Rickey Henderson Dead at 65

The Oakland Athletics and Rickey Henderson, the team’s all-time greatest person, have both left the scene within two weeks of each other. This is a strange and agonizing geometry.

Henderson, one of the most brilliant, accomplished, and interesting sports players who actually lived, has died at age 65. When asked if he thought Rickey Henderson was a Hall of Famer, the revolutionary sports scientist Bill James once said,” If you could cut him in two, you’d had two Hall of Famers.” Really. The work of Rickey Henderson was unlike anything that Babe Ruth had ever done in his day.

Rickey Henderson stole foundations, just like Ruth did for house works. In 1980, Henderson became the first American League player in the modern time to take 100 bases in a single year, two years later, he set a new all-time history with 130 stolen bases, a document that is possible never to be broken. ( In 2024, Elly De La Cruz of the Reds led the majors with 67 base thefts. ) In total, Mickey won 1, 406 lifetime stolen bases, breaking the previous record by almost five hundred ( Lou Brock had 938 ). In addition to all of this, Henderson even had a powerful hitting ability that changed leadoff.

Rickey Henderson had a huge temperament, and his persona was as big and powerful as his field-going prowess. When he stole his 939th center to established a new all-time history, he announced moderately:” Lou Brock was the sign of wonderful base stealing, but today, I’m the greatest of all time”. Even if Rickey was Rickey himself, who was the greatest of all time, would have been an act of pride from anyone else, which would have been ridiculous. &nbsp,

All knew it, also. In his major league job, Rice played for nine different clubs, but his most notable team was the Oakland Athletics, where he spent 12 of his 25 seasons playing in the big tournaments and playing for two more. When Henderson was trying to break into the big tournaments, A’s director Billy Martin said he could tell him how to take bases. If he followed Billy’s counsel, he would take 100 foundations in a year. Rickey followed Billy’s tips. And he stole 100 foundations in a year, three times.

Henderson had a less successful time with the New York Yankees, where injuries hampered his success, but skeptics in the Big Apple feared he wasn’t giving it his all. One evening in 1989, when the whole field crowd was booing and jeering vengefully at Rickey, who was a wet barrel for the Bronx Bombers at the time, hitting simply .247, I was in the Yankee Stadium chairs. Still, his abilities were undeniable. Everyone knew they’d be seeing them again. Amid all the jeers, which were mostly profane variations on” Ya bum, ya”!, one man got off the best taunt of all, yelling at Henderson:” You Hall of Famer” !&nbsp,

As many Rickey Henderson stories circulate as Yogi Berra stories, and just as with the latter, not all of them are true, but they’re terrific anyway. At the end of the year, the A’s discovered, to their absolute dismay, that the books were exactly a million dollars off when they were balancing them. After conducting a thorough search, they discovered that Rickey had received a million dollars, but that he never appeared to have cashed the check. They called him, and he calmly explained that he had framed the million-dollar check and mounted it on his wall because he was so excited about it.

&nbsp, &nbsp, &nbsp, Related: &nbsp, Elegy for the Oakland Athletics

Major League Baseball players also receive meal money for every day on the road, in addition to their astronomical salaries. At the start of every road trip, there was a certain amount of cash in Henderson’s day, which were distributed in envelopes of cash. Depending on the duration of the trip, the envelopes had either a few hundred or more than one thousand dollars. Henderson, who made plenty of money, never used the envelopes of cash, instead, he took them home and put them in a shoebox. Her dogged father would tell her to grab an envelope out of the shoebox, no matter how much was in it. When one of his daughters did well on a school exam or had some other accomplishment, she would do so.

When the news broke that Rickey had passed away, many people took to X to say something to his voice,” Rickey can’t be dead!” Because of his fame, Rickey’s habit of speaking in the third person is so well-known. Only Rickey decides when Rickey will pass away. Alas, no. Time, alas, hurries on inexorably, and nothing is permanent. His team’s hometown of Oakland named its field after him a few years ago, but after this past season, the billionaire team owner pleads poverty and relocates to another stadium to pursue a baseball career. Rickey Henderson and Rickey Henderson Field have both since left the scene. They will both be missed. And Rickey Henderson’s accomplishments as the player on that field and the others in the major leagues are likely never to be overrated. &nbsp,

As they say in my Church, May his memory be eternal.

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