HANOVER — The coronavirus pandemic has presented Ben Rice with an opportunity.
His Dartmouth College baseball season canceled in March by the virus and possessing an extra year of competitive eligibility from the NCAA because of it, rising junior Rice could still play three more seasons in a Big Green uniform, by his reckoning. After a summer spent tearing up Futures Collegiate Baseball League pitching, it’s a future for which Dartmouth fans should hope.
Rice recently won the FCBL’s most valuable player award after a 38-game season with the Worcester Bravehearts during which the Big Green catcher led in several offensive categories. A previous summer in Worcester helped Rice maintain a playing outlet when his original destination, the NECBL’s Vermont Mountaineers, canceled their campaign.
“I’m just grateful I got the opportunity to play, especially considering all the leagues that were dropping out early,” Rice said in a phone interview last week. “I don’t want to say they were quitting on players, but some leagues could have definitely put a better effort forward to have a season for college players.
“The Futures and the teams that were a part of it were definitely losing a lot of money this year. To pull it off was unbelievable.”
Rice had an FCBL-best 11 home runs to go with chart-topping figures in slugging percentage (.683) and on-base-plus-slugging (1.150). Playing in 35 of Worcester’s 38 regular-season games, Rice also was third in the Futures in batting (.350), hits (43), RBIs (27) and on-base percentage (.467). The Bravehearts reached the FCBL championship series, losing a best-of-three set to the Nashua Silver Knights.
Longtime Dartmouth baseball coach Bob Whalen likes to find summer playing opportunities for his Big Green roster wherever he can. When it comes to improving, it’s all about getting reps.
“Regardless of your class or what year you’re going into, you don’t get better by not playing,” Whalen said. “The NFL doesn’t have an NCAA-sanctioned league in the summer. The NBA doesn’t have an NCAA-sanctioned summer league for basketball. Baseball is the only one where the NCAA has sanctioned leagues, most of which — to some degree — are subsidized by Major League Baseball. … This is a game where you have to play to get better. You can run and train and lift, but you can’t do that for eight months and be a better player.”
Rice’s successful summer nearly never left the ground.
Rice was initially set to join Dartmouth pitcher Cole Roland with the Mountaineers in June. The Montpelier-based team called its season on April 30 out of concern over the pandemic, and the NECBL as a whole followed about a week later.
Rice developed a good relationship with Worcester coach Alex Dion last summer, one that saw Rice bat .384 with seven homers and 35 RBIs in 33 FCBL games. FCBL rosters are often New England-heavy, Rice said, but they were much more so this summer given the travel restrictions caused by the pandemic.
The Bravehearts at first didn’t have an opening at catcher, but that changed as more summer leagues shut down and more athletes from around the country opted to stay home. Just to be sure, Rice reconnected with Dion to let him know he was available.
“The roster was very different than what it looked like at the beginning of the season,” Rice said of the Bravehearts, whose 36-player lineup included 27 from New England hometowns or colleges. “They had so many guys from all over. One catcher was from Canada, but I can’t see how this would work. Sure enough, a week or so later, I got a text from Coach Dion. He told me I got a spot. I was thrilled.”
Beyond the wait, Rice spent a lot of time on the highway to make summer ball possible. The Bravehearts had to move their home games to Doyle Field, in Leominster, Mass., when their usual diamond, Fitton Field, closed with the rest of the Holy Cross campus. That added 25 miles to what was already a 70-mile one-way trip from his Cohasset, Mass., home, and Rice made it gladly.
“People were definitely pretty surprised how far I was going every day,” Rice admitted. “I wanted to play baseball. The commute didn’t make a difference for me.”
Whalen is always “reluctant to put titles on kids,” he said, but it was clear by the end of Rice’s freshman campaign that the Dartmouth coach had a keeper. A left-handed batter, Rice earned the starting job behind the plate by midseason and finished with a .278 batting average in 23 games, 18 of them starts. Whalen considers Rice’s .148 mark from this spring an aberration given that the Big Green played just seven games before the pandemic wrecked the schedule.
“As I always tell the guys, if you go out and have a terrific summer and play great when you’re here, you’ll play; if you go out and have a terrific summer and you’re hitting .065 here and not playing well, you don’t play,” Whalen said. “In the vast majority of cases, when you go out and have a competitive summer, it benefits you tremendously.”
Rice is now ready to use the pandemic to his advantage.
He plans to take fall terms off to get in more baseball reps, playing in a suburban Boston league a Harvard baseball friend, Buddy Mrowka, is setting up. Studying during the winter and spring terms would allow Rice to play three more Dartmouth seasons.
Dion already holds Rice in high regard. “I think (he) will probably be a professional player at some point,” he told the Worcester Telegram last year following a 4-for-4, three-homer Rice performance.
Whalen also notes that, as a 21-year-old entering his junior year with the Big Green, Rice will be eligible for the MLB draft in 2021. “He’s a terrific kid,” Whalen said. “He loves going to practice. He’s always smiling, has great energy. He’s fun to be around, a fun kid to coach.”
Rice is just thankful he got to play baseball at all this year, given everything.
“Some guys didn’t get to play any games this year; some didn’t get to start,” he said. “It’s pretty awesome to play. It was weird without fans and with a mask, but you had to do it to play baseball.”
Greg Fennell can be reached at gfennell@vnews.com or 603-727-3226.