By Gary Phillips, New York Daily News
Ben Rice could have been a hometown hero.
A native of Cohasset, Massachusetts, the 26-year-old grew up an outlier, as he cheered on the Yankees despite living roughly 45 minutes from Boston. That, of course, didn’t stop the Red Sox from pursuing Rice as an amateur, as the Yankees’ fiercest rival also had serious interest in the Dartmouth product before the pinstripers spent a 12th-round pick on the sweet-swinging lefty in 2021.
“The area scout, Ray Fagnant, absolutely loved him,” Matt Hyde, the Yankees’ Northeast area scout, said of his Red Sox counterpart.
But Hyde, citing “good scouting,” told the Daily News that he never feared the Sox would draft Rice first.
“He was meant to be a Yankee,” Hyde added Wednesday via text.
The message came in mere minutes after Rice drilled a two-run homer off Boston’s Brayan Bello in Game 2 of the Wild Card Series, a must-win for the Yanks after they dropped Tuesday’s opener. The first-inning, first-pitch blow put the Sox in an early hole before their eventual 4-3 downfall, which was aided by RBI singles from Aaron Judge and Austin Wells, the latter of which shook Yankee Stadium in the eighth inning.
Rice, who had to help create his own DIY baseball league to get looks from scouts during the height of the pandemic, only took a moment to admire his handiwork, as the 106.6-mph laser left the field of play in a hurry. The first baseman then let out a little roar as he passed the Yankees’ dugout.
“I know I was able to get the boys fired up. Being able to set the tone like that was huge,” Rice said before adding, “To be a part of the rivalry now, just given where I am from and where I grew up and all that, just makes it all that much more special.”
Rice’s first postseason home run gave momentum to an offense that mustered just one run with him on the bench in Game 1.
That run came on a homer from Anthony Volpe, another Hyde find. The scout also discovered Cam Schlittler, another Boston-area native who will take the ball for the Yankees in a do-or-die Game 3 on Thursday.
“It’s pretty cool for an area scout from anywhere, let alone the Northeast, which isn’t exactly a hotbed for baseball, to have three guys making an impact for the team,” Rice said.
Rice, who attended Yankees-Red Sox games at Fenway Park as a kid — he dared to wear his Bombers jacket and even wrote “Yankees rule” alongside his signature on the Pesky Pole — is no stranger to tormenting Boston’s ballclub. Just last year, he became the first Yankees rookie to hit three home runs in one game when he bludgeoned the BoSox for seven RBI on July 6.
Rice’s friends, many of them Red Sox fans, jokingly shared their frustrations with him shortly thereafter.
“I know I’ve got a lot of support from my friends back at home,” Rice said Wednesday. “I’m sure they’re rooting for the Red Sox, but they’re also rooting for me too.”
Rice, who entered Game 2 with four doubles, four homers, 11 RBI and an .822 OPS over 18 games against Boston, has battered just about everyone this season. A breakout star after bulking up over the winter, his metrics jumped off the charts as he hit .255 with 26 home runs, 65 RBI and a .836 OPS.
With a 133 wRC+, he was the Yankees’ second-best qualified batter behind Judge.
“He hits the ball hard every single time he gets up there,” Judge said. “Just great at-bats, calculated. Knows what he’s looking for, and when he gets it, he usually doesn’t miss. So it’s been fun to see his growth from last season to this season.”
Aaron Boone, meanwhile, already thinks of Rice as “a really formidable hitter in this league.”
“We’re seeing the emergence of a true middle-of-the-order bat,” the manager recently said, grateful to have Rice on the Yankees’ side of baseball’s most storied rivalry.
In an alternate universe, things may have played out differently.
“I knew the Yankees liked me more,” Rice said, recalling the pre-draft interest he received. “But I was thinking that if the Yankees let me slide too far in the draft, then maybe the Red Sox would take me.
“It’s hard to talk about something that didn’t happen, but I’m sure it would have been interesting being a part of your hometown team.”
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