Rice HOF in '09 aka Hawk Hunting | FranklyP's Blog

There seems to be a surge of people supporting Andre Dawson as HOFer as opposed to Jim Rice... This being Jim Ed's last shot of having all the media types he cheesed off during his career vote him in, I figured I'd stand up for him. After all, I did wear 14 in his honor in high school. (Do you think there is any correlation to his vote totals going up as more of the 70s sportswriters die off and the incoming new blood that he never picked up by their shirt and hung on a locker? ) I asked Tony Massarotti who he thought had a better shot of getting into HOF.. Tiant or Rice? (considering Rice would also have to get in thru the veterans committee if he didn't make it this year) and he answered "Rice"

Let's compare Rice career (1974-1988; 2033 Games) thru his last full season with the same period of Dawson (1976-1990; 2018 Games). All but one of Dawsons seasons after that were way down from his usual production, so it would be reasonable to say this was their prime years.

Games AB Runs Hits HR RBI SB Slug Avg

Rice 2033 8016 1227 2403 379 1423 57 .512 .29978

Dawson 2018 7785 1130 2201 346 1231 300 .482 .28272

Over 14 prime years, Rice scored 100 more runs, had 200 more hits, 30 more HRs, 200 more RBI, 30 pt higher SLG and 17 points higher batting average. Dawson was agrubably a better base stealer. Rice did set the MLB record for errorless games in the outfield his first full year in left, and led the AL in outfield assists several times, but Dawson did get the hardware. One thing to factor in is that Dawson did play most of his career in Montreal, so with the Canadian exchange rate, all of his stats should be discounted by a factor of 1.3, as evidenced by how is numbers dropped off the table when he came to Boston. Rice HOF 09!

Comments (1) Add A Comment

December 2, 2008 11:38 PM ET

Report Abuse | QUOTE

I'm pretty sure that Rice also led many AL categories throughout his "star years" ('75-'86). I didn't know he set the record for errorless games in the outfield, that's pretty amazing. Nice comparison of Dawson vs Rice.
-Elizabeth