Have a Rice Day!
Jim Ed Gets In the Hall of Fame
Gallery: Rice Through the Years
Rice's reaction: “I don’t understand about being overrated, the numbers spoke for themselves, and during that time, you look at the guys that played the game and the numbers they put up. So as far as being overrated, I have no idea. I think what you’re trying to get at is that some of the writers probably said I was arrogant, you know that wasn't true. You want to talk about baseball, I talk about baseball, but I never talked about my teammates. I protected my teammates. I don’t think you should make any excuses, when I felt like as captain of the ballclub, I took a lot of pressure off the guys because some guys could handle pressure, some guys couldn’t handle pressure, and I was the type of guy that I got paid to go out and play baseball...I didn’t get paid to sit there and rah-rah myself, or rah-rah the team. When the team lost I was there, when the team won, I was gone. That’s the way I was. I didn't sit back and give the writers the information about the ballclub they wanted as far as who’s not playing today, what’s wrong with the ballclub, why aren’t there more black players coming to Boston. I didn’t deal with that. You had to deal with the front office. I was just taking care of myself and my teammates.”
