After being diagnosed with prostate cancer last year, Baseball Hall of Famer Wade Boggs posted a video of him ringing the bell for cancer survivors on Monday.
Boggs, 66, posted he was cancer-free Feb. 7, exactly five months after he revealed that he was beginning treatment for prostate cancer. In that initial post, he predicted that he would ring the bell one day, and that day finally came. Fittingly wearing a Boston Red Sox shirt, Boggs rang the bell with “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple playing in the background.
A 2005 Hall of Fame inductee, Boggs spent 11 of his 18 MLB seasons (1982-92) with the Red Sox before spending five seasons with the New York Yankees (1993-97) and his final two seasons with the then-Tampa Bay Devil Rays (1998-99).
Along the way, he made 12 All-Star Games, won five batting titles and two Gold Gloves and collected 3,010 hits, good for 31st all-time. He’s one of just 33 players in MLB history to reach the 3,000-hit benchmark and was the first one to reach it with a home run.
Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter — Boggs’ former Yankees teammate — have since joined Boggs as players who homered for their 3000th hit.
Boggs, who won the 1996 World Series with the Yankees, owns a career .328 batting average, ninth-best among the 33 members of the 3,000-hits club. His 2,098 hits for the Red Sox alone are fifth in franchise history, and his .338 batting average for Boston trails only Ted Williams.
