Interesting facts about Pre-War Players - share yours

[ParisianJohn]

Originally Posted by ValKehl

A couple of additions to John's post about Sam Rice. Rice told very few, if any, of his teammates about the tragedy that befell his family.

Rice actually came to the Senators as a pitcher in 1915. Clark Griffith acquired Rice from the Petersburg Goobers of the Virginia League in exchange for cancelling a debt of several hundred dollars owed to Griffith by the cash-strapped Goobers owner. Rice's MLB pitching record for 1915-16 is 1 win and 1 loss with a 2.52 ERA. It wasn't until July 1916 that Rice was converted to a full-time outfielder.

Sam Rice's SABR bio is an interesting read: https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/Sam-Rice/

Thanks for that correction on when Rice switched to the outfield, thus making his career hit total more impressive.

In addition to his SABR bio Val posted, here is an article Sports Illustrated wrote about him in 1993. I read it as a teenager and was fascinated by the man, this his card was the first Goudey I ever bought (it does cover a lot of the same ground that the SABR bio has, but they don't totally overlap):

https://vault.si.com/vault/1993/07/1...re-was-nowhere