When your asked by someone who thinks you deserve to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame, you don’t go and make an ass of yourself. Former Red Sox OF Jim Rice was invited by Pawtucket Red Sox owner, Ben Monder, to speak at the Pawsox luncheon that introduced the players to the media and the fans. Former Sox player Bob Montgomery moderated the Q&A.

Basically Rice told the players that it was ok to cheat and to be greedy. By cheating though, he didn’t mean for the players to take steroids but to use other measures to get ahead in the game. Not something you’d expect from a guy whose trying to get into the Hall of Fame. Back in the day, he was a a self-proclaimed “Bad Guy” but has since toned down his act since he’s an analyst for the Red Sox on NESN.

So let’s take a look at the comments that came out of Rice’s mouth.

Montgomery asked Rice what his brightest moment was as a major-leaguer, and he answered by telling the audience it was helping the Red Sox reach the World Series in 1975 as a rookie. He was then asked if he had any advice for the PawSox’ players, and he went on a six-minute rant, with a swagger that suddenly emerged. “You have to trust yourself, he said. “You’ve got to work twice as hard, and to me, if I was one of the players right now, I would be a selfish player.

He began to explain that today’s players take spring training for granted because of all the amenities and state-of-the-art equipment. Rice said he saw some things during this year’s spring training that he didn’t like. He said if he was playing today he wouldn’t be sitting in his room watching television; he would be at the ballpark taking batting practice.

“This is my 36th year of marriage to the same woman,” he said. “If I had to do it all over again, I would have been divorced 10 years or 20 years ago because I would have been at the ballpark. There is so much money now to be made in the game of baseball, and you have this ability to play the game, why not take advantage of it? It’s out there. Go get it. They’re not going to give it to you; you’ve got to earn it.

More of Rice’s comments after the jump.

Technorati: Pawtucket Red Sox, Jim Rice, Baseball Hall of Fame

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If you didn’t have a chance to watch the Red Sox game today or haven’t seen the highlights yet, you missed a masterful performance by Daisuke Matsuzaka against the Royals on Thursday afternoon. The Sox won the game 4-1.

The story of the game though was he pitching performance by Dice-K. He went 7 innings, scattered 6 hits, gave up 1 run, 1 earned run, struck out 10 batters and walked 1 on 108 pitches. At one point, he retired 10 batters in a row. This started with the last out of the first inning. Royals rookie 3B Alex Gordon broke up the streak with his first big league hit to lead of the 5th inning.

In listening to the postgame show on NESN, Dennis Eckersley said that he counted 7 different types of pitches during the game. It was very interesting to see him pitch. He wasn’t afraid to use a breaking ball in a fastball count or fastball in a breaking ball count. He had great command of his pitches and was hitting spots. It seemed to me that he was even getting some close calls from the umpire when he was hitting the corners of the plate.

Matsuzaka’s next scheduled start comes on Wednesday against the Seattle Mariners. His first batter he will face at Fenway Park will be fellow Japanese import Ichiro Suzuki.

Technorati: Boston Red Sox, Daisuke Matsuzaka

Sox Nation. Red Sox Nation that is. This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for. The Major League debut of the Japanese phenom, Daisuke Matsuzaka. His opponent; the Kansas City Royals. The game starts at 2:10 PM ET and 4:00 AM Friday morning Japan time. The game is being televised here in Red Sox Nation on NESN and will also be broadcast live back to Japan.

That leads me into this video below. It is a Nike commercial featuring Matsuzaka that will only be shown in Japan.

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It will be interesting to see if he struggles with his command like he did in his last two spring training starts. Hopefully he has found the flaw and straightened it out (I actually think I said this yesterday too).

So at 2:10 PM, you will know where I will be. My ass will be parked on the couch watching Dice-K make his debut.

I have a special treat for all you Boston Red Sox fans out there in the greatest nation in the world, Red Sox Nation. I was asked by the fine people at Holtzbrinck Publishers to take a look at and review David “Big Papi” Ortiz’s new book entitled, ‘Big Papi: My Story of Big Dreams and Big Hits’ which he wrote with Tony Massarotti. The book will be hitting bookstores in approximately 2 weeks on April 17th and can be bought at bookstores nationwide or preordered at Amazon.com. There is even a Spanish version as well.

Once I get my copy of the book, I will be reading and reviewing it here on the site. I also hope to be able to get a few extra copies to give away. I won’t know that until they ship my book out. If I do receive the books, I will be giving them away on our radio show, The Hits Keep Coming…, on a future episode. We would probably do some type of Big Papi trivia contest and the winner would receive a copy of the book. I will have more on this once I know if this will be possible.

So for the next three days, we will be taking a look at excerpts from the book. If you would like to read the last part, click the read the rest of the entry link. To read part 1, you can click here and you can read part 2 here.

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The beloved Red Sox got their first win of the 2007 season on Wednesday night, 7-1 over the Kansas City Royals, behind five solid innings from Josh Beckett and some timely hitting from J.D. Drew and Mike Lowell.

In Beckett’s five innings, he gave up 2 hits, 1 earned run, walked 4 and struck out 5. The bullpen was solid as they pitched 4 innings of 1 hit ball with 3 strikeouts.

Drew had two hits and 1 rbi in his 5 at bats while Lowell was 1 for 4 with a double and two rbi’s. That double came on the heels of back to back walks by David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez.

Some uncharacteristic defense by Lowell as he made two errors in the third inning. Beckett was able to escape without any damage done. Lowell also committed another error in the 9th inning. Lowell only committed six errors all of last season and has three already. The last time he committed two errors in an inning was back on July 1, 2005.

To see the boxscore from the game, click here.