Edgar Charles "Sam" Rice (February 20, 1890 – October 13, 1974) was an American pitcher and outfielder in Major League Baseball.

Playing for the Washington Senators from 1915 until 1933, he was regularly among the American League leaders in runs scored, hits, stolen bases and batting average.

He wrote a letter that was only opened after his 1974 death; it claimed that he had maintained possession of the ball the entire time.

[2] They lived in Watseka, Illinois, where Rice ran the family farm, worked at several jobs in the area, and attended tryouts for various professional baseball teams.

The tornado killed Rice's wife, his two children, his mother, his two younger sisters and a farmhand.

[7] Perhaps wracked with grief, Rice spent the next year wandering the area and working at several jobs.

In 1913, he joined the United States Navy and served on the USS New Hampshire, a 16,000-ton battleship that was large enough to field a baseball team.

[13] By September, his company was sent to France and they prepared for combat, but the men did not see any action before the signing of the Armistice of 11 November 1918.

He hit .338 in 1920, recorded a league-leading and career-high 63 stolen bases and was caught stealing a league-high 30 times.

[16] Though not the league leader in 1925, Rice recorded a career-high 227 hits, 87 RBI, and a .350 batting average, career highs among his full seasons.

With two out in the top of the inning,[17] Pirate catcher Earl Smith drove a ball to right-center field.

Rice ran the ball down and appeared to catch it at the fence, robbing Smith of a home run that would have tied the game.

The controversy became so great that Rice wrote a letter when he was selected to the Hall of Fame, to be opened upon his death.

"[19] Leading the league in hits again in 1926, Rice finished fourth in the Most Valuable Player Award voting.

[11] Though Rice hit .310 in 1931 across 120 games, Dave Harris got significant playing time when the team was facing lefthanded pitchers.

[11][20] The Senators held "Sam Rice Day" in late 1932, where the team presented him with several gifts, including a check for more than $2,200 and a new Studebaker automobile.

Nowadays, with radio and television announcers spouting records every time a player comes to bat, I would have known about my hits and probably would have stayed to make 3,000 of them.

His farm was located in Olney, Maryland next to that of Harold L. Ickes, the United States Secretary of the Interior.

Rice and Ickes employed several workers of Japanese descent who were displaced from the West Coast by order of the U.S. Army after the outbreak of World War II.

The interviewer asked Rice about the tornado, and as he told of the storm and its destruction, his wife and children learned for the first time of the existence of his previous family.

[30] Rice made one of his last public appearances at the Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremonies honoring Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle in August 1974.