BROCKTON, Mass. — Willie James Boyd played against the original Satchel Paige and fathered the closest copy to the Negro Leagues star that baseball has seen since.
His name is Dennis, but he came to be known as Oil Can. With the Boston Red Sox in the 1980s he was a talented but temperamental foil for Roger Clemens, as likely to pitch a shutout as a fit.
Fourteen summers after his last big-league appearance, the Can is in camp with the minor-league Brockton Rox for another comeback try. He is 45 — older than the still-dominating Clemens, but younger than Paige when he had his best year in the majors.
"Whatever Satchel Paige had in (him), Can's got," Brockton manager Ed Nottle said. "If anybody would let him, there's no doubt in my mind that five years from now when he's 50, he'll be able to pitch like he does now."
"How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?" — Satchel Paige.
Paige went 12-10 for the St. Louis Browns in 1952, the season he turned 46, then lasted one more year before returning to the barnstorming that made him the most celebrated of the black players exiled from the majors. With a one-game cameo for the Kansas City Athletics at 58, Paige is believed to be the oldest major leaguer.
"I plan to beat him by one year," Boyd said last week after reporting to spring training in Brockton, about 30 miles south of Fenway Park. "I still want to play in Boston. I'll go to Pawtucket for a couple hours, and then let's go get the Yankees."
The first stop for Boyd this time is the Can-Am League — that's Canadian-American, not some of the Can's colorful syntax — among the lowest rungs on the baseball ladder. He joins organizational castoffs and undrafteds in search of another shot.
"They asked me, 'Are my grandkids going to be at the game tonight?' I heard it all," Boyd said.
He has been around long enough to know that pitching isn't about how fast you get it there. It's about location, and Boyd has found his.
There is still more pepper than salt in Boyd's mustache, more pep in his right arm than a man his age has a right to expect.
At last week's media day, reporters gathered around Boyd and largely ignored his young Rox teammates; if they were unfamiliar with his history, they were about to learn it.
"When I first saw him, I thought he was a coach," said pitcher Manny Tejada, 23. "Then I was looking at a baseball card and I thought, 'He was a superstar in the major leagues.' "
Several hundred like-minded fans sat in the cold to watch an exhibition game on Monday night that was Boyd's Brockton debut. Playing his changeup off a fastball in the mid-80s, Boyd threw three scoreless innings against the Worcester Tornadoes and left to a standing ovation.
Regardless of how things go here, the Can is working on another venture ripped from the pages of Satchel Paige: a team of former major leaguers — Oil Can Boyd and the Traveling All-Stars — that would barnstorm from South America all the way to Asia.
"People still want to see me pitch, and I'm going to give it to them," Boyd said. "I'm a drawing card."
"I never rush myself. See, they can't start the game without me." — Paige.
The Can lacks Paige's talent but makes up for it with a memorable personality.
He claimed during the 1986 World Series to channel Paige on the pitcher's mound. When a game at Cleveland's Municipal Stadium was called because of fog rolling in from Lake Erie, Boyd said, "That's what happens when you build a ballpark on the ocean." With the White Sox in the spring of 1995, Boyd called Michael Jordan "Shoes."
When Boyd was dunned by a video store over an unpaid bill, a Boston newspaper printed the selections, replete with pornographic titles, as "The Can's Film Festival."
"Somebody said, 'They'll be talking about Oil Can Boyd 300 years from now,' " he said.
The Rox know what they have: They scheduled Boyd to start two of their three home spring training games, including Saturday night against the New Haven Cutters. But the club insists the Can is not just another promotion.
"I never threw an illegal pitch. The trouble is, once in a while I toss one that ain't never been seen by this generation." — Paige.
Boyd claims he has 12-15 different pitches; most pitchers at this level are lucky to have two.
Boyd's catcher Boston, Rich Gedman, happens to be the manager in Worcester this season, which allowed him to see the Can's comeback in person. Jones, Boyd's current catcher, joked with Gedman before the game that he didn't have enough fingers to signal for all the pitches Boyd can throw.
"Just keep wiggling the fingers," Boyd told him. "That's my changeup."
"Avoid fried meats, which angry up the blood." — Paige.
Boyd sneaks cigarettes between innings of his start, and he works out by pitching almost every other day, year-round — far more than modern theory recommends. Fifteen years past his prime, he remains lanky and fit.
"He's probably not a half-pound different than he was for Boston," Nottle said. "Yesterday, we're taking pitching drills, and he's the best athlete out there."
"My feet ain't got nothing to do with my nickname. But when folks get it in their heads that a feller's got big feet, soon the feet start looking big." — Paige.
Leroy Robert Paige picked up his nickname carrying bags at the train station in his hometown of Mobile, Ala. Few called him anything else as he became the first player inducted into the Hall of Fame on the strength of a career in the Negro Leagues.
Oil can was slang for beer in Boyd's Mississippi, where he liked to lift his weights 12 ounces at a time. The Can was in college when he met Satch, but most of what he learned from Paige came indirectly: Boyd's father and uncle KT played in the Negro Leagues, and they copied their style from the master.
"A nickname don't hurt, either," Boyd said. "I'm blessed with the mystique. A lot of people don't have what I have: A nickname and knowing how to pitch can carry a long way."
"I ain't ever had a job, I just always played baseball." — Paige.
Called up by the Red Sox in September 1982, Boyd was a regular in the rotation before the next season was over. In '85, he went 15-13 with 13 complete games while pitching 272 1-3 innings — not even enough to lead the AL that season, but a total that hasn't been surpassed in either league in 15 years.
In 1986, he joined Clemens and Bruce Hurst to help Boston win the AL pennant. But he became so angry about being left off the 1986 All-Star team that he left the Red Sox for three days; the club suspended him and ordered a psychiatric evaluation before he could return.
The World Series, which has been famously unkind to the Red Sox, provided Boyd with yet another tipping point.
He was scheduled to start Game 7, one night after Bill Buckner's error kept the New York Mets alive. Rain pushed the game back a day, and Boston manager John McNamara decided to bring back Hurst four days after his complete game victory in Game 5.
Boyd broke down in tears.
Hurst tired, the Mets rallied and the Red Sox went another 18 years without a championship before ending their dynasty of disappointment last season.
"Don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines." — Paige.
Boyd became a free agent in 1989 and signed with the Montreal Expos, going 10-6 with a 2.93 ERA in his first season there. In the middle of the next season, the Expos shipped him to Texas and, bothered by blood clots, he went 2-7 with a 6.68 ERA for the Rangers.
Overall, he was 78-77 in the majors — a winner, but barely.
Boyd signed a minor-league deal with Pittsburgh the next April but didn't want to start at Double-A.
In 1995, Boyd was the first big-name player to cross the picket lines while the regular major leaguers were on strike; when the strike ended, he was let go.
Boyd went to Mexico, and to independent league teams in Bangor, Maine, and Lynn, Mass., and "a little bit of everywhere" before the blood clots, muscle spasms and pinched nerves forced him to quit in 1997.
Now he's healthy again.
"I'm 90 percent of what I was when I was 100 percent. . . . The old man still can pitch," he said.