After waiting 15 agonizing years, Jim Rice finally got elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The question remains, however, what the hell took so long?
Rice's numbers for his entire career (.298, 382 home runs, 1,451 RBIs) may not have been jaw dropping, but when you consider how baseball statistics have been tainted by performance enhancing drugs, they were pretty damn good.
The other factor for Rice was consistency. From 1975-'86, he belted at least 20 home runs and had least 85 RBIs every season except the strike-shortened 1981. He finished in the top 5 in the MVP voting six of those seasons and won the award in 1978 with a monster year (.315, 46 HRs, 139 RBIs).
He was an 8-time all-star and the most feared hitter in the game in the late '70s, averaging .320 with 41 homers and 128 RBIs from 1977-'79.
Rice becomes the fourth Hall of Famer to have spent his entire career with the Red Sox, joining fellow left fielders Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski, along with second baseman Bobby Doerr.
In his rookie season Rice and Fred Lynn formed the dynamic duo known as "The Gold Dust Twins" leading the Sox to the World Series. Lynn won the MVP and Rookie of the Year awards, but Rice was a close second for Rookie of the Year and 3rd in the MVP race.
I still say if he hadn't broken his wrist in late September and missed the entire postseason the Red Sox would have beaten the Reds in the classic '75 Series.
Rice will be overshadowed again at the HOF induction as he will be going in with Rickey Henderson. Rickey was easily the greatest leadoff hitter and base stealer of all-time and will undoubtedly have an entertaining speech. The fact that 28 writers left Rickey off their ballots again shows how stupid some of these guys are and how archaic the process is.
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