A big Gurgling Cod salute to Jim Ed Rice, the pride of Anderson, SC*, and Red Sox hall-of-famer.** The best part? Instead of Balco, his performance-enhancing substances came in the form of a meat and three. I am sorry to see that especially these days, no Boston-based writer has used Rice's career in Boston, as player, coach, and TV guy as a window on race in Boston over the last 40 years or so. It's a shame Larry Whiteside is not with us. It would be a complicated story -- and not a pretty one, but it is a story, in that the Boston of Rice's rookie year is a very different place than it is today. Deval Patrick is in the corner office on Beacon Hill, and Rice, notably aloof from the media as a player, is part of the NESN broadcast team. It's shameful that that would have been unthinkable in 1974, but it is a reality now. The Gurgling Cod likes to think it's possible to note progress like this without being a postracial Pollyanna.
*Once, when I was buying a set of tires not far from Jim Ed's hometown, the mention of Jim Rice led to a nostalgic reflection on his high school football career.
**Bittersweet, too, in that it happened on what would have been my father's 71st birthday. That's the man who took me to see Jim Rice play baseball, and who talked me off the ledge on 10/2/78 as we were biking home from Fenway.
JIM RICE IN THE HALL OF FAME!
JIM RICE IN THE HALL OF FAME!
JIM RICE IN THE HALL OF FAME!'
JIM RICE IN THE HALL OF FAME!
JIM RICE IN THE HALL OF FAME!
A proud day, and your dad is proud too. Why don't you do a piece on Jim Rice/race/Mass.?
Also, as Bob Ryan said, that means left field in Fenway had Hall of Famers for 50 straight years!
Posted by: New Orleans Survivor | Monday, 27 July 2009 at 10:14 AM