Rice explained that the All-Star chumps you see today, can't compare to genuine American heroes of Jim Rice's day. They didn't have the rock and roll and the drugs back then, so their old timey brand of baseball was pure and good. Unlike the kind you see from that hippie Derek Jeter.

Guys that I played against and with, these guys you're talking about cannot compare ... We didn't have the baggy uniforms. We didn't have the dreadlocks," Rice said. "It was a clean game, and now they're setting a bad example for the young guys." [...]

Flexing the muscles in his right arm, Rice said, "That's all the steroids you need. ... It's called God-given talent."

So remember kids—say your prayers and eat your vitamins and you too can wait 15 years to get into the Hall of Fame on a sympathy vote. Then you can badmouth the existing generation of baseball players all you like.

Hall of Famer Rice takes big leaguers to task [AP/USA Today]

-Jim Rice's number retired at Fenway, which really should have been done without waiting for him to be elected to the HOF. But it's not the first time the Red Sox fielded a black guy only after the rest of MLB did.

-Michael Phelps loses a race! But because it's swimming, and it's not the Olympics, no one gives a shit.

-First team up in the Michael Vick sweepstakes? Your Baltimore Ravens. Second team up? No? No one?

-This is a little absurd. Mark Buehrle stayed perfect into the sixth inning, retiring an MLB-record 45 straight batters. He lost the game. Welcome to Chicago.

-Wang to have season-ending surgery. That means a temporary end to sophomoric headlines like "Wang to have season ending surgery."

-At least we still have sophomoric headlines like "Giant's Johnson has torn rotator cuff!"

-The Madden 10 soundtrack listing is in. Final score: Rock 18, hip-hop 7.

-SI launching Swimsuit Issue iPhone app. Hey, it'll cut down on the rustling of magazine pages when you have to rub one out in the bathroom stall at work.

-Jays GM says he's unlikely to trade Roy Halladay, after being unimpressed with offers. Translation: teams have been offering the moon for him. Now let's see if we can bluff them into offering more.

-The commish plans to give Michael Vick a "conditional reinstatement," which means if a team wants him, and he doesn't kill anything, he'll be back for opening day.

-It took this long? After his team loses on an unreviewable blown call, Ron Gardenhire calls for an NFL-like system of challenge flags in baseball. In related news, average game time still hovering around 3 hours.

-Kimo Leopoldo: Not dead! Though life's probably not going so well when you have to hold a press conference announcing that.

-For all the babies he ate and puppies he kicked, Jim Rice saved this guy's life.

-Figures that Hedo Turkoglu is a marketing dream in Turkey, but nothing will prepare you for his Roald Dahlian nightmare of a world that they call a cell phone commercial.

-With Tim Wakefield on the DL, Clay Buchholz is back up. Smoltz and Penny should probably just fight to the death, because one of them's gone when Wakefield's back.

Wave your flags and blow the trumpets. And for good measure find a baseball beat writer and threaten to stuff him in a locker, as Rice has infamously done on more than one occasion. Perhaps that's why it took him 14 years to make it, and just under the wire at that. Our hero got 412 votes in the BBWAA election for 76.4 percent of the vote, with 75 percent needed to get in. He had 72 percent last year.

Oh, and Rickey made it too, which we'll get to momentarily.

Rice only got 29 percent of the vote the first year he was eligible for the Hall, in 1995, and his yearly fail in making the club became one of baseball's favorite ongoing narratives. When the news came down today, I called an old friend and member of the BBWAA who covers the Giants and Athletics for the Associated Press, Rick Eymer, and told him the news. His reaction summed up the moment pretty well.

"Holy shit. He made it?"

Had Rice not gotten the 75 percent necessary from the writers this time around, his case would have been sent to the Veterans Committee next year. His credentials would seem to make him a shoo-in, IMHO anyway, but then I never dealt with Rice in the clubhouse. By all accounts he gave new meaning to the word curmudgeon; once notoriously even tearing the shirt off of writer Steve Fainaru of the Hartford Courant.

But then there are the numbers: .298 lifetime batting average, 382 homers (non-steroid division), 1,451 RBI and a .502 slugging percentage. From 1975-1986, Rice drove in 1,276 runs, more than any other player (Mike Schmidt was second at 1,221).

"It's ridiculous that he hasn't made it before now," Eymer said. "I guess it's because he was a pretty irascible guy. He's definitely his own person."

So Jim Rice, your latest slugging Red Sox left fielder to make it to Cooperstown. The fact that he had to kick down the door 10 minutes before the joint closed for the night shouldn't diminish the accomplishment in any way.

Henderson, Rice Elected To Hall of Fame [BaseballHall.org]
Getting Into Rice Numbers [Boston Globe]
Rickey Races Into Hall, Rice Finally Slugs Way In [NBCSports]