Rambling Rickey Henderson and quiet Jim Rice top Sunday's MLB Hall of Fame induction class

COOPERSTOWN - In one of the most anticipated inductions in years - if for nothing else than just the speeches - the Baseball Hall of Fame Sunday will welcome to the club Rickey Henderson, Jim Rice and the late slugging Yankee second baseman Joe Gordon.
In addition, Tony Kubek, the often outspoken former NBC and Yankee announcer, will be inducted into the broadcasters wing and longtime San Francisco Giants beat reporter with the Sacramento Bee, Nick Peters, is the winner of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award for induction in the baseball writers wing.
The wonder is, what will they all say and how will they say it?
In Henderson's case, this may well be the first time an inductee delivered his entire speech in the third person. It's what we've come to call "Rickeyspeak" and Henderson gave us a hint of how his speech may go back March when he told reporters in Scottsdale, Ariz., he wasn't sure if he was ready to go into the Hall of Fame. At least not if he was going to have to play second fiddle to Rice or any of the other great left fielders of the game.
"Man, Rickey's still got it," he said, "and it would be disrespectful to myself and my family if I entered a situation where I was playing backup to Stan Musial or Ted Williams. What are those guys, like 50? Rickey does not ride the pine. Rickey plays. You think Lou Brock can run like me? Please. Goodbye!"
Presumably it was all tongue-in-cheek, but then, with Rickey, one never knows. He did finish his career with the all-time records for runs scored (2,295) and stolen bases (1,406) and second all-time in walks (2,190). In addition, he had 3,055 hits (19th all-time), 297 homers, and in 1982 broke Brock's single-season stolen base record with 130.
In contrast to Henderson's often disjointed loquaciousness, Rice was a man of few words (at least to the media) during his 16-year career with the Red Sox in which he had eight 100-RBI seasons, batted .298 lifetime with 382 homers and won the American League MVP award in 1978 when he led the league in hits (213), triples (15), homers (46), RBI (139) and slugging (.600).
It took Rice the full 15 years on the Baseball Writers Association ballot before he was elected on his final year of eligibility, and has since made it eminently clear he feels he belongs. At the same time, he's sounded as if he has more disdain now for those players who would seek to cheat their way into the Hall of Fame by using steroids than he does for his old sportswriter enemies.
"I think if they did something wrong to enhance the game of baseball or go against the game of baseball, they shouldn't be in. That's just me," said Rice, with obvious pride at having attained all of his Hall-of-Fame numbers playing the game clean.