RICKEY: The Life and Legend of an American Original
On April 25, 2001, when the season was just three weeks old and the country was entering the final months of its pre-9/11 life, Rickey Nelson Henley Henderson, aged 42 and in his second stint with the Padres, took ball four to lead off the bottom of the ninth against Jose Mesa of the Phillies. It was the 2,063rd free pass of his career, and with it Rickey passed Babe Ruth as the all-time leader in walks.
Later that year, on Oct. 4, 2001, in the bottom of the third inning against the Dodgers, Rickey stepped into the box at Qualcomm Stadium. Tie game, Rickey facing Luke Prokopec, born in 1978. The day before, the Dodgers had creamed the Padres, 12–5. There’d been nothing much to see there—except that when Rickey walked and scored in the third inning, the run tied him with Ty Cobb for the all-time lead. Now, again in the third, Prokopec tried to sneak a fastball past the old man. The crouch wasn’t as deep as it used to be, but Rickey uncoiled and connected.
Three days later, on Oct. 7, in teammate Tony Gwynn’s final game, Rickey flipped a bloop double to right against the Rockies’ John Thomson, a little dead fish in his first at bat on the first pitch he saw. It was hit number 3,000, making Rickey the 25th player in history to reach the sacred plateau.
The numbers were too big to ignore. The history he was now reaching back and touching, the names whose real estate he now shared. Rickey occupied the top shelf with Ruth … Cobb … Mays … Williams … Aaron. He was part of the 3,000 hits club—Williams and Ruth never got there. These players had become the bedrocks of the sport, and in 2001 Rickey, still an active player, had already been the all-time stolen-base king for a decade. He had even done something that season that shouldn’t have been possible—and yet it was. From Rickey’s big-league debut on June 24, 1979, to the end of the 2001 season, he had stolen 1,395 bases. During that same period, the Boston Red Sox franchise had stolen 1,382 bases. Rickey hadn’t just stolen more bases than any other player during his career—he had outstolen an entire
Rickey was vindicated by the numbers—he was a Made Guy now—so they told stories about him. He had become that most unique, most untouchable of characters—an American treasure and a living part of baseball folklore in the tradition of Satchel Paige and Yogi Berra. What had once made him frustrating now made him a character—and everyone laughed together. He was no longer self-absorbed for not remembering names—he was just Rickey. The people who knew him told stories about him, and people who didn’t repeated the stories they’d heard—they were too good not to be repeated. People who had never met Rickey spoke about him with a certainty that underscored his ubiquity. His legend was baseball’s legend.
And now their eyes lit up when they heard his name.
The fearsome Red Sox slugger Mo Vaughn used to call Rickey “Gas” because, Mo says, “to walk him was like putting gasoline on a fire.” Ball four, and Rickey would trot down to first. Mo would be there, a boulder of chaw ballooning one cheek.
“What up, Gas?”
“What up, baby.”
Rickey would take a few steps toward second, and Vaughn’s manager—didn’t matter which one, Butch Hobson, Kevin Kennedy, Jimy Williams—would get nervous. So would the pitcher, even strikeout guys like Roger Clemens, who could make base runners irrelevant merely by overpowering whoever was at bat. Vaughn recalls the familiar pattern: The manager would order a throw to first. Rickey would dive back, and Mo would slap a little leather on him. Another throw, another retreat to first, another swipe of the mitt from Mo. Again. And again. Finally, Rickey would call for time, emerge from the dust cloud, wipe himself off, and look at Vaughn. “He would say, ‘Dawg, I gotta go. He’s tiring me out throwing over here so much!’ ” And then Rickey would steal second. Another time, Rickey was on first, Mo gave him a little glove tap on the hip, respect for the legend. “What up, Gas? You going?” “You know I am.” And then Rickey was gone.
There was the time, in 1990 or ’91, late in the game, when the manager, either Stump Merrill or Bucky Dent, was giving out instructions. Buck Showalter was coaching the Yankees. “Rickey was hitting against us, and he has us playing no-doubles defense,” Showalter recalls. “Guarding the lines. Don’t give up anything big. Don’t let him get in scoring position. Then [Don] Mattingly turns around and yells into the dugout, ‘What for? If he gets a single, IT’S A DOUBLE ANYWAY!’ ”
It’s May 30, 1994, the A’s made their first trip of the season to Toronto. The team bus left the Toronto Sheraton, rolled down Spadina Ave., and as it rumbled into the SkyDome passed a billboard on Blue Jays Way containing just three elements: a photo of an elated Joe Carter, the date of his epic home run and the time the ball landed in the seats to give Toronto the championship. No other words. The billboard sparked a question that bounced around the A’s bus as it pulled into the ballpark: “Where were you when Joe Carter hit the home run?” From the front to the back, players, coaches and staff recalled their whereabouts at Canada’s most famous baseball moment. Dave Feldman, the statistician for KRON-TV, the A’s television affiliate, said he was sitting on the couch, watching the game in his San Francisco apartment, totally stunned. More voices followed, with more recollections. Then a lone voice boomed from the very back of the bus. “I WAS ON SECOND BASE!”
It was Rickey.