Rickey Henderson, Run Scorer Nonpareil (1958-2024)

The premature death of baseball's greatest leadoff hitter means 'Rickey Stories' will be in circulation. The biography that Howard Bryant wrote that was published in 2022 separates facts and fictions.

Rickey Henderson never got to be ancient.

Sixty-five years old is far too young to go, especially for someone who embodied the ‘looks like he could still play’ cliché at his appearance at the Athletics’ final home game in Oakland about three months ago, in September. By now, you have heard the tributes, the reminders: greatest leadoff batter in the sport’s history, all-time leading run-scorer, all-time leading base stealer.

Tough year for baseball in California’s Bay Area. Willie Mays, Rickey Henderson, Orlando Cepeda, and the Athletics all gone in the same year.

Rickey Lore will be in heavy circulation over the next few days. That is how it works with AI, aggregation, and engagement farming. The acceleration of tech makes it easier for a distortion to get turned into a graphic with Canva near-instantaneously.

In effort to diffuse the pain, it is called for to talk about some Rickey Stories. In 2022, Howard Bryant appeared on SportsLit to discuss his book Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original (Mariner Books, August 2022).

Bryant explained how ‘Rickey stories’ have a cruel, institutional-racism streak to them.

Finding work in baseball after their playing careers had ended was hard enough for Black players, but it was even harder in a game saturated with Rickey stories. Doubts about being respected as baseball thinkers and leaders, as men who the white billionaire suits could trust not just to run spring training and draw up lineups but to speak to civic organizations and represent the club, followed every Black player who wanted a future in the game after their playing days were over. Laughing at Rickey may have made for hilarity at the bar or in the press box, but every Black player hoping to one day be a manager or a general manager knew the stories were just making it that much more difficult to be taken seriously. What belonged to one stuck to the rest. They knew that laughter directed at Rickey was also directed, however subtly, at all of them. Anyone who doubted that could simply look at the percentage of managerial jobs that went to Black candidates. The numbers didn’t lie, and no amount of apologias in The Sporting News could change what they said.

When the players winced, they were also wincing for Rickey, because underneath the laughter was the cruelty of inequity. There was no question that Rickey suffered from an early reading disability that had not been addressed, that his education had not received adequate attention, and no question that his athletic ability had reduced the academic rigor required of him in the classroom, allowing him to play sports and not learn. (Rickey, pg. 347)

Bryant noted this escalated when Henderson came to the Yankees in 1985, after spending his first five-plus seasons in small-market Oakland. The baseball writers lumped him with Mickey Rivers: “… both seen in the baseball world as characters, as entertainers, and that was not always a compliment.”¹ Rivers was also a top-of-the-order catalyst with speed … but one easy stat check shows this comparison was very surface-level.

Henderson, with his famously scrunched strike zone, cadged a base on balls once every 6.09 plate appearances. That is a rate more than 3½ times greater than Mickey Rivers (22.66). You could look it up. I know

Anyway, cribbing from Rickey, there are other legends that are deconstructed, and in some cases, confirmed.

Rickey Story: Henderson framed a million-dollar cheque

How I heard it, verbatim, more than once in a Canadian newsroom: “Rickey Henderson is so dumb that he framed a million-dollar cheque.” I recall making a face but not saying anything; I lacked refuting evidence. And I didn’t want to start something by saying you cannot fault someone if they didn’t trust banks.²

A few years later, at a public library, I pored through Henderson’s early ’90s autobiography, Off Base: Confessions of a Thief. And the cheque story is in there. However, it’s not told with the same judgement.

Here one thinks of that 30-for-30 documentary Broke (2012, dir. Billy Corben). Easy come, easy go, right?

Bryant, after interviewing teammates, presents it more as someone not wishing to spend what he had worked so hard to earn:

The real story, or at least another part of it, was that Rickey Henderson did not easily part with his money—not cashing a check was a way to show financial discipline, to stretch out a dollar. (Rickey, pg. 149)

See the difference?

Rickey Story: In the bathroom during the earthquake

On Oct. 17, 1989, the Athletics and San Francisco Giants were minutes away from starting the third game of the World Series when the 6.9-magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake struck, damaging Candlestick Park. The earthquake happened at 5:04 Pacific Time, just as the ABC telecast (carried on CTV in Canada) was teeing up the contest.

Talking with friends today, someone said they had heard that Henderson was in the bathroom when the quake hit. And that one checks out. Per Bryant, who had some access to Henderson for the book, Rickey recalled that a security guard had to tell him to leave the dressing room and go out to the ballfield.

“I think I had a bad stomach, and I think I went to the john. And you know, the earthquake came and shook.” (Rickey, pg. 237).

Rickey Story: John Olerud and his helmet

Bryant calls this “the most famous Rickey story of them all.”³ Recall that Henderson and John Olerud were teammates three times — 56 games when Rickey was a rental for the triumphant 1993 Blue Jays, then again with the Mets and Mariners.

Olerud wore a batting helmet for protection after surviving a brain aneurysm. So the story went that Henderson asked him about it and said, “I played with a guy in New York” — or Toronto, in other media — “who did the same thing,” and Olerud explains, “Rickey, that was me.”

It is completely fictional. But read Bryant’s book to find out who started it.

Rickey Story: “I was on second base!”

Scenario: the Athletics travel party is on the bus to a road game against the Blue Jays. There is a billboard near the Dome displaying an exultant Joe Carter rounding the bases after hitting his 1993 World Series-winning home run. That spurs a where-were-you-when-that-happened conversation, and finally Henderson tops it off by saying, “I was on second base!”

Absolutely true. Bryant, through an interview with media worker Dave Feldman, confirms it happened on May 30, 1994.⁴ Henderson had rejoined Oakland for the third of four tenures. And a quick pore over the boxscore shows he started the game with a walk against teammate and friend Dave Stewart, and reached base three times and scored a run, toward a winning effort.⁵

So that is 100 percent true.

Rickey Story: “Rickey’s hittin’ .330!”

This is a well-circulated meme. There is never any attribution, and I suppose it is fine enough as a joke.

Ballplayers always know their stats down to the fourth integer. There is little about Henderson’s persona to suggest he was as obsessive about his batting average as some players of his vintage before everyone accepted that on-base percentage is the superior metric. The 25-season duration of his career suggests someone who got off more on counting stats — adding to the stolen-base record, owning the runs record, getting to 3,000 career hits — that would make him undeniable to Baseball Hall of Fame voters.

So why would it have started? Around the end of the ’80s, there was a rainbow wig-wearing superfan who used to get on TV at sports events holding up a JOHN 3:16 sign. The Simpsons even depicted him — although you will never see it in streaming since it was in the de-circulated Michael Jackson episode.

The John 3:16 guy was still getting TV time in 1990. Henderson had an average in the range of .330 for most of the season, before settling at a final, career-best .325, and led MLB with a .439 on-base en route to winning the league MVP award. Eventually, those two dots had to connect.

Fair enough; but based on the briefings from his biographer, one has to call BS. The point of this is to understand there is nothing harmless when an athlete’s lore is sprinkled with made-up stuff.

Especially when, as a competitor, Rickey Henderson was The Truth.

Friendly reminder! :)

My marginalia on other topics are posted in Notes. Hopefully, this is enough for now. Please stay safe, and be kind.

Dec. 21-22, 2024
Hamilton, Ont. : on the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and Mississaugas.

1. Rickey, pg. 148.

2. To quote Nick Miller in New Girl: “A bank is just a paper bag with thicker walls!”

3. Rickey, pg. 344.

4. Rickey, pgs. 311, 393.

5. Source: Baseball-Reference.com.