Ian O'Connor

Statistical Analysis & Data Reconfiguration

[UK Sports Network @UKSportsNetwork]

"Caught! Kentucky Wins!!!!"
@tomleachKY's call of @UKFootball's game winning overtime two point conversion at South Carolina.

[Ian O'Connor @OConnorIanM]

@NicholasGess @SouthwestAir I’m suggesting not to be moved to a flight to the same destination only 10 minutes earlier and moving us from being next to each (extra cost, first row) to different rows, both middle seats.

Not really hard to comprehend, Nick, but appreciate your unwarranted input.

[Ian O'Connor @OConnorIanM]

Shoutout @SouthwestAir for delaying then rebooking our 5:35 am flight at 1:35 am.

Now, we don’t leave until noon, our connecting flight is also delayed, our seats are worse, and my wife and I are in different rows.

First day of a 4-day trip lost with no recompense.

Fantastic!

[Tristan Pharis @TristanUda]

Will Stein's postgame interview after Kentucky's overtime win over South Carolina.

"I am a big Wildcat basketball fan. That was Comeback Cats right there. Comeback freaking Cats in Columbia, South Carolina."

[Jordan Schultz @Schultz_Report]

Epic: The #Browns locker room when HC Todd Monken says, “See you Tuesday!”

[New York Yankees @Yankees]

October Baseball coming up.

#RepBX

[Everything Yankees @eyyankees]

Frame it. What a photo.

[Brandon 🇩🇴🇵🇷 @BronxBombrs]

MICHAEL KAY’S CALL OF THE BELLI HOME RUN

[SNY Yankees @snyyankees]

EVERYTHING IS FLYING IN THE BLEACHERS!

A three-run homer for Cody Bellinger!

[Ian O'Connor @OConnorIanM]

@TalkinYanks We’re doing to Boston what Toronto did to us last year.

Contact baseball and good things happen.

Totally different from the Yankees offense we’ve seen in the recent past.

[Talkin' Yanks @TalkinYanks]

CODY FUCKIN BELLINGER THREE RUN BLAST!

[Talkin' Yanks @TalkinYanks]

YOU WALK BEN RICE TO FACE CODY BELLINGER?! HAHAHAHAHA

[New York Yankees @Yankees]

You're all invited to the Belli Bash 🥳

#RepBX

[Ian O'Connor @OConnorIanM]

@TalkinYanks Judge. Rice. Lombard Jr. Jones.

The new Core Four!!

Plus Schlittler, Wells, and Volpe.

[New York Yankees @Yankees]

Luis Gar-SEE-YA 🦁

[Ian O'Connor @OConnorIanM]

This guy is GOLD!

[Barstool Sports @barstoolsports]

Put a microphone in front of Munetaka Murakami and let the magic happen

[the Sports ON Tap @thesportsontap]

Ben Rice grew up in Cohasset, Massachusetts, twenty miles from Fenway Park, and he was a New York Yankees fan.

Not quietly. He wore the gear to school.

"I mean, you definitely stick out a little bit when you're wearing your Yankees gear around, maybe on my first-grade picture day."

Here is a little kid's entire reasoning, in his own words.

"I liked the team that won the most, and I liked Derek Jeter."

He wore an old school Yankees jacket to games at Fenway. His classmates were Red Sox fans. His whole town was.

And on one of those trips to Fenway with his father, he walked over to the Pesky Pole, the right field foul pole Boston fans treat as a shrine, and wrote two words on it.

Yankees Rule.

He has said he was probably one of the only people ever to write something pro Yankees on that thing.

Now here is what happened to that kid.

He went to Dartmouth. Then COVID cancelled the entire 2020 college season, which for a player trying to get drafted is the worst possible thing at the worst possible time.

So he made his own.

That summer he played in the Futures League, hit .350 with 11 home runs and was named MVP. Then he got his college friends together and organized workouts at a complex in Northborough. His buddies started calling it the Ben Rice League, because that is what it was. A kid ran his own league so scouts would have somewhere to find him.

The next spring he played in an amateur league around Massachusetts where scouts stood in parking lots to watch. He got a few games in at Cotuit on the Cape.

Two Yankees scouts, Matt Hyde and Damon Oppenheimer, found him in the middle of all that.

New York took him in the 12th round in 2021. Not the first. The twelfth.

He reached the big leagues in 2024. And that July, as a rookie, he hit three home runs in one game.

No rookie in the history of the New York Yankees had ever done that. Not Lou Gehrig. Not Joe DiMaggio. Not Mickey Mantle.

It was against the Boston Red Sox.

"I can't believe it was against the Red Sox," he said that night.

This season he hit 41 home runs, the most on the team.

And tonight, Game 1 of the Wild Card Series, Boston again.

Ben Rice went 4 for 5. A double. An RBI single in the seventh. A home run. Then, with two outs in the eighth, a grand slam.

Six runs batted in.

No player in the history of the New York Yankees had ever had six RBI and four hits in one postseason game. Not Babe Ruth. Not Gehrig. Not Mantle. Not Jeter. Not Judge.

New York Yankees 9, Boston Red Sox 0. The Yankees lead the series 1-0.

Now the honest part. The slam came with the game already gone, off a bullpen with nothing left.

But the kid who wrote Yankees Rule on the Pesky Pole went in the 12th round, invented a league to get seen, and has now broken two Yankees records against the Boston Red Sox.

For more stories like this, follow us on any platform @thesportsontap

[New York Yankees @Yankees]

An all-time interview for Ben Rice after an all-time performance last night.

#RepBX