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Rice, Morgan and Mondor Inducted Into International League HOF
By Administrator | July 20, 2008
If there is any justice in professional baseball, Jim Rice will enjoy Hall of Fame inductions in both 2008 AND 2009…
This afternoon at McCoy Stadium, home of the Pawtucket Red Sox, the first of those two ceremonies was held. Jim Ed was officially enshrined into the International League Hall of Fame, along with former PawSox / Red Sox manager “Walpole Joe” Morgan and PawSox owner Ben Mondor.
PawSox owner Ben Mondor, Red Sox great Jim Rice, former PawSox / Red Sox manager Joe Morgan, and IL president Randy Mobley (l to r) at today’s induction ceremonies at McCoy Stadium… SOX1FANation photo
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The IL Hall of Fame was active between 1947 and 1963, during which time fifty-one individuals were honored with enshrinement. Then, inexplicably, the HOF went dormant in 1964 and remained inactive until last year - when former IL presidents Harold Cooper, Jr and George Sisler, Jr were inducted.
This season, in honor of the 125th anniversary of the International League, the Hall is being revived with the enshrinement of twenty-seven IL personalities (players, managers and owners). The Hall will not have a permanent home (building)… rather, it will travel from ballpark to ballpark as a testament to the league’s legacy.
Jim Rice is well-known to Red Sox fans. He was one of the most feared hitters in baseball from the mid-70s through the mid-80s, finishing with a career batting average of .298, 382 home runs and 1451 rbi. He was the American League MVP in 1978, a season in which he garnered 406 total bases — the last American Leaguer to do so since Joe DiMaggio in 1937. Yet the Major League Baseball HOF has yet to beckon…
What most Red Sox fans don’t realize is that Rice is the last player in International League history to achieve the Triple Crown — in 1974 — when he hit .337, with 25 HR and 103 rbi despite being called up to Boston in mid-August. He is the PawSox all-time leading hitter (with a .340 BA).
“Walpole Joe” Morgan is the only man in International League history to win both the IL MVP Award (1964, Jacksonville) and Manager of the Year Award (1973, Charleston and 1977, Pawtucket). In 1973, he was the Sporting News’ Minor League Manager of the Year. He won 845 games as a manager in the IL, including a franchise record 601 with the PawSox.
Ben Mondor retired from the business world in 1977, when he acquired the then-bankrupt Rhode Island Red Sox. Over the course of the last thirty years he has turned the Pawtucket Red Sox into one of the most successful franchises in the minor leagues. He was named the Sporting News’ Minor League Executive of the Year in 1999… and he has been inducted into the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame.
Topics: Miscellaneous |
