It was 43 years ago this month that Jim Rice the future Baseball Hall of Famer became Jim Rice the Humanity Hall of Famer by saving a little boy’s life. A story always worth repeating, it’s also an example of how a famous athlete, even with a questionable reputation, can become a hero in the truest sense of the word.
Rice was with the Boston Red Sox, halfway through his 16-year career. On a sunny Sunday afternoon at Fenway Park, the Red Sox were tied with the Chicago White Sox, 2-2, in the fourth inning. Rice had driven in both Boston runs.
In the dugout, he heard the crack of the bat, swung by teammate Dave Stapleton. He didn’t hear the ensuing crack of four-year-old Jonathan Keane’s skull, split and fractured by the foul ball. Told that a kid was hit, Rice leaped from the dugout, into the stands, picked up the boy and carried him straight to Boston’s medical staff.
Later, doctors said without Rice’s quick action the boy probably wouldn’t have made it through the night. Jon Keane lived, returned to Fenway to throw the opening pitch eight months later, graduated from high school and North Carolina State’s Poole College of Management, married and had three children. Today, he’s the co-founder and CEO of a call-center company that he told NC State’s newspaper began “with the dream of creating a place that can treat people better.”
He is 47. Rice, who is 72, did more than save his life. He visited Jon in hospital and, after learning the family was financially stretched, Rice quietly paid the medical bills, without fanfare or headlines. This silence would be no surprise to baseball writers who found him generally unwilling to give them any such warmth, or information. Such was their relationship that in his acceptance speech the day he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2009, Rice referenced his “notorious reputation” and said he “refused to be the media’s mouthpiece.”
For the last 22 years, Rice has been in the media, as a baseball broadcaster.
A southern black, he’d faced prejudice like many players of his time, even though it was 30 years after Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s colour barrier. As a rookie, Rice was one of Boston’s “Gold Dust Twins”…Fred Lynn was the other. The records show that Lynn, who is white, became a starter in the Red Sox outfield slightly before Rice did. “Race has to be a factor,” Rice later told Sport Magazine, “when Fred Lynn can hit .240 in the minors and I can hit .340, and he gets a starting job before I do.”
Rice finished second to Lynn in both Rookie-of-the-Year and Most Valuable Player voting. Both went on to have Cooperstown-worthy careers. However, only Rice made it, and by then he was already a Hall of Famer to that four-year-old who went to the game to watch his favourite Red Sox player, Dave Stapleton — the batter who hit that foul ball.
Rice’s heroics have been likened to Rick Monday’s dousing of the burning flag, President Bush’s ceremonial first pitch after 9/11, Jackie Robinson’s historic appearance. Unlike Jim Rice, none of them directly saved a life.
