Rickey Henderson

Rickey Henderson was ours before he was anybody's. He was born Rickey Nelson Henley on Christmas Day, 1958, in Chicago, but his mother Bobbie brought the family west, first to her mother's farm in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and then to Oakland. She married Paul Henderson, who adopted her five boys, and that's how the greatest leadoff man who ever lived ended up with the name on the back of the jersey.

At Oakland Tech he played baseball, basketball and football, and football was his first love. He was an All American running back with two 1,000 yard seasons. Dave Henderson, who'd later share an outfield with him, remembered seeing high school Rickey take a sweep 80 yards and thinking nobody could tackle that. Rickey wanted football. His mother picked baseball. "I gave her the choice to make and she chose baseball," he said, and the whole East Bay owes Bobbie Henderson a thank you card.

The A's took him in the fourth round of the June 1976 draft. In 1977 at Modesto he hit .345, walked 104 times and stole 95 bases, and he gave the credit to his manager Tom Trebelhorn, who sat up with him watching film of Lou Brock and Ty Cobb and let him run whenever he thought he could make it. He reached Oakland on June 24, 1979, and went 2 for 4 with a double and a stolen base against Texas. The team lost 108 games that year. Rickey led them with 33 steals anyway.

Then Billy Martin showed up and the place came alive. Billy Ball was built for Rickey. In 1980 he stole 100 bases, breaking Ty Cobb's American League record of 96, hit .303, drew 117 walks and made his first All Star team. In the 1981 strike year he led the league in runs, hits and steals, won his only Gold Glove, and the A's won the West, beat Kansas City in the Division Series and got swept by the Yankees in the ALCS.

1982 is the year that'll never be touched. He stole 130 bases. Lou Brock's record had been 118. Number 119 came on August 27 in Milwaukee, when Rickey walked three times and stole four bases that night. He followed it with 108 steals in 1983 and 66 more in 1984 before the A's traded him to the Yankees that December in a deal that brought back Jose Rijo, Jay Howell, Eric Plunk, Tim Birtsas and Stan Javier.

He came home on June 21, 1989, in a trade for Plunk, Greg Cadaret and Luis Polonia, and the Bash Brothers suddenly had a guy on base in front of them every night. Oakland won the West by seven games. In the ALCS against Toronto he hit .400, homered twice, scored eight runs, walked seven times and stole eight bases, and he was the series MVP. Then in the Earthquake Series against the Giants he hit .474 with two triples and a homer as the A's swept.

1990 was his MVP year. He hit .325 with 28 home runs and led the league in runs (119), steals (65) and on base percentage (.439). On May 1, 1991, in front of 36,139 at the Coliseum with his mother in the stands and Brock there to watch, he stole third off the Yankees for number 939 and passed Brock for the career record.

The A's won the West again in 1992. On July 5, 1993, he led off both ends of a doubleheader against Cleveland with home runs. Later that month, with Oakland out of it, he was traded to Toronto and won a second ring. He came back for 1994 and 1995, left for San Diego, and then came back one more time in 1998, when at 39 he led the American League in steals (66) and walks (118). He played 14 of his 25 big league seasons in Oakland.

By the time he finished with the Dodgers in 2003 he'd played for nine teams and owned the records for steals (1,406), runs (2,295) and leadoff home runs (81). He had 3,055 hits, 297 home runs and 2,190 walks. He went into Cooperstown in 2009 on the first ballot with 94.8 percent of the vote, and the A's retired his number 24 that August 1.

The A's named the field at the Coliseum after him on April 3, 2017. He was there for the ceremonies during the team's final season in Oakland in 2024, and he died on December 20 of that year. He was 65.

Rickey's whole game was pressure. A leadoff walk from him was a double, and everybody in the building knew it, including the pitcher, who'd start throwing over and lose his focus on the hitter. When he said "I like to think that I'm a money player" after the 1989 ALCS, he'd just backed it up with eight steals and two home runs in one series.

The biggest stages were where he was best. In the 1989 postseason he hit .441 with a 1.509 OPS, three homers and 11 steals in nine games, and the A's won it all. In Game 4 at SkyDome he hit two home runs off Mike Flanagan and drove in four. In the clinching Game 4 of the World Series at Candlestick he led off the game with a home run and finished with three hits.

He also delivered under the kind of pressure most guys never face, the slow motion countdown of a record chase with the whole country watching. He was caught stealing in the first inning on May 1, 1991, against Matt Nokes and the Yankees. In the fourth he stole third anyway. That's Rickey. He didn't slow down when it mattered. He sped up.