Posts tagged JimRice at FanHouse

It's always so much fun when old ballplayers feel the need to remind us that today's players couldn't carry their jockstraps. Especially when part of their argument seems to be that the current guys are more interested in promoting themselves at the expense of winning games.

That's part of Jim Rice's approach in an interview with the Watertown Daily Times. He slams today's MLB as being watered down by too many teams and says that of the current Red Sox, only Jonathan Papelbon would be good enough to replace the guy who played on the 1975 club. My immediate thought was that Rice was forgetting that he wasn't as good as Manny Ramirez but Rice has a nifty argument all lined up for that.


Rice, no great fielder himself, isn't nearly the hitter that Manny is and certainly wasn't in 1975. He could hit into a hell of a double play, though. Which is how you help teams win games! Or maybe Rice is just the self-serving one.

When Torii Hunter recounted instances of fans at Fenway Park yelling racial slurs at him last month, response was varied. There was the time-tested belief that Boston is generally a racist city, accusations that Hunter wasn't telling the truth and, via David Ortiz among others, a thought that it was more about being on the opposing team than true hatred.

Now we're hearing from Jim Rice. As a black former Red Sox outfielder, Rice is in a good position to enlighten us about the goings-on in that part of Fenway. He took to his blog to respond to Hunter's claims. He said he never heard anything negative in Boston nor on the road, interesting because one would imagine the times he played in being more racially charged than recent years. He went on from there.


What exactly does a centerfielder have to do to incite racial slurs?