BOSTON — Back in Boston for a weekend in May, Fred Lynn was killing time on a Friday afternoon at Dick’s House of Sport on Boylston Street.
An avid golfer, Lynn loafed through the aisles looking at irons and shirts, and then a sign caught his eye:
MEET HALL OF FAMER
JIM RICE
Saturday 12-1 p.m.
“Ah-ha-ha! Sweet!” Lynn laughed.
The moment Lynn saw that advertisement, it was settled. He was coming back the following day to surprise his former teammate.
It’s been 50 years since fans first lined up to see Lynn and Rice, when they were electrifying Fenway Park. To the public they were the “Gold Dust Twins.” To each other, they were two friends chasing a dream together.
Lynn and Rice first took the field together during the summer of 1973 in Double-A Bristol, where Rice swung his way to the Eastern League Triple Crown. At season’s end, both were called up to Pawtucket, where they helped win the Triple-A Junior World Series.
It was on those long minor league bus rides that the roots of their friendship were first planted.
“We became teammates and we became friends,” Rice said. “It didn’t matter if Freddie came up or I came up. Just the way that we mingled.”
A two-sport star collegiately at Southern Cal, Lynn was a second-round pick in 1973. As he was being scouted and recruited at USC, there were plenty of people from the L.A. Dodgers around and he assumed he’d end up in Dodger Blue.
“I never saw a Red Sox scout. Never,” Lynn said.
For Rice, a first-round pick in 1971 out of T.L. Hanna High School in South Carolina, that part of the experience was the same.
“I didn’t either,” Rice said. “You didn’t have scouts. We called them bird dogs. So you go by mouth. You go by someone watching you that knows a scout, and he would talk to the scout about that… that was bird dogs.”
In 2025, the Red Sox have roughly 275 members in their front office, but in the early 1970s those old bird dogs hit on both Rice and Lynn.
After brief cameos in the big leagues in 1974, Lynn and Rice combined for one of the most memorable rookie seasons in baseball history the following summer.
They weren’t viewed as saviors coming into the year.
In spring training of 1975, outfielder Tony Conigliaro was attempting a comeback, and it wasn’t a certainty that both rookies would make the team, let alone bat third and fourth for a pennant winner. Amidst a spring training slump, Rice told the Boston Globe that he’d produce if he made the team.
“I’ll guarantee you this: If I get 400-450 at-bats, I’ll hit between .280 and .300 and hit 20-25 dingers,” Rice told Peter Gammons in 1975.
Though Rice was a first-round pick and Lynn a second, they didn’t face the expectations that are put on current top prospects. The landscape was different. Veterans dominated the headlines.
“You don’t think about (expectations),” Rice said. “Why? Because you have some guy named Carl Yastrzemski. You’ve got some guy named Rico Petrocelli. You’ve got experienced guys. So here you are 21 or 22 years old, you haven’t done anything in the big leagues. So you don’t think about that. You sit over there and you keep your mouth shut.”
Still, with their mouths shut, Rice and Lynn opened eyes across baseball.
En route to an improbable American League pennant, Lynn hit .331 with 21 home runs and 105 RBIs, winning the AL MVP, Rookie of the Year and a Gold Glove. Meanwhile, the Rookie of the Year runner-up was Rice, who made good on his spring training prediction, hitting .309 with 22 homers and 102 RBIs.
Lynn credited their quick big league acclimation to the bonds they’d forged before reaching Fenway Park.
“We didn’t have to go through this process on an individual basis. We were a team,” Lynn said. “Then we were the ‘Gold Dust Twins.’ But we relied on each other. And fortunately, in the lineup, we hit 3-4 for the most part. And then we played left and center. So we had a relationship that started before we got to the big leagues, which helped us a lot.”
Both Lynn and Rice went on to have terrific major league careers. Rice spent all 16 seasons in Boston and has a Hall of Fame bust in Cooperstown, while Lynn was on a similar track until a knee injury slowed him following a 1981 trade to the Angels.
Reflecting on their time in Boston and the incredible 1975 season, Lynn harped on the importance of being alongside Rice in the clubhouse.
“Having Jimmy there for me was huge,” Lynn said. “I can’t say strongly enough how big an advantage that was for me to have somebody like Jimmy there. Because it wasn’t just me hogging the spotlight or having a good day, Jimmy’s doing the same thing. So the spotlight wasn’t just on one of us.”
With the spotlight on Rice at Dick’s House of Sport 50 years later, his friend couldn’t resist sharing it with him once again.
He returned to the store that Saturday, and a few minutes before Rice was set to hit the stage, his phone lit up with a text message from Lynn.
“Oh Mr. Rice, we’re all waiting for you.”
Readying for his appearance, Rice saw the message and called Lynn to ask where he was.
“I’m down here waiting for you, Mr. Rice!” Lynn said.
The Gold Dust twins are in their golden years now. But five decades later, those bonds haven’t been broken. They’re still joking the way they did when they were kids
“I ambushed him,” Lynn grinned.