Ben Rice could have been a hometown hero.

A native of Cohasset, Massachusetts, the 26-year-old grew up an outlier, as he cheered on the Yankees despite living roughly 45 minutes from Boston. That, of course, didn’t stop the Red Sox from pursuing Rice as an amateur, as the Yankees’ fiercest rival also had serious interest in the Dartmouth product before the pinstripers spent a 12 th -round pick on the sweet-swinging lefty in 2021.

“The area scout, Ray Fagnant, absolutely loved him,” Matt Hyde, the Yankees’ Northeast area scout, said of his Red Sox counterpart.

But Hyde, citing “good scouting,” told the Daily News that he never feared the Sox would draft Rice first.

“He was meant to be a Yankee,” Hyde added Wednesday via text.

The message came in mere minutes after Rice drilled a tw

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