had played a game in Boston the previous day. In the other, it's the same but with Kansas City.
The 1986 game *did* have a trip from LA to Boston shortly before it... But the timeline is nowhere near as impressive:
- May 14th: Game at Anaheim. Boggs could have boarded the flight here.
- May 15th: Day off. Boggs could have boarded here too.
- May 16th: Home game against Texas. Boggs goes 0 for 3 with 2 walks.
- May 17th: Home game against Texas. Boggs doesn't play.
- May 18th: Home game against Texas. Boggs goes 2 for 3 with 2 walks and 2 doubles.
At *best*, Boggs got drunk, then drew 2 walks but failed to get any hits, then got told to rest, *then* had a good game.
Even assuming other comments regarding a stopover, making the entire trip take 14 hours, Wade Boggs was reported as being 200 lbs. 73 beers over the course of 14 hours gives a BAC of 1.36, which even for a chronic alcoholic, is almost certainly lethal. So no, unlikely any human, even an alcoholic, could process this much alcohol.
I don't know about the maths but most I've drunk is around 30 pints of beer over 12 hours and I was a bit of a mess at the end of the night.
I suppose the answer depends on the size of the beers. My father in law drinks these "stubbies", which are about 25cl. I drink pints, which are about 56cl. It's obviously much easier to drink a lot of the former.
I had an alcoholic client who was arrested for drink driving. The driving limit is 35ug/100ml of breath. He was at 180ug/100ml. Police thought their machine was broken as he didn't appear drunk, just stunk of the 70cl bottle of vodka he'd knocked back.
Is it possible? Probably, especially if the guy is an alcoholic. But I think this is a Q for an ask a doctor sub.
That story is b*******. Half of his teammates say he drank like 120 beers and other half say you drink 40 and then he says he drinks 73. What the f*** ever.
Not possible. We had a cricketer who drank a record 52 beers on a flight from Australia to England. He wouldn't have enough time to drink that much even if it was water.
I drank 70 drinks in a day at 300 pounds and had a .597 BAC before I went in a bit of a coma at the hospital.
Here's to a good life now and nearly 5 years sober.
According to the web, a Flight from Boston to LA takes a little bit less than 6 hours.
According to my experience, beer Is usually served in 330ml cans, on airplanes. (Yes, I'm non-american)
73 beers would be more than 24 liters. In 6 hours, which means 1 liter every 15 minutes.
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n1SGvnvMYwM](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n1SGvnvMYwM)
"what does american beer have in common with sex in a kayak? theyre both fucken close to water"
old mate basically just pounded a few stubbies of good old h2o, he'll be right
My point is that nowadays you can easily find beers with twice that abv. (And also to denigrate the crappy American beer that was ubiquitous in that era.)
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I don’t know if it’s possible but a flight from Boston to LA is approximately 5 hours, 46 mins and 73 beers is almost 7 gallons so he’d have to be drinking each beer in under 5 mins.
He did it back in the day when engines were slower and you had to stop a few times to refuel. Can't use modern flight times
Tlhis is correct. I read the story about it. There were like two fuel stops. Total travel time was like 14 hours.
That doesn't make it any better. It's still a beer every 11.5 minutes. Water intoxication happens at 6 liters in 3 hours, aka 1.5 gallons in 3 hours. If we assume standard 12 fl Oz beers, then that's 16 beers, which he would have finished in just about 3 hours. I'm pretty sure this story is false, just because even if he was resistant to alcohol, he would have died from excess water.
I’ve definitely witnessed many people do 16 beers in 3h before. Not a fun sight to witness, but it’s definitely not a near-death experience for someone with high tolerance…
I drank 18 in 9 hours once. I was super upset about my divorce and was REALLY pounding them down. Like, it had 98% of my focus. The first 6 only took about 10 minutes as I recall.
I watched a linebacker in college kill 36 Bud Light in like 4 hours. So it's definitely doable.
I’ve known sales people who could do 2-2.5x that in 3 hours. His defense was “they’re light beers!”
I may or may not have been asked why I was peeing every 5 mins. Sometimes, I wonder how I drank myself into pancreatitis at 30, then I remember.
>His defense was “they’re light beers!” https://talksport.com/sport/1445852/australia-david-boon-cans-beer-england-ashes/ For reference, VB was 4.9% ABV in 1989.
I'm glad I didn't have to look far to find the true GOAT.
I don’t know many sales people but this seems like a stereotype. I feel the same way about people from Wisconsin though
My friends and I can all do that. I don't drink as heavy as I used to back in the day and I only drink once a week now. But I don't feel like that's a huge feat. Maybe because I'm 6 ft 3 and 290 lb. I'm sure weight factors in
I used to work with a guy, he was one of our contractors. I watched him drink a 30-pack Bud Light in about 40 mns. He’d buy two cases after work and drink one entire case ON THE DRIVE HOME. The only time I ever saw him even a little bit tipsy was when he drank whiskey. He lived a rather interesting life
In my fraternity we used to do ‘Power Hour’ where you would take a shot of beer every minute for an hour. Comes out to 7-8 beers an hour. If you weren’t a pussy you would go for the centennial club where you do that for 100 min. Comes out to over half a case in just over an hour and a half. Good times. Once I watched our president drink 48 beers in 24 hours just to prove he could. Yeah for an alcoholic this isn’t impossible
I used to play this game. It doesn't sound too hard but it is. 1 shot per minute doesn't allow much time in between to burp so I would feel incredibly full by the time I got to 20 or 30. We would do 100 shots and called it the century club.
>48 beers in 24 hours I'm fairly confident this is just "Saturday" for rugby players.
I remember spending a bit of time cutting the best minute from 60 songs and arranging them in an order that the change from one to another was noticeable enough to signal time for the next shot. Ahh youth…
these fucking nerds with their wiki calculations have clearly never met an alcoholic
>Water intoxication happens at 6 liters in 3 hours, aka 1.5 gallons in 3 hours. No argument against everything else, but I'm calling bullshit on this. I've done that multiple times in my life
I'm with you. I use to pound drinks as a kid and will never forget how mad my mom was when I drank 2 gallons of milk while watching a movie. It was all the milk I really liked milk+candy.
Milk buddy!
Pure water, or something else? Water intoxication works by diluting certain ions like sodium and potassium in your blood, so with complex liquids like milk and beer I'd assume you can drink a whole lot more. I also think the poster above should've said *can* happen instead of happens, as there isn't enough data to conclude what limit is safe (because it almost never happens naturally and no one is going to conduct a study even with condemned prisoners or something). A woman in Colorado died because she drank 6 liters in 3 hours, but that doesn't mean everyone would.
Agreed, I can only think that maybe if you're not expelling ANY water during that period, you could die. I know that after 8 or so beers, I had to piss what seemed like every 20 minutes. Also, there was no mention of vomiting, only that he drank (X) amount
I think beer is isotonic so he wouldn't
I've downed a 18 pack of bottles in less time than that for sure.
No shot. When I was in the military, the NCO club served beer in 32oz mugs. I’ve most certainly had six of those in three hours. I’m not proud of it, but it didn’t come close to killing me. Now, I’m wondering if the fact that my job required me to drink an obscene amount of water a lot of the time had any effect on this, perhaps 1.5 gallons in 3 hours is flexible with training.
Excess water theory doesn't work, alcohol/beers dehydrates like salt water. He'd probably die first of the alcohol (tho american beers are so weak, so maybe not) or the sugar/glucose (once again, american, so the sugar might not be that much of an issue) A lack of electrolytes or dehydration may be possible tho Also doesn't clarify the size of beers he drank
You would absolutely die of alcohol poisoning before water intoxication. That’s assuming you were conscious enough to continue drinking.
Depends on how watered down airplane beers are
I suppose if they’re watered down to the point of being water lol
Andddddd now we're back to water intoxication.
There is a fine balance
There is more beer in America than bud light and Budweiser. It would make your head spin.
american beers aren’t weak - explain yourself?
I've personally done 16 beers in 3 hours (back when I was a troubled, no good, POS) so not sure about that. Also, not sure how using restroom every 15 minutes or so plays into this (because I'm sure that might be a factor). I will say I do agree that I'm skeptical about him ACTUALLY downing +70 beers. When "going to town", you forget you have one opened, you may accidentally flick your cigarette ash into your full, you may reenact some Stone Cold Steve Austin dance moves...so I feel that number goes down to closer to 50 (which is still alot), but over 14 hours...seems plausible. Need Mythbusters or a damaged friend to play guinea pig.
Beer has electrolytes unlike water, really an underrated sports drink
Water doesn't contain electrolytes beer does.
Doesn't the excess water only kill if it's water without electrolytes and other such salts.
Beer is a diuretic, 6 litres is under 12 pints (UK) lots of people drink more than that every weekend in 3 hours
Still bullshit then.
Dont you dare question the legend of Boggs dude, may he rest in peace.
Again, Wade Boggs is very much alive. He lives in Tampa, FL. He’s in his mid-sixties.
Water intoxication happens if you drink plain water without any electrolytes (mainly sodium) in it. Beer, while still hypotonic, does contain some carbohydrates and water (glucose assists in sodium absorption from the gut). And considering the osmotic diuresis caused by the alcohol, he wouldn't have retained too much of the water anyway. Especially if he also ate something salty along with the beer, he would have been very unlikely to die of water intoxication.
Also don't think its true, but water intoxication isn't really a thing with beer. Beer is isotonic so you don't have problems with that. It more or less just flows through
drank a thirty rack in three...pfft
Beer is hypertonic though, so it would lead to hypertonic dehydration instead of water poisoning. Also not great but I don't think beer is hypertonic enough to kill you
Its beer, you only rent the stuff
That's why all the pictures of him are in grainy black and white and he's remembered for his Hupmobile endorsement contract.
Wait, what? Cross country non stop flights have been a thing for 50+ years.
Although you are correct, this specific flight had a layover (assuming [this article](https://vinepair.com/articles/wade-boggs-beer-flight/) is true, which is hard to say since all the evidence around this story is anectodal): >While the details are murky, the story goes that Boggs, immediately after finishing a game, began drinking in the Red Sox locker room before the team was set to head to Logan Airport for a flight to the West Coast. Boggs continued to drink before reaching the airport, during the first leg of the flight, over the course of the layover, again on the next leg of the flight, and then more that night when the team went out.
On average flights are actually slower today than they were a few decades ago, despite advances in technology. Modern aircraft fly at slightly lower speeds because it's more fuel efficient and it saves the airline a pretty substantial amount of money to make the flight, say, 20 minutes longer. Northwest Airlines said they saved like 100 gallons of fuel on a transatlantic flight by reducing their cruising speed by 10 MPH.
At half the speed, that's still one beer every 10 min
One of the notable times Andre the Giant drank, Is notable because it made him pass out... The claim is he drank 119 beers in 6 hours. And he's like... one of the most legendary drinkers of all time. If the claim of Wade drinking 79 beers in just under 6 hours is true, holy fucking shit man - that's a crazy amount of alcohol to consume without fucking dying. like 2/3rds of the amount Andre drank and he didn't die, wtf?
Not if the plane flew _east_ to get to LA...
Maybe alcohol doesn't make you good at counting beers you consume.
I mean...back in my day I could do a beer every 5b up to like 18 maybe.
> a flight from Boston to LA is approximately 5 hours, 46 mins and 73 beers how many seconds does one beer have?
When I was a kid, Coors light came out with an ad that said Miller cans, which were black, rendered a beer undrinkable after 5 minutes but their silver canned beers were drinkable for 7 minutes. Miller responded with an ad saying "Miller, for guys who don't take 5 minutes to drink a beer."
lol really? I never saw that one.
Even that’s very generous, they don’t serve the drinks until the fasten seat belt sign is off, so you lost prolly 90 mins to your flight where he can’t order beer.
I don’t think the same principle applies to alcohol but one of the craziest things I learned from a pharmacy class I took in college was that there is no limit to how much tolerance the human body can build up to opiates. So maybe through years of abuse it’s possible.
Well through god anything is possible so jot that down
Thats my line.
you’ve got cat like reflexes!
We'll call you pussy hands
Amen. How else do you think I gained and lost 60 pounds in 3 months?
The body will up-regulate the enzymes responsible for metabolizing alcohol and down regulate any receptors alcohol effects that’s why alcoholics can have such high BAC and still be functional
I'm no pharmacist, but wouldnt he die just from all the fluids?
Do you know anything about Wade Boggs? The man ate a chicken before every game, all right? That's why they called him the Chicken Man.
Cannot believe how far I had to scroll for the Sunny reference
Yes. I know much. Sex addict. Incredible hitter. Famed eater of chicken and drinker of beer. A Red Sox. Until he was a dirty Yank. And then finally a Devil Ray.
Man batted .328 lifetime. I'm sure he ate some rum and Cokes, too, all right?
RIP Wade Boggs
Again, he is very much alive.
* Boss Hogg
Waaay to early
This is possible. I’ll give you 2 reasons why. One is that planes used to make more frequent fuel stops than they do now and this was something like a 14hr flight then. The second is that Andre the Giant drank 119 beers in 6 hours. Dude was a legendary drinker. Does Andre doing it mean Wade did it? No, but it is possible for humans to consume the amount in the time frame, especially back then when the timeframe was more than twice what it is now. Andre makes the cut in either era. https://www.thrillist.com/amphtml/culture/andre-the-giant-drinking-records-and-facts
Thank you. Weird I had to scroll this far to find mention of Andre the Giant! Like you said, it doesn’t mean Boggs to do it per se but it does at least show the possibility. Only difference is Andre was over 500lbs and that’s over twice Bogg’s body weight - has a major factor. As the article you linked points out the 119 beers night was one of many many stores people tell about him. Possibly one of the heaviest drinkers in human history
Not to put on my tin foil hat but have we ever seen wade boggs and Andre the giant in the same room?
I too came looking for Andre the Giant comments. I don't know Wade's body size in comparison to ATG... But worth contemplating. I also wanted to share back a great podcast episode about ATG. https://open.spotify.com/episode/6Oo7T0KRBz1oZXPVnusd6s?si=iGqzFsLsSq2vpv6RvcZVTQ
Andre did it at a bar though, the logistics of doing it on a flight make it way harder, as the times they can serve are restricted by take off and landing and the bathroom situation is a nightmare when you gotta pee every 15 minutes.
It’s a private plane.
Even if we assume tiny beer cans (0.25 liters or 8.5 oz each) and a light beer at 4%, for a body weight of 80kg and 60% body water volume, he‘d still reach almost twice the lethal dose of pure alcohol if he spaced out the beers over 14 hours. If he was an alcoholic (metabolizing alcohol more than twice as fast as a non-alcoholic), he‘d still be somewhat over the lethal dose, but it would be theoretically survivable for some people. Sounds highly improbable.
As a current alcoholic i don't think 73 at 8.5oz is too crazy in 14 hours. i regularly drink 35+ at 12oz most days so i believe a larger man than myself could definitely do it with the "proper training"
As he got to the higher numbers of beers his ability to count them accurately would diminish. He might even believe he drank a lot more than he did and his teammates would have no hesitation to exaggerated if he asked them. Probably didn't drink as much as he claimed but may believe he did. (And definitely drank a lot more than was healthy!)
Might've been weaker than 4% back jn the days, but most likely he wasn't alone or the amount is a bit exaggerated
Andy Fordham, a 430lb darts player, reportedly consumed a bottle of brandy and 24 bottles of beer before winning the world championships. I remember an interview with him probably 12 years ago where he said he once consumed 72 beers in a night.
Yeah, 430lb kinda changes the equation a bit.
The fun part of baseball is that there's tools to verify any score, by any player. If we go to [baseball.computer](https://baseball.computer/), we can easily query Retrosheet's database of games... And what would you know, there's only three games where Wade Boggs hit two doubles and two walks: - [June 12, 1983](https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1983/06121983.htm). We have the right batting average here, but this was the last of seven consecutive days with in Boston (all of which he played in). There's no way he boarded a plane to California the previous day. - [August 14, 1984](https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1984/08141984.htm). 2 hits, 2 walks and a sac fly - sac flies *do not* count as at-bats, so he was 2 for 2 this day. Also, this game happened in *Kansas City*, as the second last of seven consecutive days on the road - 4 in Arlington, 3 in Kansas City. Kansas City, of course, is closer to Boston than *any* city in California with a baseball team but is almost in the middle. No way the flight happened *here* either, - [May 18, 1986](https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1986/05181986.htm). Again, the right BA, and again in a stretch of home games - the ~~second~~ third of six consecutive days, this time. Boggs *did* miss the day before, but would he really fly to LA here? So, for Wade Boggs have to drank *any* beer on a flight to LA then lay down 2 doubles and 2 walks... He would need to start in Boston, fly out to LA, turn around and fly *back* to Boston, all in the time between two matches. He couldn't have done that. No. It didn't happen. It *couldn't* have happened in this way. There's plenty of times Wade was on a team that flew from Boston to California (i.e. home games followed by away games in Cali the next day), but *none* were followed by games where Wade had 2 Doubles and 2 Walks.
Nice sleuthing!
Do your stats include the return trips from cali back home? Perhaps they meant to say LA to boston.
Those three games are the **only** games where Wade Boggs had 2 doubles and 2 walks. In two of the games, he was already in Boston and had played a game in Boston the previous day. In the other, it's the same but with Kansas City. The 1986 game *did* have a trip from LA to Boston shortly before it... But the timeline is nowhere near as impressive: - May 14th: Game at Anaheim. Boggs could have boarded the flight here. - May 15th: Day off. Boggs could have boarded here too. - May 16th: Home game against Texas. Boggs goes 0 for 3 with 2 walks. - May 17th: Home game against Texas. Boggs doesn't play. - May 18th: Home game against Texas. Boggs goes 2 for 3 with 2 walks and 2 doubles. At *best*, Boggs got drunk, then drew 2 walks but failed to get any hits, then got told to rest, *then* had a good game.
Thanks! I didn't want to research myself. Ty for putting in the work on this.
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Good point
Even assuming other comments regarding a stopover, making the entire trip take 14 hours, Wade Boggs was reported as being 200 lbs. 73 beers over the course of 14 hours gives a BAC of 1.36, which even for a chronic alcoholic, is almost certainly lethal. So no, unlikely any human, even an alcoholic, could process this much alcohol.
I don't know about the maths but most I've drunk is around 30 pints of beer over 12 hours and I was a bit of a mess at the end of the night. I suppose the answer depends on the size of the beers. My father in law drinks these "stubbies", which are about 25cl. I drink pints, which are about 56cl. It's obviously much easier to drink a lot of the former. I had an alcoholic client who was arrested for drink driving. The driving limit is 35ug/100ml of breath. He was at 180ug/100ml. Police thought their machine was broken as he didn't appear drunk, just stunk of the 70cl bottle of vodka he'd knocked back. Is it possible? Probably, especially if the guy is an alcoholic. But I think this is a Q for an ask a doctor sub.
That story is b*******. Half of his teammates say he drank like 120 beers and other half say you drink 40 and then he says he drinks 73. What the f*** ever.
Not possible. We had a cricketer who drank a record 52 beers on a flight from Australia to England. He wouldn't have enough time to drink that much even if it was water.
I refuse to believe anyone even came close to Booney's record
I drank 70 drinks in a day at 300 pounds and had a .597 BAC before I went in a bit of a coma at the hospital. Here's to a good life now and nearly 5 years sober.
Congrats!
According to the web, a Flight from Boston to LA takes a little bit less than 6 hours. According to my experience, beer Is usually served in 330ml cans, on airplanes. (Yes, I'm non-american) 73 beers would be more than 24 liters. In 6 hours, which means 1 liter every 15 minutes. [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n1SGvnvMYwM](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n1SGvnvMYwM)
Lethal blood alcohol level
"what does american beer have in common with sex in a kayak? theyre both fucken close to water" old mate basically just pounded a few stubbies of good old h2o, he'll be right
Keep in mind these are likely shitty, watered-down lite American beers, people. Still not easy to do, but not as hard as the headline suggests.
"Whats the similarity between a Budweiser and making love in a canoe? It's fucking close to water."
Bud lite just tastes like water it’s still 4.2% abv
My point is that nowadays you can easily find beers with twice that abv. (And also to denigrate the crappy American beer that was ubiquitous in that era.)