Today's entry is made possible by the generous contribution of Val Kehl who provides images of today's card, a D327-1 Holsum Bread Sam Rice from 1920:
Player #74E: Edgar C. "Sam" Rice. Outfielder for the Washington Senators in 1915-1933. 2,987 hits and 34 home runs in 20 MLB seasons. 1924 World Series champion. 1920 AL stolen base leader. He was inducted into the MLB Hall of Fame in 1963. Led the Senators to three AL pennants (1924,1925, and 1933). Best known for controversial "over the fence" catch in the 1925 World Series. He had many excellent seasons, but one of his best was 1930 as he posted a .407 OBP with 121 runs scored in 669 plate appearances. He had 63 stolen bases in 1920. He last played in 1934 with the Cleveland Indians. His early life was marred by tragedy when his wife, two daughters, parents, and two sisters were all killed by a tornado in Indiana.
Carroll highlights Rice's 1920 season: Though Rice had shown promise in his previous two full seasons, the 1920 campaign was a breakthrough for him. Rice turned 30 years old two months before the season began, but played like a man entering the physical prime of his mid-twenties. He had 211 hits, the first of six times he'd reach the magic two hundred-hit mark during his career. Not that Rice was any kind of free swinger before, but he was getting the bat on the ball even more in 1920, striking out just twenty-six times in 624 at-bats. And he was durable, leading the team with 153 games played. In all of Rice's full seasons as an outfielder, in fact, he had led Washington in games played.
He also, once again, managed to finish among the top ten in the American League in hitting. Curiously, Rice's .338 final mark put him eighth in the league -- in 1917, he had finished eighth, as well, but batted just .302. It seemed that Rice wasn't the only American Leaguer in 1920 who was improving his hitting, however. (Lagging a little behind, the National League saw Brooklyn's Ed Konetchy finished eighth in that league with a much more modest .308 mark.) In a year and a league in which offense increased so dramatically, Rice managed to stay in the top five of the American League in batting for most of the summer. Well into August, the newspaper listings of the American League top five in hitting read the same almost every day -- Tris Speaker, followed by George Sisler, then Joe Jackson, Babe Ruth, and Rice. The first four spent a lot of the season flirting with the .400 mark. Rice couldn't seem to surpass his high-water mark of .370, a mark he actually reached as late as August 1 after a 4-for-5 game at Cleveland. . . .
. . . There were other memorable personal moments for Rice throughout the season. On June 26, Rice collected the 500th hit of his career. The fact was noted by the local press, curiously so since years later, fatefully, no one would seem to notice when he moved to the brink of 3,000 career hits. And his fielding prowess in the outfield was beginning to draw some attention, as well. A newspaper account of the team's July 25 game against the Philadelphia Athletics, a 4-3 Washington victory, noted "another one of his brilliant catches." In late August, he made a breath-taking one-handed catch in the deepest part of center field in Washington to rob Chicago's Eddie Collins of an extra-base hit. (Sam Rice by Jeff Carroll.)
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