Red Sox great Jim Rice, left, and Boston president and CEO Larry Lucchino are all smiles after the former slugger Rice received just enough votes to be elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame yesterday.

AP / Steven Senne

BOSTON — Finally!

James Edward Rice will have a plaque in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Jim Rice, the former Red Sox slugger, received just enough votes to be elected into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The 54-year-old narrowly eclipsed the 75 percent needed for enshrinement with 76.4. He joins Rickey Henderson and Joe Gordon (Veterans’ Committee) as members of the Class of 2009.

Rice walked into a 4 o’clock news conference at Fenway Park yesterday sporting a Hall of Fame hat and a bright big smile.

“I’m not nervous now,” he said. “But when I got the call, I was very nervous. It’s a big relief. It’s over with. I feel really good.”

He was watching soap operas when he received the call. He immediately called his wife, daughter and older sister and all had their phones off. So Rice called good friends Cecil Cooper and Rich “Goose” Gossage to tell them the good news.

Last week, Rice said he didn’t like to think about the Hall of Fame. Even in his 15th and final year of eligibility, he said he wasn’t thinking about it. Yesterday, however, he said he began to get a little antsy around 1:10 in the afternoon.

Exactly seven minutes later he received the phone call he has been waiting for — he was in.

“It was a big relief,” Rice said. “I didn’t have any weight on my shoulders, but when I got the call it just seemed like everything fell back. It was a relief.”

Rice joins an impressive pair of Red Sox left fielders in the Hall of Fame, joining Carl Yastrzemski and Ted Williams. Rice called it “ a plus” to be heading to Cooperstown with Yastrzemski and Williams already enshrined.

Rice told many stories during his news conference yesterday, but he made it a point to give Yaz his due. If The Captain didn’t agree to move from left field to play first base later in his career, the younger Rice probably would have remained on the bench.

“Congratulations to Jimmy on his election to the Hall of Fame,” said Yastrzemski. “It was long overdue. He was a great teammate and a friend. I’m looking forward to his induction in July.”

Yaz wasn’t the only former Red Sox player to make a comment on Rice’s election.

Good friend and golf partner Fred Lynn said: “It’s about time.

“Throw out the statistics; Jimmy was the dominant force in his era,” Lynn said.

Former manager Don Zimmer said he always believed Rice belonged in the Hall.

“He played every day and never asked for a day off,” said Zimmer. “He was a great competitor and always wanted to improve himself.”

Rice becomes 32nd Red Sox player to receive the honor and is the 48th to spend his entire career with one team. He is just the fourth to do so with Boston, joining Bobby Doerr, Williams and Yastrzemski.

During his 16 seasons in Boston, Rice hit .298 with 382 home runs and 1,451 RBI in 2,089 games, while earning eight All-Star selections. He won the A.L. MVP in 1978 when he compiled a .315 average with 46 homers and 139 RBI.

While he loved being a Red Sox, he believes his numbers could have been different.

Playing at Fenway Park “Hurt me in a way, and it helped me in a way,” he said. “I was a right-field hitter. I could drive the ball to right-center. When you pull the ball, you want to pull it in the air. This ballpark hurt me more than anything else because a lot of line drives I hit would have been out of any other ballpark. This is a hitters’ ballpark. I probably had an opportunity to leave, to go to another team, but I chose to stay here and I’m still here.

“If someone told me that 400 home runs would get me in the Hall of Fame, or 3,200 hits would get me in the Hall of Fame I could have been selfish and tried to accomplish that,” he added. “If you go back and look at the history of the Red Sox, we were a family. We didn’t put ‘I’ before ‘Team.’ We put ‘Team’ before ‘I.’ That’s probably why my numbers were down because I considered myself part of the team.”

Rice had come very close to being elected to the Hall in recent years, but always fell short. He said yesterday he didn’t know why that was. He didn’t want to blame any of eligible members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America who did not vote for him. Rice just wanted what he thought he deserved.

He has it now.

“You don’t have to like me, but give me the respect,” he said. “Over the years I’ve said, ‘Good things come to those who wait.’ ”

jmcdonal@projo.com