'bout stinkin' time!

Just heard that Jim Rice was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his last year of eligibility. I'm so glad he finally got in.


There are a few baseball games I remember fairly clearly, here's an example of one that sticks in my memory purely because of Jim Rice.

My first game at Fenway Park was in the fall of 1980. I went with some MIT fraternity and a group of freshman during MIT's "rush week". We sat way in the back of the bleachers section, on honest-to-goodness real bleachers, if I remember correctly (I think that was the last year of real bleachers in the bleachers section at Fenway). I think we were just underneath the front of the centerfield video scoreboard (back then it was still black & white, and if you were looking straight up at it, it was basically unwatchable). The Red Sox were playing the Billy Martin-managed Oakland A's (this was the height of "Billyball"). The Sox were down in the 9th inning and Jim Rice hit a home run to start a game-tying rally, then another home run in the 10th to win the game.

Here's a box score of the game.

That second home run was one of the longest I've ever seen hit at Fenway. The back of the centerfield bleachers is FAR away from home plate, and I swear it landed just a few rows in front of where I was sitting.

Congrats, Jim-Ed! You deserve it.

Oh, and congrats to Rickey "Hot Dog" Henderson, too - no doubt he deserves it, too. Hell, I half expect him to come out of retirement and play in the majors again after being elected to the Hall of Fame.