OAKLAND -– Something was amiss Saturday afternoon at the celebration of life ceremony for A’s legend Rickey Henderson at the Oakland Arena. There was a notable absence amid the outpouring of love, laughs and tears from Rickey’s family, friends, fellow ballplayers and fans.
Rickey’s No. 1 fan wasn’t there.
Erin States Hoy, once a 5-year-old girl from Tracy who forged a touching, decades-long friendship with one of baseball’s all-time greats that drew national attention, is now a 40-year-old mom in a San Diego suburb with a husband and four kids, ages 7 to 17, and all the obligations that come with that.
So it was with a sense of emptiness that Hoy spent Saturday darting here and there in Escondido, 500 miles from where her heart was.
“I thought a lot about it … but I couldn’t make it to Oakland,” Hoy said while fighting back tears during a phone conversation. “My kids are really busy these days. I would have loved to come if I could, he was such an impactful person for me during my childhood … but it was almost as if I shouldn’t come.”
With that, she began crying again before composing herself enough for a short laugh to say, “I’ve been crying over Rickey since I was 9 years old so this isn’t anything new.”
Hoy would have felt at home among the approximately 5,000 Rickey fans, not all of whom could hide their emotions while saying a final goodbye to the Oakland-raised Hall of Famer, who died on Dec. 20 of complications from pneumonia, five days shy of his 66th birthday.
Jay Frazier and his wife Lauren were decked out in A’s gear after battling the elements driving from Sacramento to honor the man whose death drove them to tears.
“He was one of those super heroes,” said Jay Frazier. “He was an icon. He made it cool to be from Oakland.”
Mike Moffitt of Fremont is like a lot of folks who were at the Arena — a lifelong A’s fan who adored Rickey. “I shed a lot of tears when he died,” admitted Moffitt, who brought his family to the event.
Like any good A’s fan, Moffitt instilled a love of Rickey into his ballplaying sons and daughter, each of whom wear numbers 35 and 24 – the numbers Rickey wore in Oakland.
“My boys, they pop their collars like Rickey, they steal bases like he did … everything about the way my kids play is (to honor) this man,” Moffitt said.
Henderson left this world six weeks ago with more runs scored (2,295), stolen bases (1,406), unintentional walks (2,129) and leadoff home runs (81) than any man in the 150-year history of Major League Baseball.
It took Rickey 25 years in the majors to capture those records. It took Rickey about 25 minutes to capture the heart of 5-year-old Erin States at the Coliseum in 1989. She still remembers walking down to her family’s seats in Section 130, Row 7 for her first A’s game that day and being instantly mesmerized by Rickey – for his hitting, running and, mostly, his playful interactions with the fans in the left-field corner.
“I was so blown away by this baseball player,” she recalled, that with the help of her mom she made a sign that she brought to the next game that read: “Hi Rickey” with a big red heart next to it.
“Every single inning I’d hold up my sign and he’d wave to me,” she said. “Then in the ninth inning he came over and gave me a baseball. And I had a hero.”
She’d go on to make other signs and hold them up for her hero to see over the next five years. Rickey, who made a point of seeking out the young girl at most every game for a chat or a wave, got something out of their friendship as well. In his 1992 autobiography, “Off Base: Confessions of a Thief,” Rickey called Erin his “No. 1 fan.”
Then came July 31, 1993, the day the A’s traded Rickey to Toronto. Nine-year-old Erin was so beside herself with grief that she penned a letter to some Bay Area newspapers, including this organization, that read, in part:
“I know Toronto is a long way away from here and my mom and dad won’t let me move there,” she wrote. “I asked my mom to take down all my Rickey posters and pictures in my room. They make my heart hurt too much to look at. My mom said that the hurt won’t be so bad later and I’ll be able to stop crying when I hear his name. If someone out there knows Rickey would you please tell him that the girl with the signs in the left field corner of the Oakland Coliseum misses him very much and would you tell him I said goodbye? I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”
Erin’s letter was faxed to Henderson, who cried while reading it. He then said, “The fans and press might be on me, but I knew I could always count on that little girl.”
When he visited the Coliseum with the Blue Jays later that season, Rickey met Erin before the game and hugged her while she broke down in tears. He assured Erin that she’d always be his No. 1 fan. Two hours later, he hit a home run down the left field line, not far from where Erin and her family were seated.
Erin and her family moved to the San Diego area in 1999, when she was 15. But as fate would have it, Rickey signed with the Padres two years later. When he set MLB’s all-time runs record in 2001, the Padres surprised Rickey by having Erin there to present him with a plaque honoring him.
There would be one other meaningful connection between Erin and Rickey when he was inducted into Baseball’s Hall of Fame in 2009. She and her husband Ben went to the ceremony with their oldest child, Ryan, who was 2. Erin also brought along the sign she made for Rickey when she was 5 – drawing a smile from the newest Hall-of-Famer.
A Hall of Fame executive later approached Erin and asked if she would consider donating her sign so that it could be displayed there in Cooperstown, N.Y. Erin and her family got to see her sign again when they visited the Hall and saw it prominently displayed there in 2018.
Hoy said she’s thought a lot about those special days since that awful December day, when she was sitting on the couch with her husband and she broke down in tears over Rickey again when she saw the news that her hero had died.
“It was something that I look back on now, the whole story with Rickey, and wonder ‘Was that even real?’ ” she said. “It was such an incredible story and I am so grateful that I got to be a part of it.”
