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Bradford Doolittle, ESPN Workers Author
Should you may identify one participant within the historical past of baseball who was the Platonic splendid of a leadoff hitter, who would you identify?
Rickey.
Even right this moment, 21 years after Rickey Henderson’s final huge league look and because the information of his demise simply 4 days earlier than his 66th birthday reached us, that first identify is probably going the speedy response to the query. That is your reply whether or not you are a Gen Xer who was a toddler when Henderson broke in with the Oakland Athletics, or a Gen Zer who was a toddler when he performed his final recreation for the Los Angeles Dodgers 25 years later.
Rickey. In case you have even a passing information of baseball historical past, that identify is all it’s good to reply the query. The identify encapsulates a lot.
Put aside for a second every thing you realize (or assume you realize) about Henderson as a one-of-a-kind character and simply think about what he was on the sector. There, too, he was singular, and never simply because he threw left-handed and batted righty.
For each crew, the leadoff hitter is likely one of the most necessary roles on the roster — and it was a task Henderson performed higher than anybody earlier than or since.
What Rickey did
Consider the essential traits you need in a leadoff hitter: getting on base, stealing bases and scoring runs. Let’s take them so as.
1. Getting on base.
Henderson is one among simply 63 gamers to retire with a profession on-base share over .400. Solely three gamers reached base extra occasions than his profession whole of 5,343: Pete Rose, Barry Bonds and Ty Cobb.
Henderson began 2,890 video games throughout his quarter century within the majors. He batted leadoff in 2,875 of these video games. Rose was a leadoff hitter for almost all of his profession, however he additionally began greater than 1,100 video games in different spots. Bonds began off as a leadoff hitter however is significantly better identified for what he did additional down within the lineup. Cobb began simply 29 video games within the leadoff slot.
In different phrases, no leadoff hitter has ever gotten on base extra usually than Henderson.
And naturally, there was no participant who you wished to maintain off the bases extra, as a result of he did a lot harm as soon as he was there.
2. Stealing bases.
Steals is the class that may seemingly all the time be most related to Henderson. He is the all-time chief in single-season steals (130 in 1982) and the profession chief (1,406). That profession whole is sort of proper at 50% above the second-highest mark, Lou Brock’s 938.
It is laborious to explain how we checked out Henderson throughout his apex within the Nineteen Eighties, a decade by which he swiped 838 baggage. It virtually felt like he had damaged baseball. Maybe the right instance of this: July 29, 1989, when Henderson was enjoying for Oakland and going through Seattle, with future Corridor of Fame lefty Randy Johnson beginning for the Mariners. Henderson performed the complete recreation and didn’t report an official at-bat. As a substitute, he walked 4 occasions, stole 5 bases and scored 4 runs.
Each stroll felt like not less than a double however maybe a triple; so did each single. The geometry of the game felt insufficient to accommodate his capability. You possibly can’t assist however marvel what number of bases Henderson may steal now, with the brand new set of steal-friendly guidelines in place.
For example a long-ball hitter dominated the house run class over his friends the best way Henderson did the stolen base column. That slugger would have completed with round 1,143 homers — or 1.5 occasions the ultimate tally for Bonds.
When Henderson broke Brock’s all-time mark in 1991, he nonetheless had greater than a decade left in his profession. He completed that season, his age-32 marketing campaign, with 994 steals. From age 33 on, he tacked on one other 412, a complete which by itself would rank 68th on the profession checklist.
With so many issues Henderson did, the scope of all of it now takes on an air of mythology, as a result of he did it so properly for therefore lengthy. Henderson first led the American League in steals with 100 swipes in 1980; he was 21. He final led the AL in steals in 1998 with 66 — when he was 39.
3. Scoring runs.
Regardless of all these stolen bases, and all these occasions on base, Henderson seemingly nonetheless noticed these issues as a method to his final objective for any journey to the plate: scoring.
In 2009, across the time of his induction to the Corridor of Fame, Henderson instructed reporters, “To me a very powerful factor was stirring issues up and scoring some runs so we may win a ballgame.”
Nobody scored extra runs. His 2,295 occasions crossing the plate is the report, 50 greater than Cobb and 68 greater than Bonds. Solely eight gamers have ever cracked the two,000-run barrier. The energetic chief — the Dodgers’ Freddie Freeman, who has performed 15 years within the majors — is at 1,298, almost 1,000 shy of the mark. It is a staggering determine.
What Rickey meant
For a lot of his profession, quite a lot of what Henderson did past stealing bases was underappreciated. He performed so lengthy that he was round to see perceptions of baseball worth shift greater than in any time within the sport’s historical past, however throughout most of his years, batting common earned extra consideration than on-base share, and RBIs held sway over runs.
The illustration of this got here in 1985, when Henderson batted leadoff for a Yankees crew that featured that yr’s MVP, Don Mattingly. It may need been Henderson’s finest total season: He hit .314 whereas drawing 99 walks, stealing 80 bases, clubbing 24 homers and scoring 146 runs — his profession excessive, a determine tied for the fourth-highest whole of the mixing period.
If present analytical practices have been in place then, Henderson would have been the seemingly AL MVP, as his 9.9 bWAR whole led the AL (and dwarfed that of Mattingly, who received the award with 6.5). Henderson completed third in a hotly contested race amongst himself, Mattingly and George Brett.
Mattingly’s 145 RBIs seemingly received the votes he wanted for that award, however he would not have reached that whole with out Henderson in entrance of him: Donnie Baseball drove in Rickey 56 occasions that season. Henderson did win an MVP award in 1990 — however he most likely ought to have received one or two extra.
Ultimately, the analytics caught up with Henderson’s greatness, and there are few who would dispute his stature at this level. We’ve got WAR at our disposal now, and Henderson’s whole of 111.1 is the nineteenth highest within the historical past of a sport that dates to 1871 — indisputably, among the many highest who ever placed on a uniform.
Nonetheless, he was greater than his numbers. For legions of Gen X baseball followers, particularly these on the West Coast, he represents childhood. Whether or not it was the mere act of stealing a base or imitating his smooth, low-slung, head-first slide into the bag, he was a type of gamers you’ll faux to be on the sandlot. He was a type of gamers you wished you possibly can be.
Should you have been of that technology, you have been about 10 years outdated when he arrived in Oakland in 1979. By the point he lastly left the majors — not of his personal volition, as Henderson would have performed on and on if it have been as much as him — you have been in your mid-30s, with grownup tasks and nearly no reminiscence of Main League Baseball with out Rickey.
Henderson was virtually with out antecedent, the one actual historic comparability being the legendary Cool Papa Bell of the Negro Leagues. No matter you may consider Henderson given his quirky and infrequently misinterpreted public persona, the person knew his historical past. He would generally use “Cool Papa Bell” as an alias when checking right into a resort.
My favourite anecdote about Henderson could be apocryphal, not less than in that I’ve no solution to confirm it. But it surely’s innocent, so I will go it alongside. There’s one thing stunning in imagining it to be true.
Just a few years in the past once I was in Cooperstown, I used to be chatting with a person who stored a ship on one of many docks of Otsego Lake, which spreads away from the underside of the hill on which Cooperstown resides.
The person instructed me that throughout the weekend on which Henderson was inducted, Rickey approached him and requested how a lot it might value to be taken out within the man’s boat. They agreed to a worth and headed out. Henderson was “dressed to the nines” and carrying wraparound sun shades.
The unlikely pair went out into the water a methods, then stopped. Henderson sat there trying again on the village, house to baseball’s immortals, arrayed alongside the hillside. He did not communicate. Simply regarded, swaying with the water. After a couple of minutes, Henderson requested to be taken again to shore. That was it. The person had no thought what Henderson was interested by throughout these minutes.
That was in 2009, 4 years after Henderson performed his final season in unbiased ball in 2005. For the 39 years earlier than that, since his professional profession started within the minors in 1976 when he was 17, he did it his manner, which was the right manner.
In doing so, he grew to become greater than a participant, however an archetype. Rickey, the leadoff man. Nobody will ever be extra suited to a task on the baseball area than he was for that job. And nobody is more likely to ever do it higher.