From Rob Neyer’s ESPN.com chat earlier today :
Brian (Raleigh): Rob, if Jim Rice was not the most feared hitter of the 80’s, who was? Jorge Bell?
Rob Neyer: I think you mean Jorge Orta . . . Seriously, I’m sick to death of this “most feared” thing. What does that mean? I know it doesn’t mean “best,” which really is all that matters. Looking at Rice’s 10 best years, 1977-1986 — which, by the way, are also his only 10 good years — and you’ll find that he was, at best, the third-best hitter in the American League, behind George Brett and Eddie Murray. And again, that’s stacking the deck in Rice’s favor. If we go to 11 or 12 years, or talk about defensive value and double plays grounded into . . . I’ve heard from a lot of people about Rice in the last 24 hours, and I’ve come to the conclusion that he does lead all hitters in one thing: myth creation and misperception.
jim rice was paid to hit home runs and drive guys in. he wasn’t asked to work the count or draw walks, he was asked to be aggressive and hit the holy hell out of the ball. so now, 15 years later, he’s being punished because he played the game the way he was asked to play it? seems fair to me.
y’know, I think Neyer isn’t arguing that Rice wasn’t a good player. He’s stating that Rice was not the best of his generation. And that said, he might still get in.
My own guess is that had Rice not been such a sourpuss with the media, he’d be getting the benefit of the doubt from a few more voters. That’s no reflection on Neyer’s remarks, btw.
this whole “most feared” type of question is typical of the hackery that is sports talk. why analyze or contextualize an issue when you can have ridiculous arguments like the following:
1. does x belong in the hall of fame?
2a. most valuable player.
2b. most important player (and why that’s different from the most valuable player)
2a.1 if y is the most valuable player in the x league, who is 2 thru 5?
and so on…
i’m sure alberto gonzales wrote a brief that said that being subjected to this asinine type of “discussion” torture for hours at a time (see: every fucking show on espn radio), though unquestionably lethal, is not covered by the geneva convention.
Hey, if you don’t like what you’re hearing, you can turn the radio off anytime you want. That’s what I did —this Dan Patrick show is really missing something.
Ummm,maybe its just me, but if any player is the third best hitter in baseball for a full ten years, and the two ahead of him are George Brett and Eddie Murray, shouldn’t they be in the Hall of Fame?
By the way, in the years 1977 – 86, Brett played more than 130 games only four times. And while Neyer talks about Rice having “only” ten good years, he forgets that Rice finished 3rd in the MVP race his rookie year (1975), or that for all of the extra time Murray played, they have the exact same number of all-star appearances, 8.
“Ummm,maybe its just me, but if any player is the third best hitter in baseball for a full ten years, and the two ahead of him are George Brett and Eddie Murray, shouldn’t they be in the Hall of Fame?”
Well, not necessarily. In Rice’s case, I think so. But if we were talking about another hypothetical players whose numbers were far beneath those of Murray and Brett, or we were discussing a player who shared the same position(s) as either of those two (which Rice didn’t), that would change the argument. And not to nitpick,but Neyer characterized Rice as the third best hitter in the AL over that span, not in all of baseball.
For more on Jim Rice’s relationship with the Boston media, I’d reccomend Howard Bryant’s “Shut Out : A Story Of Race And Baseball In Boston”.