If you need to ask why Jim Rice is “the man” then you probably shouldn’t be reading this blog.
Here is my favorite part of Jim Ed’s speech:
I am a husband called Rice. I am a father called Dad. I am a brother called Ed. I am an uncle called Uncle Ed. I am a grandfather called Papa. I am a friend that doesn’t call, some of my friends know that, and sometimes best not called at all. Finally, and I do mean finally, I am Jim Rice called a baseball Hall of Famer.
You always feel that after every great once-in-a-lifetime moment, there could not be anything else to top it. You find your life-long partner, that one true love. You have your first child and you spend hours wondering at the perfection of tiny little fingers and toes. You rejoice and cry through pre-elementary, middle and high school and, if you’re lucky, college graduation. You marvel at how sanity endures. Right when you thought it couldn’t get any better, you have grandchildren and a new astonishing love blossoms.
And then after 15 years, you get a phone call that you thought you’d never get. Your aspiration’s realized. Your tears overflow. Because you know now that the highest honor of your career means so much more than you ever thought it would mean before. Because what it feels like most is being welcomed at home plate and after hitting a walk off home run. You find yourself repeating the same phrases over and over:
“We made it, we made it. We made it.”
And suddenly you think, “Where’s my wife?”
The dude should write songs.
And on to tonight’s game:
It’s the A’s, boys. The Oakland Athletics. Enough said?
