It took Jim Rice 15 years to finally make it to Cooperstown, NY.
People will dispute his numbers. Fans do that from time to time. Sometimes, fans get caught up too much in the numbers game. How dominant was he? He hit less than half the number of homeruns than Babe Ruth...he hit less than .300 for his career. Blah, blah, blah.
If there is one lasting image in Rice's career, he believes it is this:
More after the jump...
For many readers of this, August 7, 1982 was before they were born. For Jonathan Keane, then a four-year-old from Greenland, NH, sitting at a game with his father, it was the day his life almost ended, and the day his life was saved by a quick thinking outfielder for the Boston Red Sox, Jim Rice.
From Dan Duggan's article in the Boston Herald,
[F]our-year-old Jonathan Keane of Greenland, N.H., was sitting with his father, Tom, in the second row along the first base line at Fenway Park when he was struck in the left temple by a foul ball of the bat of Red Sox first baseman Dave Stapleton. Rice sprung from the dugout, lifted the bloodied boy into his arms and raced him through the clubhouse to an ambulance.
"There's a big reaction from that," Rice said. "People always say, 'What happened to the kid?' "
The "kid" is now 31 and living in Raleigh, N.C., where he works for an Internet company. While Keane suffered a fractured skull and was hospitalized for five days, he had no lasting effects from the incident. For that, he thanks Rice's quick reaction.
"What he did saved my life," Keane said. "In those types of situations, most people freeze. He was really quick to react. That's heroic in my eyes."
Keane still sports a scar from the incident he cannot remember. Rice does remember, since that picture is part of a collage at Fenway, and it still stands out in his mind.
Rice happily recalls the day eight years ago that he received a letter from Keane after the youngster graduated from NC State, but has not had much contact with him since.
To Keane, Rice has always been a Hall of Famer, and hopefully, more readers will believe that, too.
That is an amazing story
I am glad he finally got it. This writers be BSing
I, too, am glad that Jim Rice finally got into Cooperstown. While baseball and getting into Cooperstown is all about the numbers, Jim Rice has the numbers. The problem is that sports writers tend to exhibit schizophrenic behavior. First, they want the players to have the numbers, then they want the players to be persons of moral fiber, then the sports writers have to like the player or players based on the number of interviews they were granted or their overall attitudes towards the press.
I think it is time to put a rubric together or set up a different way of determining who gets into Cooperstown. Until we do, the fans and the players themselves will have to be subjected to the subjective whims of sports writers.
Hi, good post. I have been pondering this issue,so thanks for writing. I will definitely be coming back to your posts.