No, I don’t normally publish a post on an NFL Sunday, but one of the greatest players in baseball history, Rickey Henderson, died on Friday night. I actually worked “with” him as I was Director of Baseball Operations for the San Diego Padres when they/we acquired him via free agency before the 1996 season.
By that time he was past his peak, but he still produced an excellent .410 on-base percentage (OBP) and scored 110 runs in 148 games to help us win the National League Western Division title. Since they’re both dead now I can tell you that Tony Gwynn was not happy with the attention Henderson received in 1996. Gwynn had always been the “King Of The Padres.”
Henderson is the all-time leader in career runs scored and career stolen bases. (He was a first-ballot inductee to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2009.) He was awarded one Most Valuable Player (MVP) award–with Oakland in 1990–but he probably deserved more. Henderson’s 1985 season, his first with the New York Yankees, was UNBELIEVABLE. However, he finished third in the MVP voting and–I hate to write this–but I think racism played a role as well as overrating middle of the order hitters and underrating lead-off hitters like Henderson. To be fair, George Brett, who finished second, did have a hell of a year, but not as good as Henderson, IMO. Besides, Brett didn’t win the award, either. Who did? You’ll have to look that up if you’re interested.
I don’t want to get baseball wonky, but in 1985 Yankee Stadium was still a tough park for a right-handed hitter like Henderson. His road stats for that year are mind-boggling for the era: .322 AVG/.422 OBP/.562 SLG, 16 HR/50 RBI in 75 games.
In total, he scored 146 runs in 143 games, stole 80 bases in 90 attempts while playing an above average center field, threw in 24 homeruns for good measure and posted a .314/.419/.516 “Slash” line. He led the league in Wins Above Replacement (WAR) at 9.9; a mark above 5.0 is very good.
Here are what I think are two very funny Rickey Henderson stories:
First, he signed a large contract extension after being traded back to the A’s during the 1989 season. (I think the contract was signed after the season to keep Henderson from being a free agent.) Not surprisingly, the contract included a large signing bonus: $1,000,000. Some months after the contract was signed, someone in the A’s accounting department realized that Henderson’s signing bonus had never been deposited. When they called him Henderson informed the accountant that he had framed his signing bonus check and hung it on the wall. I think the A’s issued him another check.
Second, Henderson was briefly a teammate of John Olerud with the Toronto Blue Jays during the 1993 season. Olerud always wore a batting helmet, even in the field or on the bases, because he had suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage (bleeding in a space around the brain) while in college. That he always wore a helmet was well known.
In 1999, they were teammates again with the New York Mets. In spring training, Rickey walked over to Olerud and said, “Hey man, I had a teammate who wore his helmet all the time.” Of course, Olerud said, “Yeah, Rickey, that was me.”
By Henderson’s second season with the Padres (1997), the outfield was kind of crowded with him, Gwynn, Greg Vaughn (whom we had acquired in July, 1996 to get more power in the lineup; we re-signed him in free agency in that offseason and he hit 50 homeruns for us in 1998 to help us win the National League championship) and Steve Finley and with no Designated Hitter in the National League. Henderson wasn’t happy when he didn’t play and didn’t hide that fact. We had a great offense, but bad pitching doomed us to a bad season and we traded Henderson to the Angels in August, 1997.
Rickey Henderson was one of my favorite baseball players ever. I remember putting him on a Strat-O-Matic team after receiving the cards for the 1985 season. I didn’t play an entire league, just this team’s season. (I named the team the Baltimore Orions.) I kept statistics, of course, and when I realized Henderson was amassing a good RBI total batting leadoff I moved him down in the order so he could get 100+ RBI. (OK, RBI = Runs Batted In.) The team was not drafted through a random process; it was a de facto All-Star team. Henderson ended up with something like 170 runs scored and 110 RBI.
When I was sort of a post-grad at my alma mater (I was not officially a post-grad, but spent a decent amount of time on campus doing research odds and ends) I was part of a group developing a baseball simulation that could play an entire season in minutes. That’s not a big deal now, but it was in 1984-85.
We decided to see how much of a difference one player could make to a team. We decided to replace John Shelby, who was the regular centerfielder for the World Champion 1983 Baltimore Orioles, with Rickey Henderson. If I remember correctly, we played 50 seasons with each player. The Orioles averaged seven more wins per season with Henderson compared to Shelby. Remember that it was a World Series champion team already.
I could publish more statistics, but I cannot really convey how sad Henderson’s death makes me. We were contemporaries; he was one of my favorite players beginning when I was in college. We were later part of the same major league organization, which blew my mind even then.
I hear the clock ticking more loudly with every passing year. An event like the death of Rickey Henderson really ratchets up the sound.
Goodbye, Rickey Henderson.
#ItTollsForThee:GoodbyeRickey