7 months ago
Looking for the next Rickey Henderson? Nobody in baseball is. They gave up long ago.
Henderson, baseball's all-time stolen base and runs scored leader and unmatched leadoff hitter, enters the Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday. He will give an acceptance speech that even he can't predict. Will it be prepared or off the cuff? In first person or, as Rickey often spoke to teammates and reporters, third person?
It's much like when Henderson came to the plate to start a game. Would it be one of his 1,406 stolen bases? Or another of his unmatched 81 leadoff home runs?
There's never been anyone quite like him, from a flamboyant style that could excite or aggravate - depending on whose side you were on - to his game-disrupting speed and power.
Philadelphia Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins grew up in Oakland when Henderson was running wild for the Athletics. Rollins studied him so closely that Rollins has left teammates roaring with clubhouse imitations of Henderson.
"Rickey was my favorite player, hands down, all time," says Rollins, who's hit as many as 30 homers in a season and once led the National League in stolen bases with 46 - hardly in the same league with Henderson's record 130 in 1982. "The flash, the pizzazz, the flair, the energy, the total entertainment package."
The imitation is fun and full of that flair, but that's about as far as Rollins will go in truly emulating Henderson.
"I couldn't do what Rickey did," Rollins says. "I wouldn't even try."
That's the point.
"He changed the game," says New York Mets general manager Omar Minaya, who was Henderson's last major league employer when Rickey became the team's batting coach during the 2007 season.
Pitchers 'used to hate me'
Henderson, as a 23-year-old in his fourth big league season, broke Lou Brock's single-season stolen base record. Eight years later he led the AL in on-base plus slugging (OPS) at 1.016. Eight years after that, he led in steals for the 12th time.
"Pitchers used to just, oh man, they used to hate me," Henderson says.
The game has changed. Maybe part of the reason is that nobody has found another Rickey Henderson. But the stolen base has become devalued - partly because of the power explosion of the last 10 to 15 years, but also because statistical analysts calculated that basestealers need to be successful roughly 75% of the time to keep the running game from being counterproductive.
Henderson, after all, also is the all-time leader in being caught stealing - with 335. Lou Brock, the man he passed for the all-time lead in steals, also was who he passed for the caught-stealing lead.
But Henderson's career success rate meets the sabermetricians' standards at 80.76%. Brock finished at 75.34%
In Henderson's view, it wasn't so much that teams in his era were willing to run at all costs. It's that teams today have talked themselves out of running.
"It's the stopwatch," he says, referring to the constant calculation of how quick a pitcher gets the ball to home plate.
"You drill it in a guy that if that clock is such and such time, you can't run," he says. "Hey, wait a minute. You're telling me ... I can't beat the guy. That is no challenge to me. If he's quick to the plate, I got to be quick on the ground."
Henderson also is the career leader in runs with 2,295, and that's the statistic that overshadows the stolen bases in his mind. "My pride and joy is coming across home plate," he says.
Simply put, Henderson did things no one else did - or, maybe, no one else could.
An achievement that gets lost in the statistical shuffle is Henderson's 2,190 walks. That's second all-time behind Barry Bonds. But nobody was better at drawing walks.
Pitchers certainly didn't want to walk Henderson. He received just 61 intentional walks in his career - Bonds got 688. That leaves Henderson with a whopping 2,129 to 1,870 edge atop the unintentional walk list.
That's not all.
"Rickey could have hit more home runs," Minaya says. That's a frequent comment about many players considered high-average singles hitters.
One of the more famous illustrations involves Hall of Famer Rod Carew, who lost an arbitration case before the 1975 season. Minnesota Twins owner Calvin Griffith had turned down Carew's request for a raise, saying Carew didn't hit enough home runs.
Carew decided he'd show Griffith. He went out and won a fourth consecutive batting title - and hit more homers than he had in the four previous seasons combined. But that homer total was just 14 - Carew's career high for one season.
Henderson's career high was double that. He hit 28 twice, had four 20-plus homer seasons and finished his career with 297.
Oozing confidence
Henderson also was unique in his style and personality, and when he steps to the podium Sunday in Cooperstown, N.Y., there is a feeling among people who plan to be there that anything could come out of his mouth.
"I can't wait," San Diego Padres general manager Kevin Towers says. "His whole speech might be Rickey talking on behalf of Rickey. He's going to be interesting, that's for sure, and he won't be humble. But that's what made Rickey so great. The confidence that man has made him one of the top two or three players who ever played the game."
New York Yankees GM Brian Cashman, who also plans to be in attendance this weekend, remembers Henderson's reaction to being traded by the Yankees to Oakland in 1989.
"Trade Rickey? You're trading Rickey? You're kidding me, right?" Cashman recalls.
Henderson, 50, won't dare forecast the outcome of his own speech.
"Speeches and me don't get along sometimes," Henderson said on a conference call last week. "It is kind of like putting a tie too tight on my neck. I'm going to do whatever feels right."
Dave Stewart, Henderson's former teammate who grew up in Oakland with Henderson, calls him "one of the funniest people I've ever been around." He also predicts the speech just may stun everyone.
"People are anticipating his speech will come out in a way that will give them something to laugh about or talk about," Stewart says. "But I think he will shock a lot of people how well it will be presented."
Just the latest opportunity for Henderson to prove he is one of a kind.
By Paul White, USA TODAY
