Legendary leadoff hitter Rickey Henderson dies at 65
Rickey Henderson, one of the greatest players in the history of the game and recognized as the greatest leadoff hitter and base stealer in MLB history, died Friday at the age of 65.
Rickey Hendersonthe best leadoff hitter and base stealer in baseball history Major Leagues of Baseball, whose blistering speed, keen eye and unusual home run power complemented an irrepressible swagger that took him from the vacant lots of Oakland to the Baseball Hall of Famedied on Friday, according to his family. He was 65 years old.
With a fearless and extravagant style of play, which thrilled some players and fans thirsty for the theatrical energy of a sport known for its seriousness and irritated others who believed that the iconoclastic approach to the game did not respect old traditions, Henderson broke barriers along with tons of records during a 25-year career in which he played with nine teams.
In a sport that depends on the historical consistency of its numbers, Henderson swept the record book, owning the most stolen bases of all time with 1,406, a staggering 468 more than the great Lou Brock of the St. Louis Cardinals, who held the record of 938 for a dozen years before Henderson surpassed it in 1991. Henderson holds the records for most stolen bases in a single season with 130 in 1982, the most of times he led the league in steals with 12 and the most consecutive years leading the league in steals with seven. At age 39 in 1998 with Oakland, Henderson became the oldest player in history to lead the American League in robberies with 66.
During his quarter-century in the game, which included four separate seasons with his hometown A’s, Henderson won league championships. World Series with Oakland in 1989 and Toronto in 1993. The Most Valuable Player of the American League with Oakland in 1990, Henderson redefined the role of a leadoff hitter by injecting unprecedented offensive power into the traditional leadoff hitter’s role of getting on base. He hit 297 home runs, including a major league record 81 of them leading off.
After his final season in 2003, Henderson finished with 3,055 hits and left the game with the all-time marks for steals, runs scored (2,295), and walks (2,190), a record he now holds. Barry Bonds (2,558). He was appointed for 10 Star Games and finished his career with 111.1 wins above replacement, the third most of any player in the last half century, behind only Bonds and Alex Rodriguezwho used performance-enhancing drugs. Henderson was first voted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2009, receiving votes from 94.8% of voters.
Yet by all records, Henderson left perhaps his most indelible mark on the game with his boisterous presence on the field, celebrating home runs with a jump, a tug of his shirt and, when he felt like it, one of the slowest jogs. of the game. He claimed that he imitated the great boxer Muhammad Ali through his game. When he stole his 939th base on May 1, 1991, to break Brock’s all-time record (nine years after he had shattered Brock’s record in one season), Henderson pulled the second base bag out of the ground, He held it high above his head and proclaimed, in a celebration of the moment on the field, “I’m the greatest of all time.”
He even gave his game his own nickname: “Rickey Style“, he called. His quick catch (he would slap the air before the ball landed in his glove and hit his hip in a single motion) made fielding look like sleight of hand. He introduced the play on the last out of the no-hitter Mike Warren 1983 for Oakland against the Chicago White Sox.
Henderson believed his style was predestined. Born in a blizzard in Chicago on Christmas Day 1958, Rickey Nelson Henley was named in honor of 1950s teen idol Ricky Nelson. According to family legend, his mother Bobbie went into labor before entering the hospital and nurses took the child from the car. When his father arrived frantic and late at the hospital, demanding to see his wife, the nurses told him, “Calm down! The boy is already in the back seat.” Over the years, Henderson would tell the story as proof of his destiny to be the best base stealer in baseball. “I was born fast,” he would say.
Henderson, who grew up in North Oakland and attended Oakland Technical High School, part of a dynastic legacy of Oakland talent. After Joe Morgan, Bill Russell, Curt Flood, Paul Silas, Vada Pinson and Frank RobinsonHenderson, along with Dave Stewart, Lloyd Moseby, Gary Pettis and Rudy Maywas part of a second generation of Oakland high school players to play professional sports.
Henderson preferred football to baseball, but his mother steered him toward baseball because she was convinced his body couldn’t handle the physical contact of football. NCAA and the NFL. Henderson was selected in the fourth round by the A’s in the 1976 draft. Three years later, he made his major league debut with Oakland at age 20 in June 1979, going 2-for-4 with a stolen base. His dynamism was on full display early on, and Henderson actually came through in his first full season the following year, breaking the American League record of 96 stolen bases he held. Ty Cobb for 65 years, stealing 100 bases in 126 attempts.
With a propensity to refer to himself in the third person and to be the center of often absurd stories that bordered on the apocryphal, Henderson was one of the game’s great characters, in the style of baseball greats Satchel Paige and Yogi Berra. Stories about Henderson were as legendary as his play, such as the true story of him once framing a million-dollar bonus check and hanging it on his wall, without cashing it first. Henderson often flouted baseball conventions and did whatever he wanted, making him a legend to younger baseball fans and players.
However, to the game’s establishment struggling through a tumultuous era of labor disputes, Henderson represented a new generation of players in the new world of free agency and the millions of dollars that were now available to players. Unlike previous generations, Henderson was not afraid to demand the high salaries he believed his game deserved.
After six years in Oakland, featuring record-breaking seasons and several high-profile contract battles, Henderson was traded in December 1984 to the New York Yankees, where he brought his particular brand of showmanship to a team that had lost him after the march of Reggie Jackson. Henderson was traded back to the A’s in 1989, and led a powerful A’s team to back-to-back titles in 1989 and 1990, including a World Series title in 1989, sweeping San Francisco in the Bay Bridge Series. defined by the Loma Prieta earthquake which hit during Game 3 and delayed the series for 10 days. Henderson led the A’s to another playoff appearance in 1992, a six-game loss in the American League Championship Series to eventual champions Toronto.
For all the flamboyance and hilarity, Henderson was one of the great players of any era. His best season came with the Yankees in 1985, when Henderson led the league with 146 runs scored and 80 stolen bases, hit .314/.419/.516 with 24 home runs and finished third in American League Most Valuable Player voting. Henderson continued to produce, his on-base percentage still regularly hovering around .400, a hallowed threshold usually reserved for Hall of Famers. Henderson finished his career at .401.
When he returned to Oakland in 1989, his signature performance in the 1989 American League Championship Series against the Blue Jays was one of the greatest devastations to an opponent in playoff history. In the season of MVP from Henderson the following year, he tied a career-high with 28 home runs, stole 65 bases and hit .325/.439/.577. In 1993, the A’s sent him back to Toronto, when he was 34 years old. In October of that year he got his second championship ring, being on second base for one of the great moments in the history of the game, the three-run home run by Joe Carter that gave him victory in the World Series against the Philadelphia closer Mitch Williams.
Over the final 10 seasons of his career, Henderson would tour the majors, returning to the A’s twice more, the San Diego Padres twice, the Anaheim Angels, the New York Mets, the Seattle Mariners, the Boston Red Sox and, finally, in 2003, to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Part of his aura emanated from his physical appearance. Once, in the 1980s with the Yankees, he won the team competition for lowest body fat percentage, at 2.9%. Years later, at age 40, Henderson looked like a man half his age. He never lifted weights. He did push-ups and sit-ups every night, flexing his muscles and showing off his abs to anyone who wanted to see. In 1999, he hit .315 and got on base for the Mets more than 42 percent of the time. He played his last game at age 44 years and 268 days on September 19, 2003, for the Dodgers, and his stolen base total is still more than 1,000 ahead of the current active leader.
True to his reputation as an ageless showman, Henderson never officially retired from MLB: teams simply stopped calling him. His wife, Pamela (whom Henderson had first dated 50 years earlier, when they both attended Oakland Tech, and who would remain his rock for the rest of his life) said that Henderson, even in his 60s, believed he could still play if another team gave him a chance. “We’d sit there having breakfast and he’d watch TV,” she once said. “And I’d see how much today’s players were making, and I’d look at their stats and say, ‘I could do that.'”
