Rickey Henderson 1958-2024

[Frayed Knot]

If anyone decides to 'statue-ize' the Rickster they could do worse than using the above NYY pic of him with his iconic
low-to-the-ground power stride style of running as their model. Only, y'know, without the pinstripes.

[ashie62]

He took some great at bats as a Met

Very sad

[Cowtipper]

Didn't have this one on my bingo card. Totally unexpected. One of the top physical specimens ever, so of course he dies young. Just crazy. .315 in 1999, I'll never forget that!

[TransMonk]

Any word on his cause of death?

[Cowtipper]

Pneumonia is the word.

[Frayed Knot]

BB-Ref mentions his (somewhat obscure) record of Most Times Reaching Base of any RH Hitter

[Gwreck]

BB-Ref mentions his (somewhat obscure) record of Most Times Reaching Base of any RH Hitter

I would’ve guessed that record belonged to Aaron or Mays, both of whom are a fair bit higher on the hits leaderboard.

[Edgy MD]

But Rickey, on the other hand, walked about a million times.

[whippoorwill]

I remember that Rickey was exactly six months older than I

[batmagadanleadoff]

He was named after Rickey Nelson.

[Frayed Knot]

He was named after Rickey Nelson.

The fact that he played for nine different clubs, including the Yanquis twice, the Padres twice, and Oakland four times ... kind of made him a Travelin' Man, didn't it?

[Bob Alpacadaca]

He was named after Rickey Nelson.

The fact that he played for nine different clubs, including the Yanquis twice, the Padres twice, and Oakland four times ... kind of made him a Travelin' Man, didn't it?

Good one. I wonder if any Hall of Famers played for more teams. Gaylord Perry, maybe?

[Edgy MD]

Dan Brouthers is the leader with 11.* Rickey (nine teams) is tied for second place with Rich Gossage, Deacon White, and Hoyt Wilhelm. Gaylord is just behind them with eight, tied for fifth with Jim O'Rourke and Lee Smith.

The best part of all that is that, somehow, it still feels like Henderson could eventually take the lead, despite having now passed on.

* Nineteenth-century star Brouthers gets something of an asterisk. One of the teams he played for was in the one-year-only Players League, which was a solid league full of National League walkouts, but not all historians accept as a major league. They're probably full of it, though. The talent was pretty indisputable. (The Federal League is another matter.)

Also, eight years after what had been thought to be his final MLB game, a 46-year-old Brouthers laced 'em up for two games (five plate appearances) with the Giants, adding an 11th and final team to his total. It's not clear what the circumstances were, but it wasn't uncommon in the era for coaches who were retired players to take the field in the final innings of blowouts. Brouthers managed the press box for John McGraw's club after his career so it's possible he was in the house wearing civilian garb and ran down to the field and borrowed some spikes when McGraw called on him.

[Bob Alpacadaca]

Fascinating! Thanks, Edgy!

[Edgy MD]

Two 11-teamers with a chance of making the Hall-of-Fame and tying Brouthers:

> Kenny Lofton (decent chance)
> Bartolo Colón (outsidish chance)

[batmagadanleadoff]

He was named after Rickey Nelson.

The fact that he played for nine different clubs, including the Yanquis twice, the Padres twice, and Oakland four times ... kind of made him a Travelin' Man, didn't it?

He was really, really really named after Rickey Nelson. His middle name was Nelson.

[Edgy MD]

Andrew L. and I weren't tight back in our school days. He was clever and confident and I less so. He played third base on the AOT team that beat my Halperin Shoes team two games to one in the 1980 championship series of the Rockville Centre Little League Minors Division. We were 14-2 during the regular season that year and should have won the series pretty handily, but our star pitcher and my best frenemy Eric G. was dealing with a scrotum infection and was fading over the last two innings. With one out to go, Andrew hit a two-run triple to tie things up, and a double by Henry F. plated him with the go-ahead run. We went down in order in the bottom of the inning, and that was that.

Andrew also successfully defended me from a wife-murder rap in a mock trial in seventh or eight-grade. I knew he had the bug, and he would grow up and be a successful attorney, and indeed he has. During our trial prep, I learned he also had a baseball-card collecting bug. I loved my cards, but there was no way I could go after special rare ones, and try and complete sets like he did.

Decades later, Andrew and I are Fezbook friends. We rarely engage, though. I saw him at a thirtieth anniversary reunion, though. I was actually catching up with frenemy Eric, whose scrotum had long since healed, but he was really in the bag when I arrived, and talking out of school. He sees Andrew and says something ridiculously anti-Jewish. I didn't know where it had come from. Both these guys were Jewish, though and I briefly thought, hey, I guess, maybe, this is OK to say among themselves? Maybe they'd kept in touch and regularly talk to each other like this.

It wasn't, though, and they hadn't and didn't, and Andrew looked at Eric like he was trying to come up with a reason not to kill him, and then walked away. I resigned myself to the sad reality that frenemy Eric had not improved over the decades, and getting drunk and stirring the pot was probably a pretty regular thing for him, and not that different from the guy I hadn't seen since 1992 or so. I wrote Andrew an apology that night before I went to bed. "Hey, I was with the guy, but I wasn't with him, you know?"

That's far more than you need to know about Andrew L. (or Eric), but about a year ago, his brother friended me. I didn't really remember his brother Jon at all, except that Andrew caught the card collecting bug from him. Turns that Jon has become the nuttiest of memorabilia collectors. If you suddenly remember an actor from who is out of circulation like Richard Benjamin, Jon will tell you that Benjamin married Paula Prentiss and they were both in movies about robots that look like people — Westworld and The Stepford Wives, respectively — and they've been together 60 years and he has an original print of their wedding photo signed by both.

You can't get Lou Klimchock's autograph to complete your 1966 Mets collection, because Lou never appears in public and his address isn't listed? Jon has you covered, as he tracked Lou down through one of his old marine buddies and has been to his house. Stuff like that.

Turns out the prize of his Rickey Henderson collection — and you just know he has a Rickey Henderson collection — is the yearbook from Rickey's 1976 senior year at Oakland Technical High School. (Go, Bulldogs!). And he of course got Rickey's signature.

And so we learn that Rickey was a Capricorn.

[whippoorwill]

As was Jesus.

Cool story!

[DocTee]

Two interesting (to me) things about that yearbook:

1. They spell his name without the E
2. They don't list his membership on the team for the sport in which he would eventually be enshrined in the HoF

[Benjamin Grimm]

Ricky Nelson didn't have the E either.

Strange that the yearbook gives everyone's Zodiac sign.

And I wonder if Kenneth Humphrey still has the hairdo and the bowtie.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

Rickey was way into football. Bryant's book clears up the name issue, forget exactly what went down.

[smg58]

He was named after Rickey Nelson.

The fact that he played for nine different clubs, including the Yanquis twice, the Padres twice, and Oakland four times ... kind of made him a Travelin' Man, didn't it?

He was really, really really named after Rickey Nelson. His middle name was Nelson.

Well his attitude could be summed up as "you see you can't please everyone, so you got to please yourself."

[Edgy MD]

The way I remember it, Rickey's dream gig was to be a halfback on the Oakland Raiders, but despite a bunch of football scholarship offers, his mom convinced him that baseball players have longer careers.

[G-Fafif]

On the eve of what should have been his 66th birthday, a remembrance of Rickey Henderson, New York Met.

[metirish]

This is behind a paywall, poor taste to say the least from Mushnick