“What Jimmy really liked to do? What he really liked to do was steal. I mean, he really enjoyed it. Jimmy was the kind of guy who supported the bad guy in the movies. — Ray Liotta as Henry Hill
That’s a quote from “Goodfellas,” which premiered in September 1990, when the Oakland A’s were reigning champions and Rickey Henderson was the most exciting player in baseball. That was also his best season and early the next season he broke Lou Brock’s career record for stolen bases.
Henderson ripped the base out of the Colosseum’s mud and lifted it to the sky. He thanked God, the A’s and the city. He thanked family, fans and managers. Then, as Brock stood next to him, Henderson declared, “Today I am the greatest of all time.”
That night, 1,700 miles away in Texas, Nolan Ryan broke his own record for no-hitters with seven. The irresistible contrast made for a lazy talking point: the humble, stoic Ryan had upstaged the vain, stubborn Henderson. Low-hanging fruit at its sourest.
Henderson, who died Friday at the age of 65, was the villain in that movie — and yes, he brought it on himself. He complained about being underpaid. He often referred to himself in the third person. He wore fluorescent green batting gloves. He loosened his collar and swung at a home run trot. He sliced through the air after catching fly balls, his glove resembling Zorro’s blade.
And everything – despite the contract stuff – was great.
“The way I play, people call me a hot dog,” Henderson once said. “But I call it (bringing) style or entertainment to the people. I enjoy going out and getting the fans excited because I feel like they come here to see some excitement.
Was any player increasingly exciting than Rickey Henderson? Was anyone a better entertainer? Certainly, no one outside the movies loved stealing as much as Henderson or succeeded at it as grandly.
Henderson finished with 1,406 stolen bases. His last was in August 2003, for the Dodgers, off a Colorado pitcher named Cory Vance, born in June 1979. That was the same month as Henderson’s first-ever steal, in his major league debut for the A’s.
In some ways, Henderson was a lot more like Ryan than it seemed. Both played over four decades, well into their mid-40s. Henderson led his league in stolen bases twelve times; Ryan led his league in strikeouts twelve times. Henderson is the only player with more than 1,000 steals; Ryan is the only pitcher with more than 5,000 strikeouts. (Henderson was, in fact, strikeout victim No. 5,000.)
But here’s the difference: As freakishly dominant as Ryan was in strikeouts, Henderson was far more productive in stolen bases. Ryan has 17.2 percent more strikeouts than second-place Randy Johnson. Henderson has 49.8 percent more stolen bases than Brock.
Here’s another way to frame that: Let’s say Henderson’s career had ended in 1993, which would have been a fitting ending. Henderson, then with Toronto, drew a walk in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 6 of the World Series, prompting the Phillies’ Mitch Williams to attempt a slide-step move to hold him. Joe Carter took advantage with a convincing home run.
(In his fascinating biography of Henderson – “Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original” – Howard Bryant tells a great story from the following season, after Henderson rejoined the A’s. On a trip to Toronto, players and staff reminisced about where they were when Carter hit his home run. Henderson shouted from the back of the bus, “I was on second base!”)
In 1993, Henderson had 1,095 career steals, about 17 percent more than Brock – the same as Ryan’s lead over Johnson. But then Henderson stuck around for another decade as a speedster for hire.
He returned to Oakland, then to San Diego, the Angels, Oakland again, the Mets, Seattle, the Padres again, Boston and Los Angeles. He kept running even when the major leagues stopped calling, sweeping another 53 bases for independent teams in Newark and San Diego.
Of course, all that speed found its way to the plate. Henderson scored 2,295 points, another record, just above Ty Cobb, Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth. When he set the milestone with a homer for the Padres in 2001, Henderson trotted around the bases – then slid home.
“It was feet first and he was always a head-first guy; that caught us off guard more than anything,” said Ben Davis, a catcher on that team. “But you never confided anything to Rickey. I mean, think about it: he got his 3,000th hit, he set the all-time record for walks and the all-time record for runs scored. The walking record was broken by Barry, but that is incredible to do all that in one year.”
Henderson was 42 at the time, but still racked up 25 stolen bases, the most ever for that age. His record of 130 in a single season, set in 1982, has never been seriously challenged. Even with new rules to encourage base stealing, last year’s leader, Elly De La Cruz of Cincinnati, had only 67.
Besides Henderson, only one other modern player, Vince Coleman, has three 100-steal seasons. After Henderson passed Brock, Coleman, then with the Mets, mused about his own chances. He thought he could do it.
“He knows I’m going to chase his record just like I chase all the other records,” Coleman told the Courier-News (Bridgewater, NJ). “If I stay healthy, I’m going to average 80, 90, 100 steals a season.”
Coleman never reached the top 50 steals again. He finished behind Henderson hundreds of times, and yet had a distinguished career: his total, 752, is sixth of all time. Ultimately, Coleman missed the on-base component that eludes so many base stealers. Of the 20 players with 500 steals since 1930, more than half had a career OBP below .350.
Henderson’s was .401. Only one modern player with 500 stolen bases, Bonds, reached more bases at a higher rate. And while Bonds is by far the game’s greatest living player, Henderson was probably the greatest living Hall of Famer at the time of his death. The only others even in the conversation would have been Mike Schmidt or a pitcher like Johnson, Greg Maddux or Steve Carlton.
It’s shocking now to look at the career rankings in wins above replacement. The only living players above Schmidt, who is ranked 24th with Nap Lajoie, are Bonds, Roger Clemens and Alex Rodriguez, whose careers were affected by links to steroids. The extraordinary volume of powerful performance is so difficult to achieve.
Henderson did it. He hit from a crouch with a refined approach that would be useful in any era: He was a seven-time league leader in walks and also knocked down half a season’s worth of leadoff home runs with a record 81, plus one in the postseason.
That happened in Game 4 of the World Series in 1989, the year the A’s brought back Henderson from the Yankees in a midseason trade. October was his showcase: a .441/.568/.941 slash line with 11 steals in 12 attempts. The A’s lost just once on their way to a championship.
Henderson opened the clincher against San Francisco’s Don Robinson. He grabbed two balls. With a thunderous lineup behind him, he could have made the count. Instead, he swung hard at a fastball up the middle and hit it over the left field fence. The A’s never trailed in that World Series when they swept.
It was their last title representing Oakland, Henderson’s hometown. Ultimately, the team named the Coliseum field in his honor, though he never got his own statue — perhaps too much permanence for a franchise with a wandering eye.
Now the A’s are gone, heading to Las Vegas via Sacramento, and Henderson is gone too. Wednesday marks 66 years since he was born, on Christmas night 1958 in the backseat of an Oldsmobile on the way to a hospital in Chicago. He was a man on the move from the start.
Run away, run away, everyone run away.
(Top photo of Henderson after breaking the MLB single-season stolen bases record in 1982: Getty Images)