The telltale signs range from subtle to downright obvious, but there are plenty of them to let even the casual observer know he’s a baseball man through and through.

From the faded, rough-edged Satchell Paige baseball card hanging prominently on the side of his locker, to the pictures of his children with bats and gloves in hand, to the thick gold chain he wears from which a gold baseball and his number – 23 – are suspended.

Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd began his professional baseball career in 1980 as a 16th-round draft pick out of Jackson State University in Jackson, Miss., by the Boston Red Sox. Sixteen years later, he’s still going strong as a player-coach with the Northeast League’s Bangor Blue Ox.

Although the flecks of gray in his beard and hair reveal Boyd’s advancing age, the 36-year-old has no thoughts of ending a career that has taken him from Elmira, N.Y., up through the Red Sox system and all across the North American continent.

“I want to pitch until I can’t pitch any more. I still want to keep playing baseball as long as my body’s able. They can roll me out on the field in a wheelchair – I can still get to the ground balls,” said Boyd, who got back into minor league baseball on the independent level in 1994 after blood clot problems in his right shoulder cut short his major league career.

Judging from his 1996 statistics, Boyd will be pitching for at least a few more seasons as his body shows no signs of slowing down.

He leads the league in wins and is among the top 10 in pitching, complete games, and shutouts.

The flamboyant Oil Can is 9-0 and the Blue Ox have not lost any of the 13 games in which Boyd has been the starting pitcher. Opposing batters are hitting just .248 against him.

The 6-foot-1, 160-pound Boyd has struck out 56 batters in 81 innings while issuing 79 hits and just nine walks. The gangly righthander has also thrown three complete games, one of them a shutout, while compiling a 3.11 ERA.

Chief cook and bottle washer

In addition to his contributions on the field, Boyd has been invaluable in developing Bangor’s young pitching staff and serving as the team’s goodwill ambassador, icon, household name and almost everything else but mascot and bat boy.

“We just wanted to get him here and put a Blue Ox cap on his head, but it’s been great to see what he’s done with the young pitchers, and he’s been so accomodating to the media, local charities and the fans,” said Bangor general manager Dean Gyorgy. “That’s been real pleasing to see.”

Boyd’s influence on Bangor’s young pitching staff was evident shortly before the end of the first half when the starting rotation suddenly became the team’s greatest strength.

Pitchers like 21-year-old R.J. Spang and former Campbell College teammates Andy High and Jamie Davis, who joined the Blue Ox shortly after their college graduations, have seen their assortment of pitches jump from two or three to “The early part of the season, Spang wasn’t getting his curve over. He wasn’t sharp,” said team manager Dick Phillips. “Oil Can took him under his wing and now, all of a sudden, he’s got all four pitches working.”

At the time of his removal from the rotation, Spang was 1-2 with a stratospheric ERA. Since then, he has gone 5-1 and has been a main cog in Bangor’s drive to a second half league title.

“I expected him to be more snooty or snotty – keeping to himself, but he’s just the opposite” said High, 5-2 with a 3.39 ERA.

High credits Boyd for adding an effective slider and curve to his fastball and changeup.

“He doesn’t just tell you what he’s doing right. The other night, he gave up five runs and he told us why he gave them up,” said High.

“He should be in the big leagues as a pitching coach. I’ve seen a lot of them that don’t instruct like he does,” said Phillips

Boyd has also been instrumental in recruiting some of the talent on the Blue Ox squad.

Starting right fielder Robert “Popeye” Cole is Boyd’s second cousin while the team’s closer, Mike “Mississippi” Smith, hails from the same hometown as Boyd and Cole – Meridian, Miss.

Little League to the big leagues

There was already baseball talent in Boyd’s family before he was born. His father, Willie James Boyd, pitched for the Homestead Grays in the old Negro League.

Willie Boyd saw Satchell Paige pitch during a barnstorming tour and told his son countless stories about the Hall of Famer.

“Satch is with me always,” said Boyd, referring to the card he has kept with him the last 13 years. “I finally met him in 1980. I never got to see him play, but I heard a lot of tales about him at home. My brothers were my heroes, but Leroy Paige is my folklore idol.”

Although his favorite sport was basketball, Boyd was drawn to baseball – not surprising since Boyd’s family could field their own team with 13 children.

“My brothers and I were all ballplayers and we all played ball together,” he said.

As the youngest sibling, Boyd had to compete all the time with his 12 older brothers and sisters. The competition and his brothers’ coaching brought Boyd’s baseball talent to the forefront early.

“The first time I wrote that I wanted to be a major league baseball player, I was 9 years old. I was about 12 years old when I realized my ability was better than any other kid on the field with me,” Boyd explained.

But that ability also came with a fierce competitiveness that got Boyd into trouble.

“My dad used to spank me often because after ballgames because I would fight my teammates if they made errors,” Boyd said. “My temper was very, very bad.”

But Boyd managed to harness that temper and use it to his advantage in the form of his trademark arm pumps and gestures after good plays and strikeouts.

The gestures and chats with himself on the mound both endeared him to fans and helped get his adrenaline pumping. They still do, even though Boyd’s maturity has toned down some of that youthful exuberance.

His feistiness remains however. Boyd was kicked out of a local dance club two months ago after he and some teammates got into a tussle with other patrons.

“The word `nigger’ was used in the bar. There’s going to be a fight every time that word is used in my presence. It’s only happened once,” said Boyd.

One rumor had Boyd being kicked out after repeatedly trying to hit on a female bartender, a charge he vigorously denies.

“I don’t know nothing about that. It was [another player] hitting on somebody. That’s why the guy called him a `nigger’. I’m a married man,” said Boyd.

Boyd, a one-man sound bite who once blamed the cold weather at Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium for its proximity to “the ocean” still calls it like he sees it and has plenty of stories to tell.

Before the regular season started, Boyd allowed two teenagers to borrow his Mercedes convertible to go get some fast food and bring it back to the ballpark before an exhibition game.

Neither teen had a valid license and didn’t know how to drive a car with a stick shift. The car had mechanical trouble and had to be pulled over.

“I let some kids use my car and now I’m —ed at myself for doing it. I let them use it to go get me something to eat,” he said. “If I’d known they didn’t have drivers licenses, I wouldn’t. But they didn’t tell me.”

Striking “Oil”

Signing “Oil Can” to a contract was one of the first priorities for Gyorgy, who figured Boyd’s popularity and cult status in New England would make him a natural fit for the Blue Ox.

“We started working on Oil Can early, before we even had a manager.” Gyorgy explained. “We knew from the start that our first player would have to be someone people would know.”

Boyd, who had pitched two seasons for the Northern League’s Sioux City Explorers, was waived due to a salary cap restriction and league president Miles Wolff called his friend Gyorgy in January with the news he was available.

“We thought `Great!’ But we tried to find him and couldn’t, couldn’t find his agent, called his mother… it was just a huge phone chase,” Gyorgy said.

Gyorgy finally heard from Boyd’s agent and began to try and sell him on the area.

Then, one day in early March, Gyorgy, Boyd and his agent went out to dinner and agreed they could get something done.

“So the next morning, we went to the coffee shop on the corner [near the team’s offices on Harlow Street] and made a final offer, I called my father-in-law [team owner Vincent Burns] and called Miles. Miles said `You’ve got to do it, he’s worth every penny to you.’ He knew what he could become in the community here,” said Gyorgy.

On March 14 at 11:30 a.m., Boyd officially signed on.

Wolff, who was Gyorgy’s boss when Gyorgy was a writer at Baseball America and when he was assistant general manager for the Burlington, N.C., Indians, provided valuable assistance and advice as Gyorgy built his team.

Will Boyd be back? He says yes.

“If the opportunity is given me to come back, I’ll definitely be back. Dean’s been very good to me. Very good to work for. And maybe someday I can work with him.”

The feeling is mutual.

“I know he wants to keep playing and we’d love to have him back,” said Gyorgy.

“There are less characters nowadays than there used to be, and he is one of them. That’s what this game needs. Not guys toting an attache case and agent right behind them. He’s a treat,” said Phillips.

Boyd’s contributions in Bangor’s inaugural season certainly haven’t surprised Wolff, who attended a game in Orono this week.

“I felt Oil Can Boyd for New England would be tremendous. You get to a town and things feel right, and Bangor felt right for Oil Can,” said Wolff.