Word: rice
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...wasn't a relief pitcher for the Tigers. But the days of beanball wars are over: even the designated hitter rule, which theoretically lets pitchers zap people with impunity (they themselves don't have to bat), hasn't changed that. No, the ball must have slipped; Rice didn't duck back quick enough. He even went to first and came around to score later than inning, and batted two more times before they took him out of the game. There wasn't even the rush of sudden tragedy, then--one read about it the next morning, a nightmare you squelch...
...Rice was priceless when he played. He didn't have the picture-perfect and fluid swing of Lynn, to whom he was always compared. Instead his powerful wrists carved the bat around, hard, and caught it for an instant before bringing it back, hard. He swung it like a scythe, and once I watched him connect full force and hit the ball up and over the flagpole in deep center, still going up at the 400-foot mark...
People noticed when he hit that ball, just as they noticed when he won game after game with his bat, and when he knocked in as many runs, finally, as Lynn did. But face it--Lynn got most of the glory. Not that Rice would care, or that he was ignored, or that any fan would be prepared to admit a visceral preference for Lynn. But it was demeaning simply that Rice and Lynn were always mentioned in the same breath. They complemented each other--the rightie, the leftie, the fielder, the slugger, the rookies, the meat of the order...
Lynn is compared to DiMaggio and Williams; Rice to Henry Aaron if anybody, partly because Willie Mays wouldn't do (Rice has no connotations, yet, as a fielder), mostly because whites are always compared to whites and blacks to blacks. There really are similarities between Lynn and DiMaggio--you can feel it--but Rice and Aaron have only one similarity, and one which has little to do with baseball...
...still a hopeless flailing to think on it: Rice is dead and gone. I try to look at the bright side. For one, now in a possible World Series Cecil Cooper can start with Dwight Evans preserved at right field. Cooper on first and Yaz at left--no more problem of dumping the designated hitter. But (sigh) manager Darrell Johnson will probably start Carbo or something... And, uh, Rice wasn't hitting so well in the past week anyway--chopping his swing and neutralizing his power. Hah. It's very depressing. And you have to feel most sorry, ruthless...