Last hurrah

"It was a big relief," said Rice, who admitted to being nervous in the moments leading up the call as he sat home watching his favorite soap operas. "I didn't have any weight on my shoulders per se. But when I got the call, it seemed like everything fell back."

Rice will be inducted at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., on July 26 along with Rickey Henderson, who was elected yesterday in his first year of eligibility with 94.8 percent of the vote, and Veterans Committee electee Joe Gordon.

Rice, who likely will have his No. 14 retired by the Red Sox this summer, always has downplayed his close-but-no-cigar finishes in Hall voting.

He thanked a few people for making the moment possible, including his father, as well as longtime Red Sox publicist Dick Bresciani, who distributed an exhaustive statistical analysis of Rice's career to voters, and Johnny Pesky, who hit him endless balls off Fenway's left-field wall and served as his personal hitting coach.

But his first calls were to his family, to close friend Cecil Cooper, a roommate in his early Red Sox years, and to Rich "Goose" Gossage, his longtime Yankee nemesis and the player he thought he was going in with last year, when he finished with 72.2 percent of the vote.

"Jim was excited, as excited as Jim gets," said Cooper. "You could tell it was a relief for him. He just blurted it out to me and that was that. That's Jim.

"I've never quite understood what took so long, but the fact he's in now has made the last 15 years so worth it. I congratulated him. He's been a dear friend."

Cooper said he realized Rice's potential for greatness when they were young, but he realized it more when competing against him.

"When we had our pre-series meetings against the Red Sox when I was in Milwaukee, the one name that always came up was Jim Rice," said Cooper. "He could beat you, and our goal was to make sure he didn't. And that was a pretty tough task. He was a dangerous hitter and everyone who played in that time knew it."

Rice, who was named on 412 of the 539 ballots cast, is a contrast to Henderson, the base-stealing great who in his 25-year career spent one season, 2002, with the Red Sox.