Rice also addressed why it might have taken so long to be elected: "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 ball club, 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."