Friday, December 27, 2024

To Absent Friends - Rickey Henderson


Rickey Henderson, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame and the man generally regarded as the best lead-off hitter in baseball history, died last week, a few days short of his 66th Christmas Day birthday.   The stats and numbers more than justify Henderson's HOF status, but he was what one would call a genuine character, a guy whose quirks made him memorable way beyond his on the field accomplishments.

But first, some of those "stats and numbers":
  • MLB's all-time Stolen Base leader with 1,408 SB's, which is 470 more than the Number Two guy, Lou Brock, whose record he broke.  To put that in perspective, the current active player with the most stolen bases is the Mets' Starling Marte, who has 354 stolen bases.
  • MLB's all-time Runs Scored leader with 2,295.  The Number Two guy is Ty Cobb with 2,245.  The current active player with the most runs scored is the Dodgers' Freddie Freeman with 1,298.
  • A twenty-five season career with nine different teams.  3,055 hits, second only to Barry Bonds in lifetime Bases on Balls, two time Gold Glove winner, ten time All-Star, and member of two World Series champions, the 1989 Athletics and the 1993 Blue Jays.
  • 81 career lead-off home runs, most ever by any player
Then there were the quirks.

A favorite story of mine is that one game he was on first base and the opposing first baseman was John Olerud.  Olerud, you may recall, always wore his batting helmet when playing in the field.  Henderson said to him "I once played in Seattle with a guy who always wore his helmet in the field" to which Olerud replied "Yeah, that was me."

The Oakland A's accounting department once called him to let him know that he had yet to cash a $1,000,000 bonus check that they had paid him only to be told the he had the check framed and hanging on his wall.

But the most notable quirk was that he always referred to himself in the third person as in "Rickey's the best."  I went online and found  THIS ARTICLE, Top Ten Times That Rickey Henderson Referred To Himself In The Third Person. You can read the whole article but here a couple of gems.

When referring to his limousine (yes, he had a limo):  "Rickey don't like it when Rickey can't find Rickey's limo."

When traded to the Yankees and asked about how it would feel playing on the same field as DiMaggio and Mantle:  "I don't care about them. It's Rickey time."

Another one not in the article concerns the time someone quoted the Bible verse John 3:16:  "Rickey don't care about three sixteen, Rickey's hitting .350"

RIP Rickey Henderson.  There may never be another one quite like him.

Rickey breaking Lou Brock's SB record.

 

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