Comments on: Jim Rice

By: sb1902

sb1902 — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 01:58:30 +0000

7. I hate to be the turd in the punchbowl here, but when you trail Kevin Millar in on base percentage (.361 to .352) and have an OPS+ of 128 (to Millar's 112), you're probably not an HOFer. Though I give Rice a tip of the cap for never asking to renegotiate his contract, unlike seemingly everybody else in that era....

By: Josh Wilker

Josh Wilker — Thu, 29 May 2008 01:04:48 +0000

6. 5 : Thanks for sharing those thoughts. It casts an interesting slant on a recent post on Jim Rice’s new blog:

http://ask14.sullivantire.com/?p=58

By: loganplow

loganplow — Wed, 28 May 2008 23:07:38 +0000

5. During the summer of 1977, between my junior and senior years of college, a friend and I rented a cottage in Falmouth for a week of beach fun and drinking. We capped it off on the final day with a trip to Fenway Park. We arrived early to see batting practice. Jim Rice had always been one of my heroes. I had read about him in a lengthy article by Dick Shaap in SPORT magazine but had marveled at how powerful and gifted a player he was. He was often overlooked in favor of pretty boy, USC, oft-injured, underachiever Fred Lynn. My favorite players have always been the RBI kings and Rice seemed to always have 120 a year or more. I am a Yankees fan and have gone to a fair number of Yankees, Mets, Cubs and White Sox games(went to college in Iowa). In those days during batting practice people could come down to the seats behind home plate, close enough to hear the players banter. Rice was playing catch on the first base line. Then he got his swings in banging the ball hard and far into the seats. What should have been an exhilirating demonstration by one of my sports heroes instead sickened me. People in the stands were yelling ‘nigger’ and such at him. Not in an endearing way, but a hateful tone. I felt ashamed and embarrased and I can’t imagine what Jim Rice must have felt. He was oblivious to it which seemed to infuriate the ignorant, drunken, red-faced louts. I had never heard that word used in public. It wasn’t just one person, it was many.

You would never hear that in New York. You couldn’t get away with it. I’d like to think that even the Yankee players would climb the stands to shut up one of these fools. As rank as the bleacher fans get at Wrigley I never heard racial epithets.

I wonder how Luis Tiant, one of their great pitchers at the time, got treated being Hispanic and Black.

Jim Rice is a modest and noble man of few words, similar in character to Eddie Murray. Unlike Eddie Murray who had Cal Ripken, Rice apparently had few if any friends on his team.

He deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.

By: Benaiah

Benaiah — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 03:50:36 +0000

4. 3 - If you love words, and all good writers do, then he almost has to be. I read 80% of "Positively Fourth Street" before leaving it on an East bound Division bus at Clark Street. As such, I still don't know what happened to Richard Farina, but I just assume he spontaneously combusted out of jealousy towards the one time Zimmerman.

By: Josh Wilker

Josh Wilker — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 22:40:21 +0000

3. 1 Well said, Benaiah. Bob Dylan's my idol too.

By: Josh Wilker

Josh Wilker — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 22:39:13 +0000

2. 4 comments from old CG site:

Ramblin’ Ed McMahon said…
“Ahhh…Yes….THAT IS CORRECT, SIR!!”

Yes. Sir. That is Correct…

10:35 AM

Ian said…
Ah, Jim Ed. Walk softly and carry a big, mean motherfucking stick. Hitter of screaming line-drive taters, Monster-denting doubles and triples to the triangle in center. My childhood hero, among baseball gods, because he was flat-out feared. What 10- or 12 year old didn’t yearn for that?

Thanks for saving this one for the day the writers screwed ‘im again. He needs to be in Cooperstown.

12:10 PM

reuben said…
beautiful rice-related memoir. he was a wonderful player. i cannot imagine what it was like to find yourself the sole black player on a team playing in a city in the midst of a busing crisis….

10:54 AM

Josh Wilker said…
The Red Sox were a very white team in a city that’s had more than its share of racial problems, but I don’t think Rice was ever the only black guy on the team (throughout his years in Beantown there was also, at various times, Tommy Harper, Cecil Cooper, Ben Oglivie, George Scott, Oil Can Boyd, Chico Walker, even Ellis Burks at the very end…). But you’re right, Rice was often the only prominent black dude on a team of whites, covered by all-white writers (who found him “difficult”), in a ballpark (if memory serves) almost 100% white, except for the food service workers. I don’t know how it affected him but I do know Boston is the same city that didn’t sell out the Garden when they had the best sports team ever assembled anywhere, led by Bill Russell, KC Jones, and Sam Jones, but packed them in like sardines for the Bird-McHale-Ainge era.

3:12 PM

By: Benaiah

Benaiah — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 18:46:35 +0000

1. I was 6 the first time the Bills lost in the Superbowl, and even as I idolized Jim Kelly and Thurmon Thomas (and eventually grew to hate the Cowboys), I became accutely aware of the fact that the good guys never win and usually just break your heart in the worst way imaginable. Eventually I would move on to other heroes, now I guess Bob Dylan is my idol. Yet, when I read about what a prick he was to Joan Baez, or just in general, it doesn't make me like him less, if anything it makes me worship him even more. My heroes are only like me in their failings, I can't write "Tangled Up in Blue" but I can get fucked up for a few years straight and crash at people's houses while lying to everyone about who I am. I am elevated by Bob, since all of my failings were once his before he transcended them into Godhood.