The beauty of Jim Rice's election to the Baseball Hall of Fame is that he is going to Cooperstown on his terms. He always believed in letting his bat do his talking, which is why, year after year after year, as the Hall vote was announced and he remained outside the walls to Cooperstown, he never felt the need to decry the indignity of it all.
The way Rice looked at it, he was a .298 hitter with 382 career home runs - with or without Cooperstown. They don't add 100 or so home runs to your stats if you get enshrined, just as they don't take away any home runs if you don't get in. The body of work is the body of work, and, well, Rice was, and is, proud of what he accomplished during his 16 seasons in a Red Sox uniform. This is not to say Rice wasn't absolutely thrilled yesterday when he received the joyous news he had been elected to Cooperstown in his 15th, and final, year of eligibility in voting conducted by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. As he put it so well during an afternoon press conference, ``I would like to thank the Red Sox for keeping me around this long . . . I'm glad to wear the hat to go into the Hall of Fame of the Boston Red Sox .''
Good point by Jim Ed. For once there is no debate about a Hall of Famer being asked which cap he will wear into Cooperstown. While Rice's fellow enshrinee Rickey Henderson changed teams the way some people change their minds, Jim Ed is that rare breed of athlete who played his entire career with one team. Take a good look at Rice, because it might be a long time before you see another Cooperstown enshrinee who never changed teams. (Mo Rivera, anyone?)
The next couple of weeks are going to be a whirlwind for Rice and Henderson. This morning, they will appear at a joint press conference at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. There will be television and radio interviews, lots of people at the house, a steady stream of phone messages, texts and e-mails.
And, really, Jim Rice's life never will be the same from this point on. This isn't like 1978, when Rice edged out Yankees lefty Ron Guidry for the American League's Most Valuable Player Award. Once you're named MVP, you have to go ahead and earn it again. But you are a Hall of Famer for life: Decorum will dictate that Jim Rice is introduced at any and all future functions as ``Hall of Famer Jim Rice.'' He will need to relearn how to sign his autograph: From now on, it's ``Jim Rice HOF '09.'' And then there is the business of Jim Rice's uniform No. 14, which nobody has worn since Rice retired in 1989. Now the number will be formally retired, with No. 14 going up there in right field with the retired numbers of Bobby Doerr (No. 1), Joe Cronin (No. 4), Carl Yastrzemski (No. 8), Ted Williams (No. 9), Carlton Fisk (No. 27) and, of course, Rice's close friend and mentor, Johnny Pesky (No. 6).
From a historical perspective, Fenway Park's heralded Green Monster has just become a Hall of Fame Wall. While it's been well-chronicled through the years that some truly great players have roamed left field, now we can look at a half-century of Baseball and be awed by the knowledge that three Hall of Famers - Williams, followed by Yastrzemski and Rice - stood sentry in front of the Green Monster.
Rice acknowledged it will be special ``. . . to be able to go into the Hall of Fame, with Yaz and Williams there.'' And it's funny how things work: Had Yaz not moved to first base, who knows where Rice would have fit in?
When they retire Rice's number, the Red Sox should put up a plaque on the outside of the Green Monster: ``Ted Williams - Carl Yastrzemski - Jim Rice - Hall of Famers.''
It has taken all these years to make it official, but now Sox fans can speak of Jim Rice in the same sentence as Teddy Ballgame and Yaz.
Goose bumps, anyone?
- sbuckley@bostonherald.com
