| Hall of Famer Edgar 'Sam' Rice was one of baseball's finest hitters and one of the game's fastest runners. He helped the Washington Senators win three pennants (1924-25, 1933) and one World Series (1924). Over seventy percent of Sam Rice's hits were singles and most of his extra-base hits were due to sheer speed. He hit 498 lifetime doubles, 184 triples (14th on the all-time list) and 21 of his 34 career homers were inside the park jobs.
Rice stole 351 career bases, lined 2987 hits and finished with an outstanding career batting mark of .322, a .374 on-base-pct. He led the AL in hits for three straight years and amassed a 3-year total of 669.
Sam Rice, one of baseball's toughest to strike out, fanned only 275 times in 9269 at bats, spanning 19 years.
Although batting leadoff most of his career, Rice drove-in 1,078 runs and is one of only eight players to hit better than .300 after the age of 40 - and he did it a record three times. In later years he was often asked why he retired 13 hits shy of the magic number of 3,000. "You must remember," he said, "there wasn't much emphasis on 3,000 hits when I quit and to tell the truth, I didn't know how many hits I had." Baseballhistorian.com Archives |
