WINTER HAVEN, Fla. Jim Rice, the all-star left fielder whowalked out of Boston in a huff two years ago, is back in a Red Soxuniform, and for the first time in many years he appears comfortablein it.
If his attitude is the same, as he insists it is, his demeanoris certainly different.
Now he comes smiling to practice, eager to help, chattering allthe time, head up, eyes darting. The guy who used to sit in thelocker room waiting for wayward reporters like a lion near thewaterhole now even grants interviews.
He is a minor league batting instructor, a far cry from the dayswhen he made millions playing major league baseball. He's put onsome weight but he looks every bit as formidable as he was at fullpower, when he broke those two bats on swings that missed the balls.
And he is happy.
'This has nothing to do with money. You do it because you wantto give something back to baseball. You see a chance to work with alot of young kids who may have a future in baseball,' Rice said.
What mellowed Jim Rice?
'I feel the same as I did when I played. It's not anydifferent,' said Rice, 39 years old on Sunday. 'I was mellow then.'
Well, maybe, but there was that scuffle with the reporter in thelocker room; the time he threw a ball at a photographer; his opendisdain for his last manager, Joe Morgan; that icy, foreboding lookhe wore so often toward the end . . .
'I didn't have any bad times in Boston. All the times weregood. If times were bad I wouldn't be living there right now,' hesaid.
Rice was the third to play left field at Fenway Park in one ofbaseball's great lineages that began with Ted Williams and CarlYastrzemski.
His performances were mitigated by many strikeouts, double playballs (a major league record 36 in 1984), and his moods, but thenumbers still impress.
He is third in the history of the club in home runs, 382; thirdin RBI, 1,451; third in hits, 2,452; and he was an eight-timeall-star. He led the American League in total bases three years in arow, tying a record held by Ty Cobb and Ted Williams. He had a .298 career batting average. In his rookie year in 1975 he hit .309and helped the Red Sox win the pennant. In 1978 he was the AmericanLeague most valuable player with 46 home runs, 139 RBIs and 406 totalbases, the most by an American League player since 1937.
He had his glory days in the late 1970s through the mid-1980s,and then struggled to keep up with himself until the Red Sox calledhim in and said they were not renewing his contract after 1989.
He blamed Morgan a lot, implying he should have played him morein those final days even though he was hurt and ineffective.
'A lot of times guys mean more to a ballclub by playing hurtthan not playing at all,' he said. 'A lot of times Clemens couldjust throw his glove out there without even pitching, because of hisname. A guy like Mi chael Jordan, a guy like Larry Bird. Being in the lineup they haveto change their strategy.'
But he wasn't played much and appeared angry most of the time.And he did not diminish the perception when the team offered to holda day in his honor, and he did not respond. Just left.
That bit of his history is on the mend, and he and the club havetentatively agreed to have such a day.
Still, Rice, ever proud and private, doesn't give too much.
'I don't see where it's mandatory that people think, even thefront office, that just because you play with a ballclub for a periodof time you deserve a day. I'm not like that,' he said. 'The onlything I'm looking forward to right now is . . . trying to get some ofthese kids to the big leagues, and they can have their glory days.'
But he does think about the past, and mention of Morgan brings aquick response.
'If Morgan was such a good manager why is he gone now? So, Icouldn't have been wrong,' Rice said of the manager who was firedabruptly last year.
One day at spring training camp last week, Rice, standing at thebatting cage, kept calling out to veteran players 'six-two-and even,'an expression Morgan often used. Third baseman Wade Boggs said, fromthe opposite side of the cage, that Rice 'ought to give that up.'Rice didn't hear him.
'Things like that, you ignore that,' he said. And then headded, 'Why don't you come down and write baseball? This is a thingabout baseball. This isn't about things in the past.'
He said it plaintively, not in a mean-spirited way. Questions like that have always been partof the rub for Jim Rice. He doesn't want to talk about emotions.He's starting to touch the edges now, but no more.
Even when asked to name some of his heroes in sport as he grewup in South Carolina, he insisted he had none, was too busy playingsports to have heroes.
When that delicate moment came when he wanted back in baseball,word somehow got to minor league director Ed Kenney, who notified thefront office folk, who then called Rice.
He knows his temperament can work against him, and he hasalready steeled himself for the time when he is considered for theHall of Fame.
'If it were left up to the players and you were going on asystem on what you accomplished in baseball, I got a shot,' he said.'But as far as certain people (baseball writers) voting, no.
'A lot of ballplayers, a lot of athletes, are kept aroundbecause they talk to the press. They're not kept around because oftheir ability. They're popular.' He enjoys golf, with a game in the 70s and low 80s, but says mostof his free time is taken up by his kids.
He says he might want to be a coach in the big leagues some day,but right now he is looking forward to working the minor leaguecircuit as a roving hitting instructor for the Red Sox.
And then he walks away, to the batting cage. And soon his voicecan be heard.
'That's it. That's it. You want to keep your head steady. No,not down, just steady. You move your head and it pulls the shoulder.That's it. Right there. Just keep your head steady.'
He is back in his element, comfortable again.
