Ben Rice is bringing a familiar face with him to the Home Run Derby: his father, Dan Rice.
The Yankees slugger picked his dad to be the one tossing pitches in Philadelphia, leaning on a routine that has been part of his development for years. Rice told MLB.com that he gets batting practice from his father every offseason, and that those sessions have long been a family commitment.
“My dad has always been there for me,” Rice said. “Every offseason, I’m going back and making sure I get my BP in with my dad.
He always went the extra mile. He’d drive an hour-plus or two hours from Cohasset, and we’d go hit at a local field to get our swings in for the day.”
Rice said those workouts with Dan were never about over-coaching every detail of his swing. Instead, his father used his background as a pitcher to keep him uncomfortable and teach him how to handle different looks.
“Our BP was never about nitpicking my swing or a lot of instruction, to be honest,” Rice said. “He would try to throw me off-balance with different pitches and have me work through situations.
He wanted me to become a good hitter, not necessarily to have a great swing. That was huge in my development.”
Dan Rice brings his own baseball background to the moment. He pitched at Brown University in the 1980s and graduated in 1986. After that, he built a long career as a lawyer and now works in the “representation of parties in employment disputes before state and federal courts and administrative agencies,” according to LinkedIn.
But in Ben’s story, Dan’s biggest role has always been father. When Ben was called up in 2024, Dan told the New York Post that he had been throwing to his son since he was a toddler.
“As soon as he could start whacking things, I was throwing stuff to him,” Dan said, explaining “I had an ‘L’ Screen, it’s kind of an unusual suburban accessory, so I could just throw him little tennis balls, then he got old enough we’d go down to the little league field. He grew out of that, we’d go to the other fields.”
When Ben finally reached the majors, Dan said the moment was hard to fully picture ahead of time.
“I was scared to let myself even imagine that this was gonna happen,” he said in 2024.
Rice grew up in Cohasset, Massachusetts, southwest of Boston, but he was a Yankees fan from the start and Derek Jeter was his favorite player. He began as a hockey player before finding his way to baseball, then headed to Dartmouth in New Hampshire for college. The COVID-19 pandemic cut short much of that college run, but the Yankees still took a shot on him and helped set him on the path to the Bronx.
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