Editor’s note: This story originally published on Dec. 24, 2008. Rickey Henderson died this weekend at 65. He would have turned 66 on Christmas Day.
The signs have to be there.
As baseball’s all-time greatest leadoff hitter shuffles out of bed this morning, it would make him only normal if life’s little reminders tapped him on the shoulder as an observance of his half-century on the planet.
After all, 50 years leave signs of wear and tear. Those who have reached the big five-oh can attest to it. Fifty means fighting stiff muscles, achy joints and wrinkled skin. It’s the reality of gray or thinning hair, the sensation of reduced energy.
These things, you’d think, might be tugging at Rickey Henley Henderson this morning.
Then again, has there ever really been anything to suggest that Henderson is part of the normal world? Even his birth — in Chicago on a snowy Christmas morning in the back seat of a ’57 Chevy with his mother, Bobbi, staring up at a star — hinted that someone unique was at hand.
So it is that the man who has scored more runs and stolen more bases than any other major-league player probably won’t shuffle out of bed today so much as he’ll explode out of it, sliding headfirst.
“He’s got too much energy,” Bobbi Henderson says, laughing at the thought. “That’s how he was as a kid. He liked to run a lot. He was a busy little boy. He had too much energy then, and he’s got too much energy now.”
It seems sports were created with athletes such as Henderson in mind. “Genetically gifted,” as former teammate and childhood friend Dave Stewart puts it, Henderson was built to excel at everything he tried, and in baseball, he found an avenue for his energy.
It kept him occupied at the highest level of his profession for 25 years, and provided the stage for which he could showcase his talents “and his foibles,” as longtime Giants and A’s broadcaster Lon Simmons says. But as a man ages, we tend to remember what he has achieved along the way, not necessarily the missteps he occasionally took to get there.
So what stands out as Rickey blows out his candles and braces for his election to baseball’s Hall of Fame on Jan. 7 — “How is he not unanimous?” former teammate Dave Henderson asked earlier this year — are not just the 2,295 runs and 1,406 steals. There are also the 2,190 walks (second only to Barry Bonds’ 2,558), the 297 home runs (“He could’ve hit 400 had he been needed in that role,” St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa says) and the 81 home runs to lead off a game. Glance at the back of his baseball card, and you’re reminded that he hit .279 and collected 3,055 hits and 510 doubles, all while playing 3,081 games.
And then the question arises: What’s a 50-year-old man to do with such energy?
“He’s not slowing down, I can tell you that,” says Fred Atkins, one of Henderson’s closest friends since childhood.
That much is apparent. Bay Area News Group made repeated requests over the past year to sit down with Henderson for a lengthy one-on-one interview to commemorate today’s milestone. Rickey being Rickey, he found time to conduct only two short interviews during appearances at the Oakland Coliseum.
It seems corralling the man is still darn near an impossible task.
“I try to teach the young kids,” Henderson says, when he takes a moment to slow down. “How they can steal and slide, and save some wear and tear on their bodies. I’d love to do more, because I just stopped playing the game, and when you love the game so much, it’s a part of you.”
That said, the free time is nice, too. Who hasn’t spent a lifetime with his high school sweetheart (Pamela, whom Rickey married a few years back) or raised three children (daughters Angela, 22, Alexa, 17, and Adriann, 15), and not been in love with the concept of free time?
“Very devoted family man,” Stewart says. “The reason you didn’t hear and don’t hear very much about his family life is that unlike most of us, Rickey did a great, great job of keeping his family protected. … He’s a great dad, but you can’t forget Pam. She’s been very, very supportive of everything Rickey did in this game. She’s a strong mother, and kept her own life in order.”
Henderson has made his home in Hillsborough for several years “but comes across the bridge” to his Oakland roots “all the time,” Bobbi says. He also owns a ranch near Yosemite, where he goes “to get away in the peace and quiet,” Atkins says. Often, both say, he opens those doors to underprivileged children “to show them that if they put their mind to it, anything is possible,” Atkins says.
“He likes fishing. He has that ranch in Yosemite,” Bobbi says. “He likes kicking back, playing dominoes, watching football and being just a regular, normal guy.”
And yet, a man has energy. And 50 is hardly time for the retirement home. Remember, this is an individual whose lasting image might not be so much his strike zone — “as small as Hitler’s heart,” legendary sportswriter Jim Murray put it — but fingers wiggling, legs bent, eyes honing in on the pitcher like the scope on a rifle.
This is a man who liked to stand in front of mirrors, naked, gazing at the body that today doesn’t look much different, all while saying, “Rickey’s the best.” This is a guy whose ego often was a bigger story than his ability — and to answer Dave Henderson’s question, that’s why the vote won’t be unanimous. It’s a player who found himself on nine teams, including the A’s on four separate occasions.
Think he didn’t rub a few folks the wrong way?
“He talked a lot of propaganda then,” Stewart says, chuckling. “He talks a lot of propaganda now. But you know. That part comes from the areas that we came from. It was a show of ability. People call it being a hot dog. We called it showing ability. It was indicative of where we came from. Folks misunderstood that about Rickey.”
Indeed, it seems there was much about Rickey that was misunderstood.
Truth is, Rickey was one of the smartest players the game has ever seen. Not only on the field, but off it. He “counted every penny,” one of his friends says. “Kept track of every one, too,” says another.
Think that’s the only example?
Don’t forget, Henderson could be in a Hall by now. This is a man who ran for more than 1,100 yards as a senior running back at Oakland Tech High School and received dozens of football scholarship offers, including one from USC. But Bobbi — “an incredibly strong woman, raised seven kids,” Stewart says — put the kibosh on it. She saw Rickey get the wind knocked out of him in a game and told him baseball was where the safety net was.
“She told me long-term, it would be better for me and my body,” Rickey says. “Two-and-a-half years later, I was in the big leagues, so she made the right decision.”
“He would’ve been Tony Dorsett,” says Shooty Babbitt, a Mets scout who has known Henderson since his high-school days. “He just had that burst.”
The man has too much energy. Which is why those close to him insist that the time will come when Henderson is ready to give himself full-time to the game again.
“When first of all you have the knowledge Rickey has, and you’re a student of the game like he was, and you have the credibility he does because of what you accomplished, obviously you have a chance to be a great coach,” says A’s general manager Billy Beane, who played with Henderson during the A’s last World Series title campaign in 1989 and in Henderson’s MVP campaign a year later. “But ultimately with coaching, it’s a matter of whether a guy like Rickey would really want to do it. “… The biggest thing with Rickey for a number of years “… has been not when we’re ready, but when he’s ready.”
And when would that be? After all, energy can stay untapped for only so long, and Rickey’s a dude who stole 58 passes (in 60 attempts) in the Golden Baseball League at age 46, so what does that say about the man’s passion?
“He may finally be at the moment where he’s able to say, ‘I’m done,’ ” Babbitt says. “I think what he always said was that they would have to come take the uniform away from him. That’s what happened. Rickey, I think, finally has some acceptance about that.”
Just as important, however, is that another kind of acceptance is setting in, too. Perhaps Rickey finally realized he didn’t need to play anymore. His legacy was established. Now that Rickey is 50, the image of him as a once-in-a-generation player crystallizes far more quickly than those of Rickey the disgruntled ballplayer.
“There’s this perception out there that Rickey was only about Rickey,” says La Russa, who saw it up close as the A’s manager from 1986-95. “Rickey was a great teammate. He was not one of those guys who was so arrogant and egotistical that he was going to put himself ahead of what his teammates were trying to do. Yeah, there could be times when Rickey was about Rickey, but he always knew when those times could be. But when it came time to win, Rickey was as good a teammate as you could have.”
When it came time to winning, maybe a handful ever were as dangerous. As La Russa said, to even “be in the discussion,” with players such as Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Babe Ruth and Frank Robinson “tells it all right there.”
And so, on this Christmas morning 50 years removed from birth, Rickey can watch the muscles on his body twitch, comb that still-dark full head of hair and check out what he has received from old St. Nick:
Three healthy children. A lifelong companion. A stronger-than-steel mother. A healthy body. The respect, if not awe, of his peers.
He will be a Hall of Famer. He is the greatest player the Oakland A’s have ever seen and been voted the greatest in the history of the 108-year-old franchise. He arguably is the greatest player Oakland has ever produced. And he did much of it in his own back yard.
Oh, and he has more than enough energy to stare down the next half-century as defiantly as if it were second base.
What a happy birthday, indeed.