Finally, Jim Rice will get his well-deserved day. Rice, who batted .298 with 382 home runs and 1,451 RBIs from 1974-89 was elected into the baseball Hall of Fame this afternoon after getting a yes vote on 76.4 percent of the ballots. 75 percent is required for induction, Rice received just seven more votes than the minimum amount needed (412 out of 539).This was Rice's last chance to be voted into the Hall of Fame by the baseball writers. His attempts started back in 1995 where he was only receiving 20-30% of the votes....but with the steroid era forcing many writers and analyst to reevaluate Jim's numbers, Rice's yes votes continued to climb over the last few years. Last year, he received 72.2 percent of the vote, just 16 shy of the amount needed to get in. Many pointed to his troubled relationship with the media and a sharp drop off in numbers at the tail end of his career as key factors keeping him out of the Hall. Well that all changed today, and I for one am very happy to see him get in. Congrats Jimmy, you deserve it.
Induction ceremonies for will take place Sunday, July 26, in Cooperstown, New York. I can not wait for his speech, it is sure to be interesting, possibly bitter, and make no sense at all at times. That said, Rickey Henderson, who was elected on his first ballot today, is likely to have the speech of all speeches.....I hope he refers to himself in the third person the entire time.
7 comments:
Congratulations to Rice. Hopefully now he can sleep well at night knowing that the steroid era didn't screw him out of the HOF. Another Sox hat in the hall of fame.
Good for Rice, never saw him play but he had a good 10 year run, raked in his MVP year.
I will say the HOF voting is the dumbest thing in baseball. Every year I get all worked up because stories are told about how no one ever gets 100%, because Ripken is purer then the game. I don't know what the means but its beyond stupid.
Peter Gammons should just decide who gets in the Hall every year, and when he dies Bill Simmons. After Simmons I imagine it will fall to me however we'll have to look that one.
This is definitely one of the more enjoyable induction classes in a while
Simmons?
Brian Daubach....Hall of Famer.
I'm getting a little irritated by Simmons. I still like him and his writing, but his whole 'these are my readers' is grating me. I know there's supposed to be these layers of ironic knowingness to the statement, but I really don't think that he does fully comprehend the essential douchiness of some of 'his readers'.
I was surprised to see he even stayed with ESPN...for now at least...."essential douchiness"....spot on Joe...spot on.
I will follow Bill Simmons blindly into battle.
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