Congrats, Jim Rice. You Earned It.
Jim Rice will be inducted into Baseball’s Hall of Fame today and it’s about damned time. There’s no excuse for Rice’s exile on the eligibility list for 14 years except that baseball writers are a vindictive and petty lot who have decided to punish Rice for his years of not treating them like royalty.
Rice was, in his time, one of the most feared hitters in baseball and, for a few seasons, he was the guy no pitcher ever wanted to face with the game on the line. Just look at the man’s statistics and consider that he was playing in an era where, if a player put up 25 home runs and 90 RBI, he was a shoo-in to be an All-Star. I grew up a Baltimore Orioles fan and I absolutely hated Rice’s at-bats. It seemed that no matter who was on the mound — and the O’s has some stellar pitchers like Jim Palmer, Storm Davis, Mike Boddicker, Mike Flanagan, Tippy Martinez, Scott MacGregor, Mike Cuellar, and Steve Stone — Rice was going to crush one off the wall or drive yet another one out of Memorial Stadium.
Rice was one third of the best-hitting outfield I’ve ever seen: The BoSox trio of Rice, Fred Lynn, and Dwight Evans. That Rice never won a World Series Ring wasn’t a mark against him but a testimony to just how many great teams there were in the AL in the late 70s and early 80s (the Orioles, Yankees, Royals, and Brewers always fought hard for a Series bid) and how competitive baseball was in those days.
Look at Rice’s stat line for his MVP year in 1978. He hit .315, with 46 home runs and 139 RBIs. He also had 213 hits, a slugging percentage of .600, and 15 triples (!!). He had 406 total bases in that year, something no American League hitter has done since. That, folks, is a Hall of Fame line and it should have put him in the Hall years ago. Those who grew up watching him knew that already. It’s a crying shame that the baseball writers who vote for the Hall didn’t.
Oh, and as if that’s not quite enough, Jim Rice may well have saved a kid’s life in the middle of a game. How many players can say that?
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