Rice awaits word, again

BOSTON – Jim Rice’s life could be changed forever come this afternoon.

Or, as has been the case for the past 14 years, today could come and go and Rice will still be on the outside looking in at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Regardless of today’s outcome, when the 2009 class is announced, Rice is not planning anything special. After 14 years of disappointment, Rice won’t allow the vote to rule him, even though he is on the ballot for the 15th and final time.

“It’s not going to make any change in my life, as far as waiting for the call on Monday,” Rice said Thursday before the Boston Baseball Writers dinner. “If I was in South Carolina and the weather was pretty good, I’d be out playing golf. It’s not in my hands. I can’t go back and change anything.”

Unlike previous years, when Rice was in South Carolina when the balloting was announced, he will be in Boston today. But that is not a calculated attempt to change his luck. Just a nod to the true priorities in Rice’s life.

“The only reason I’m not in Carolina now is because of my wife,” Rice said. “She’s teaching in Lawrence. If she hadn’t gotten that job, I’d be in South Carolina. If it was a sure thing, I’d probably be at home somewhere, having a nice Pepsi, waiting. But I don’t know, so I’m not going to change anything.”

Rice, 54, played left field for the Red Sox from 1974 to 1989 and had 382 homers and 1,451 RBI with a .298 batting average. In recent years, Rice’s vote total has increased, but fallen tantalizingly short of the necessary 75 percent of ballots required from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. He was on 72.2 percent of the ballots last year, falling 16 votes short.

His candidacy has become the subject of one of the most impassioned debates in recent Hall of Fame history. But at the center of the storm, Rice seeks philosophical refuge.

“I think that any time you can get up in the morning and you can breathe and you find that your kids and your family (are) OK, it’s all taken care of,” Rice said. “It’s not going to change anything. It’s not going to change me. I think it’s going to change the people that want your services more than anything else. It means I may have to spend a little more time on the road, but that’s my choice. But that’s the only difference.”

Rice’s chance this final time is complicated by the presence of Rickey Henderson, a can’t-miss first-time candidate who could dilute Rice’s vote total.

But in the second year of voting following the 2007 Mitchell Report on steroid use in baseball, Rice finally might cross the finish line riding a wave of new appreciation for his accumulated statistics in a so-called “clean” era.

“My numbers are still the same, compared to guys with steroids or not,” Rice said. “Maybe it’s more (that) time (has passed) than anything else. Maybe the (15th) time is the best time. But my numbers are still the same.”