David Colapinto ⚖️⚾️☕️🦋

Jim Rice and Luis Tiant together in the Boston dugout in their seasons as Red Sox teammates — the American League's most feared young slugger beside the Cuban right-hander Boston rescued when his career looked finished. Tiant was released by Minnesota and Atlanta within six weeks in the spring of 1971 before Boston signed him that May. A year later he won the American League ERA title at 1.91, then won 20, 22 and 21 games in 1973, 1974 and 1976. In August 1975, after Senators Edward Brooke and George McGovern appealed to Fidel Castro, Tiant's parents were allowed out of Cuba to visit Boston. His father, a Negro leagues pitching star who had not seen his son in 14 years, threw out the ceremonial first pitch at Fenway Park on August 26 — and that October he watched as his son beat Cincinnati 6-0 on a five-hit shutout in Game 1 of the World Series, starting the six-run seventh with a single of his own. Tiant won Game 4 as well, and the Red Sox won all three games he started. Rice, who finished second to Fred Lynn in the 1975 Rookie of the Year voting and third in the MVP race, broke his left hand on a Vern Ruhle pitch on September 21, 1975, and had to watch that Series from the bench. In 1978 he won the MVP award himself: 46 home runs, 139 RBIs and 406 total bases, the American League's first 400-total-base season since Joe DiMaggio in 1937. On the season's final day, October 1, Tiant's two-hit, 5-0 shutout of Toronto forced a one-game playoff — but having pitched that day, he could only watch as Bucky Dent's home run beat Boston the next afternoon. Tiant signed with the Yankees that winter; Carl Yastrzemski said Boston had torn out its heart and soul. Rice was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2009, on his final writers' ballot. Tiant, who finished 229-172 with a 3.30 ERA, died in October 2024 still outside Cooperstown — the writers never gave him more than 30.9 percent, and an era committee passed on him again two months after his death. ⚾ Rice made Cooperstown in 2009; Tiant, with 229 wins and the 1975 October Boston still talks about, never has — is El Tiante the greatest pitcher not in the Hall of Fame? 👇️