Upon hearing of the death of all-time great Rickey Henderson, I first got a little pedantic with myself.
The overuse of the word “unique” has become a bit of a pet peeve here. Every single person, by definition of the word, is unique. There are no copies of us and we’re all one of a kind, after all. I’ll hear people in the sports media say something is “very unique” or something and it nearly makes me want to scream. You’re either one of a kind or you aren’t. There’s no very.
With Rickey, though, I’m ready to be a hypocrite and throw my issue out the proverbial window. He was a special kind of unique and baseball is never going to see anything like him ever again.
It wasn’t just how good he was, though that was a major component. There are plenty of mind-blowing stats posted by Henderson. He led the league in steals 12 times, including when he was 39 years old. He led the league in runs five times. He got on base more times than all but three players in history. He scored more runs and stole more bases than anyone, ever.
Rickey Henderson was, without a doubt, the single greatest leadoff man in baseball history. It wasn’t just that he was so good at getting on base and stealing bases and scoring runs. He was a power threat as a table-setter, a generally foreign concept in his era. He squatted down so low in his batting stance that despite opposing pitchers desperately wanting to keep him off first base, he drew more walks than anyone not named Barry Bonds in history.
More than any of that, though, Rickey had a swagger that was something to behold. Back before home run celebrations were ubiquitous, he would pick at his jersey while rounding the bases in style:
The “cool” just oozes out of the screen, man. There was just no one in his ballpark. He homered to set the all-time record for runs scored and fittingly slid into home plate.
The personality was legendary. Sure, there are mainstream stories on it. Who could forget when he said “today, I am the greatest of all time” while standing right next to Lou Brock, having just broken Brock’s stolen base record? We’ve all heard the John Olerud tale — which isn’t true, but we’ll get to that — a million times, but in diving into Howard Bryant’s excellent book, “Rickey,” you’ll find some other gems.
Such as …
- In 1987, Henderson was injured and only played in 95 games. Harold Reynolds led the AL with 60 stolen bases. Rickey called him and didn’t even introduce himself. He simply said, “60 bases? Man, Rickey got 60 by the All-Star break,” and hung up without further extending the call. (page 202)
- In 1994, he reached first base against the Angels and first baseman J.T. Snow said that after the pitcher threw to first base twice, Henderson told him, “you can tell him he don’t gotta throw over here today. I’m not running today. Rickey tired.” He doubled and homered in his next two at-bats, but later reached first again and dealt with a few more throws to first. Rickey then implored Snow, “Man, you better go tell him he doesn’t need to throw over here today. Rickey tired. Rickey ain’t running today.” (page 298)
- Red Sox first baseman Mo Vaughn told a story on the other end. After two throws to first, Rickey would say, “dawg I gotta go, he’s tiring me out throwing over here so much,” and then he just stole second with relative ease. Another time, he reached first and Vaughn asked, “you going?” while Rickey replied, “you know I am” and first pitch he took second. (page 305)
- According to A’s catcher Terry Steinbach, one time Henderson didn’t stretch or do anything at all to warm up. Right before the national anthem, he was in the clubhouse just saying, “Rickey’s gonna have a great day” over and over. He hit a leadoff home run. (pages 310-311)
- The legend of the Jon Olerud story is a good one. Olerud wore a helmet while playing first base due to having surgery for a brain aneurysm in college. Olerud and Henderson played together in Toronto, New York and Seattle. The story goes that Henderson “met” Olerud in Seattle and talked about how he played with a guy in New York who also wore a helmet in the field. The story, according to Olerud, was fictitious, instead the brain child of Robin Ventura with the Mets when a group sat around coming up with a story that could have happened. However, the wrinkle that makes this story amazing now is that Olerud said Rickey would tell people it was true, seeming to indicate he liked the story. (page 346)
- By 2001, when the legend of Henderson not knowing any of his teammates’ names had grown to laughable length, Padres teammate Phil Nevin told Rickey he’d give him $100 for each teammate on the bus that he could name. Rickey’s reply? “F— you, PHIL!” (page 348)
For some, this paints a picture that Henderson was a bit of a circus act, but that isn’t who he was. He was a serious player and he took himself seriously when need be. His Hall of Fame speech is a good example there. Notice that he closes with “today, I am very, very humble,” as a play on this “greatest of all-time” speech. Also, his talking in the third person was “exaggerated,” Dave Parker told Bryant, and it was done to get laughs out of white people.
And, hey, it works. Those stories are funny. It’s one of the many reasons he’s one of my favorite players of all-time. The main takeaway from Henderson’s life as a baseball legend, though, is being the greatest leadoff man of all-time.
The leadoff man is the catalyst to the offense. He sets the tone of the game to come. No one has ever hit more leadoff home runs and nothing sets the tone for the game like that. No one has ever scored more runs and there’s no more important job for a leadoff man. No one has ever come even remotely close to stealing as many bases and that makes him the biggest pest of pitchers we’ve ever seen. He won an MVP. He won two World Series. He ranks in the top 20 all-time in WAR. He squeezed every bit of production possible out of his baseball talent.
Throw the swagger and funny stories on top of everything and we’ve got the one and only Rickey.
The baseball world has lost an all-time great. There was never anyone even close to Rickey Henderson and we’ll never see anyone come close moving forward. He was enough to throw the rules out the window and make exceptions to our own personal preferences. He was, truly, a special kind of unique.
