This “Oil Can” doesn’t need oil to shine. All he needs is a baseball. And a team. And if that team happens to include Marquis Grissom, and Delino DeShields and a dozen other of African-American players, all the better for Dennis ”Oil Can” Boyd.
A year ago when I last spoke with “Oil Can” before he pitched the home opener for the Independent League Brockton (Massachusetts) Rox, his body was about to take the mound, but his mind was elsewhere. His plan he told me, from behind diamond glittering eyes and thick glasses, was to spend the winter fielding a team in the spirit of the old Negro league barnstormers. The intent, he said, was to revitalize baseball in the inner cities, especially among black kids who have turned away from the national pastime.
I tried to turn his attention back to the ‘86 World Series and his dazzling performance against the Mets in the cold and drizzle of Fenway Park. But “The Can” would have none of it. He kept talking about the kids, bobbing his head the way he does, his two golden earrings keeping time.
So the triple play of Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd, Marquis Grissom and Delino DeShields are now taking a positive strategy to revive baseball in the inner cities. Their plan is not only to succeed through the barnstorming tour – Oil Can Boyd’s Traveling All-Stars – but through their newly formed Urban Baseball League, which will begin 2008.
“When I was a kid, and I know that was some long time ago, every kid played baseball, country and city,” said Boyd. “I mean the black, kids, the white kids, it was baseball all the time, right up to the major leagues.”
Their plan is to also promote independent professional baseball in predominantly African-American cities with the model of the old Negro Leagues and the hopes that successful black community members will purchase franchises. In turn, inner-city kids will learn the game Boyd, Grissom, and DeShields can’t leave.
The big league numbers confirm the precipitous drop off in black players in the last two decades. Last season, only 8.4 percent of Major League players were African-American, almost a 10 percent drop from 10 years earlier – and nearly a 20 percent drop from the peak in the 1970s. The percentages taken through the years read like a reverse curve, with the present inching downward toward 1947 when Jackie Robinson made his debut with the Dodgers.
This summer’s barnstorming tour will include a multi-racial team of 21 players, including occasional appearances by Boyd’s former Red Sox team mate, 60 year-old Bill “Spaceman” Lee. Look for both Lee and Boyd on the mound when the team plays the Brockton Rox in Brockton, Massachusetts on May 16th, and I would not be surprised if Rox owner Bill Murray gets in on the act.
The team will sport uniforms reminiscent of those in the Negro Leagues and already have lined up exhibitions against many independent minor league baseball clubs. The Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Japan and Europe have expressed interest in the traveling baseball bonanza.
At somewhere between 45 and 50 – Boyd winks at questions about his age – “The Can” is still throwing hard. And like a contemporary Satchel Paige, he says he hopes to be buried under some pitcher’s mound. But not for a while. Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd still has work to do with that knee-buckling hook, and miles to go before he sleeps.
“Oil Can” Boyd and his barnstorming All-Stars will next play in Pittsfield, Massachusetts on June 19th at 7p.m. vs. Team USA at Wachonah Park. ESPN will be taping the game for future broadcast.
July 27th Delino DeShields and Oil Can Boyd will be keynote speakers at the 4th Annual Bobby Bonds Symposium in Montgomery Alabama
July 28th Delino DeShields and Oil Can Boyd will be guests of Jim Mudcat Grant’s BLACK ACES book signing at Alabama State.
July 29th The All Stars will be playing a double header against local Alabama all-stars at a site to be determined.
