In his final year of eligibility, Anderson S.C. native Jim Rice was finally inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame yesterday, the end of a thirty-eight year odyssey that began when the Boston Red Sox selected him in the first round of the 1971 draft.
An eight-time All-Star, Rice hit .298 lifetime with 382 homers and 1,451 RBI in fifteen seasons, all of them with the Red Sox. He was the AL MVP in 1978, when he hit .315 (third in the league) and led the majors with 46 home runs and 139 RBI, and won two Silver Slugger awards.
Not bad for the non-steroids era.
So why did it take Rice so long to get inducted?
Well, apparently he wasn’t liked very much by his teammates, and one time he actually tore the shirt off of a reporter, which is not exactly the best way to get good ink.
Of course, there was also the time in 1982 when he jumped into the crowd during a nationally-televised game and basically saved the life of a four-year-old kid who was struck in the head by a line drive off of a teammate’s bat.
Pretty impressive.
Unfortunately, they probably won’t name anything in Rice’s hometown after him.
Not because he doesn’t deserve it, of course, it’s just that everything up there is already named for a member of the Cooper family.
Which sort of makes it “Cooperstown,” too, when you stop and think about it …
By Toyota Kawaski January 13, 2009 at 9:32 am
Congrats to Jim
By OOOH January 13, 2009 at 9:37 am
Bout Time. GO JIM and GO SOX!
By andersonnativejtm January 13, 2009 at 2:22 pm
The Jim Ed Rice Center, a city recreation department facility with ballfields has been named for Jim Ed Rice for over 15 years.
By fitsnews January 13, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Didn’t that get folded into the Dolly Cooper something or other?
By andersonnativejtm January 13, 2009 at 2:27 pm
By the way, nothing in the city of Anderson is named after Dan Cooper. Powdersville is barely even in Anderson County. The majority of its residents work and play in Greenville.