As an unabashed Jim Rice fan, I can say with complete and total bias, he is a fantastic pick to be in baseball's Hall of Fame.
As a kid, for whatever reason I zeroed in on Rice and followed his every move. My baseball card collection contains my cards and then a special notebook filled with nothing but Jim Rice cards. Which reminds me, that collection probably just bumped up in value a bit.
I remember being crushed when I started hearing stories about Rice not being the nicest person in the world. The media was really tough on him and that in turn bothered me. But it never turned me against him.
It was sad to see his career quickly tail off after a superb 1986 season. But even in 1986 I recall seeing warning signs. His power had diminished and he went to the opposite field much more often. Normally an admirable skill, but his opposite field hits seemed almost by accident. I don't know if there is a way to check my memories as I was only 14 at the time, but he seemed late on his swings and lacked the brute strength he'd had prior.
Again, it pained me to read articles that perhaps he was a conditioning freak and his rapid decline was the result of refusing to wear glasses. There was always something negative surrounding Rice.
As many have argued, had he stuck around another 2-3 years and put up bad numbers he just might have reached 400 home runs and 1500 RBI, but instead he hung 'em up. Many years have passed since Rice played baseball, but it seems like just yesterday to me.
My good memories of Rice were many, but the ones that stuck with me were the day game in which a Dave Stapleton liner hit a young boy sitting in the short left field stands. Rice saw the injury, hopped into the stands and carried the blood covered boy into the dugout for faster treatment. If I recall correctly, Rice played the rest of the game with a blood stain on his uniform. Here's what Peter Gammons had to say about it while still writing for the Boston Globe:
RED SOX NOTEBOOK\ FENWAY ROUGH AGAIN
PETER GAMMONS
August 9, 1982
Covering this place has become like "Guadalcanal Diary." Saturday there was the sickening beaning of a 4-year-old New Hampshire boy and a subsequent injury to another fan on another foul ball. Yesterday one fan in the left- field grandstands was hurt by a foul ball, Carlton Fisk was struck twice by Dwight Evans' bat and, in succession in the ninth inning, Ron LeFlore flipped his bat and caught Gary Allenson square on the right (throwing) elbow and Tony Bernazard flipped his and caught home plate umpire Mike Reilly flush on the back of the head.
"Fans love Fenway," said Dave Stapleton, "but one of the reasons is that they're so close - but it makes it awfully dangerous." Stapleton was advised by doctors at Children's Hospital not to see Jonathan Keane, the boy struck by Stape's liner Saturday, until after yesterday's game, which he did. Chicago manager Tony LaRussa and Allenson visited the boy early yesterday morning. If only every cynic in America could have 1) observed Jim Rice's reaction to crisis and 2) seen how concerned players from both teams were. Keane, incidentally, was reported in good condition yesterday.
End
The other memory I am fond of was a 1986 game in Yankee Stadium. It was my first game there and in the 8th or 9th inning there was a foul into the short left field stands. Rice had reached the area in an attempt to make a play. While at the wall, a fan reached out and grabbed Rice's cap. He didn't like that and leapt the wall and went after the fan to get his cap back. Good times, except for the fact that the family that had hosted my family at the game (and drove us) decided to get an early exit and we were on the drive home when the event went down. I was grumpy not to have witnessed it.
Here is Leigh Montville's take on that episode. I had most of the facts correct, but didn't realize Rice made the catch and that the whole team swarmed the scene:
HATS OFF TO RICE
Leigh Montville
Globe Staff September 14, 1986
NEW YORK -- Don't try to rollerskate in a buffalo herd. Don't mess with Superman's cape. Don't -- absolutely don't -- take Jim Rice's baseball cap.
Jim, you see, has some friends. "The old story about the Boston Red Sox always has been that they needed 24 cabs for 24 players," Red Sox designated hitter Don Baylor said yesterday afternoon after the American League leaders lost, 11-6, to the Yankees during one of the strangest days in the long and storied history of this series between rival teams. "Well, you saw everyone moving in one direction today. That was a team."
Have you ever? Did you ever? The direction this team was traveling on this day was into the left-field stands to rescue their captain, who had gone there first to rescue his baseball cap. Have you ever? Did you ever?
Part ice hockey, part junior high school rumble, part swimming against a strong tide in an angry sea, this was a picture that will be remembered for a long time. Half the Red Sox team was in the middle of the stands filled with people who hate them worse than anyone or anything on this earth.
"You think about it now and you say, 'I shouldn't go in the stands,' " centerfielder Tony Armas said. "A lot of trouble could happen to you there. People could have guns, knives.
"You think about it at the moment it happens, though, and you just think that you have to get in there to help Jimmy."
First things first. The trouble began at the start of the Yankee half of the eighth inning with one of those high and lazy fly balls that causes infielders and outfielders to collide. The ball was foul, close to the left- field stands and Rice ran a long way for it and shortstop Spike Owen ran a long way and they arrived at the ball at the same time.
"You couldn't hear anything because we were so close to the stands," Spike Owen said. "I thought it was my ball. I didn't have an idea where Jimmy was until we hit."
The collision -- in the words of Red Sox trainer Charlie Moss -- was "like a Cadillac hitting a Volkswagen. The Cadillac caught the ball and somehow held on to it. The Volkswagen careened off to one side and hit his head on the padded fence.
Spike Owen never lost consciousness, but he felt a pain in his chest.
"Something happened to my ribs," he said later, a giant bandage wrapped around those ribs. "I guess it's not serious, but it still hurts when I breathe."
Both Owen and Rice stayed on the ground for a while, and in the confusion a 27-year-old genius from Brooklyn named Thomas J. Nihill reached over the railing and stole Rice's cap. The television replay clearly showed him making the grab, picking up the hat as the two ballplayers still rolled in pain.
"It's like going to a funeral home and taking the good teeth from a corpse," a man in the press box exclaimed. "Isn't that something?"
Owen was helped off the field. Rice wiped dirt from his uniform and prepared to go back to his post in left. The game was ready to resume.
Then Rice realized he didn't have his hat.
"The fans started pointing at the guy who had the hat," Tony Armas said. "The guy was trying to get away. He stuffed the cap in the front of his pants. Then he said something. I think he said a bad word."
"I guess he said some racial epithet," manager McNamara said. "Jimmy even was offering the guy another cap. That's when the guy apparently said what he said."
Rice, who refused to comment on his reasons, vaulted the railing and began to chase Thomas J. Nihill, the 27-year-old genius from Brooklyn. The rest of the players saw Rice disappear and they followed.
"You just go," Tony Armas said. "I didn't want Jimmy hitting the guy and getting in some kind of lawsuit."
"When one of my players goes into the stands, I know there'll be at least one guy going with him," McNamara said. "I think I was the first one out of the dugout. I wasn't first into the stands, though. There are some younger legs than mine around here."
"I was on the mound, warming up," pitcher Joe Sambito said. "I was in my motion when I looked at the plate and saw that Rich Gedman, the catcher, wasn't there. I wondered where he went. Then I saw what was happening. Everyone went."
Rice wound up wrestling the hat free from the 27-year-old genius. McNamara wound up behind pitcher Oil Can Boyd, who suddenly was having trouble with someone stealing HIS hat. McNamara went to help Boyd and then Don Baylor came along to help McNamara.
"My bodyguard," McNamara said. "He ended it right there. He pulled away the hat and the guy just sort of sat in a seat and Baylor said, 'Stay there.' "
LaSchelle Tarver, the rookie outfielder, won immediate points for good planning. He carried his bat with him into the stands. ("I don't know," he said, "it just followed me out there.") Marc Sullivan went in wearing a batting helmet. Roger Clemens, in what must be his arguing style, turned his hat backward, and vaulted the railing in a rush.
"What did you expect to find in there?" the pitcher was asked.
"I didn't know," he said, "but if anybody came at me, there was going to be trouble. We were going to get Jimmy. No prisoners in that kind of situation."
The meeting between fans and players mostly was a jumble. There were no real fights. Security people came along to arrest the 27-year-old genius and another fan. All the hats were saved. All the players were alive and well when they finally returned to the field.
"You think, though, about what could happen," McNamara said. "You go out there and you look at who's around you. Rice. Baylor. Clemens. Can. The potential of things that can happen is really dangerous. Not just for the players, either. There's little kids out there. Women. I'll tell you, it's scary."
Before the game resumed, a third fan was arrested when he dropped his cigarettes over the railing and came onto the field to retrieve them. A second cap also came flying onto the field, thrown by a fan. A rubber chicken also was thrown onto the field.
A rubber chicken?
"I just told the umpire to have someone remove the chicken," Sambito said. "I said I'm not going to pitch with a rubber chicken on the field."
The chicken was removed. Jim had his cap. The genius from Brooklyn had his citation for disorderly conduct and criminal trespassing. Play ball.
Baseball began again.
End
Always entertaining. Good work James Edward Rice.