Rickey Henderson, ‘greatest of all time,’ dies at 65

Rickey Henderson, the greatest leadoff hitter and base stealer in Major League Baseball history whose blazing speed, discerning eye and unusual home run power complemented an irrepressible swagger that led him from the sandlots of Oakland, California, to the Baseball Hall of Fame, died Friday. He was 65.

The Henderson family released a statement Saturday evening confirming the Hall of Famer’s death.

“A legend on and off the field, Rickey was a devoted son, dad, friend, grandfather, brother, uncle, and a truly humble soul,” the statement from his wife Pamela and his three daughters read. “Rickey lived his life with integrity, and his love for baseball was paramount. Now, Rickey is at peace with the Lord, cherishing the extraordinary moments and achievements he leaves behind.”

The family did not announce a cause of death but did thank the doctors and nurses at UCSF hospital, which they said cared for Henderson with “dedication and compassion.”

With a fearless, flamboyant style of play, which thrilled some players and fans thirsting for theatrical energy from a sport known for its staidness and irritated others who believed the iconoclastic approach to the game disrespected old traditions, Henderson broke boundaries alongside reams of records during a 25-year career spent with nine teams.

In a sport that relies on the historical consistency of its numbers, Henderson obliterated the record book, owning the all-time stolen-base record with 1,406, an astounding 468 more than the St. Louis Cardinals great Lou Brock, who held the record of 938 for a dozen years before Henderson surpassed him in 1991. Henderson holds the records for the most stolen bases in a single season with 130 in 1982, the most times leading the league in steals with 12 and most consecutive years leading the league in steals with seven. As a 39-year-old in 1998 with Oakland, Henderson became the oldest player in history to lead the American League in steals with 66.

Following his final season in 2003, Henderson finished with 3,055 hits and left the game holding the all-time marks in steals, runs scored (2,295) and walks (2,190), a record now held by Barry Bonds (2,558). He was named to 10 All-Star Games and finished his career with 111.1 Wins Above Replacement, third most of anyone in the past half-century, behind only Bonds and Alex Rodriguez, both of whom used performance-enhancing drugs.

Henderson was a first-ballot inductee to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2009, receiving votes from 94.8% of electors.

“I’ve been saying this for years: Rickey wasn’t just great. That doesn’t say enough for me,” Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson once said. “He’s one of the top 10 to 12 players of all time. That’s how good Rickey was.”

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred called Henderson “the gold standard of base stealing and leadoff hitting” in a statement Saturday.

“Rickey epitomized speed, power and entertainment in setting the tone at the top of the lineup. When we considered new rules for the game in recent years, we had the era of Rickey Henderson in mind,” Manfred said, referencing recent rule changes that have encouraged more stolen base attempts. “Rickey earned universal respect, admiration and awe from sports fans. On behalf of Major League Baseball, I send my deepest condolences to Rickey’s family, his friends and former teammates, A’s fans and baseball fans everywhere.”

Over his quarter century in the game, which included four separate stints with his hometown A’s, Henderson won World Series championships with Oakland in 1989 and Toronto in 1993. The American League MVP with Oakland in 1990, Henderson redefined the role of a leadoff hitter by injecting unprecedented offensive power to the traditional leadoff role of reaching base. He launched 297 home runs, including a major league-record 81 to lead off a game.

For all of the records, however, Henderson left perhaps his most indelible mark on the game with his boisterous on-field presence, celebrating home runs with a hop, a jersey tug and, when the mood struck, one of the slowest trots in the game. He claimed to channel boxing great Muhammad Ali through his play. When he stole his 939th base on May 1, 1991, to break Brock’s all-time record — nine years after he had smashed Brock’s single-season record — Henderson plucked the third-base bag out of the ground, held it high above his head and proclaimed, in an on-field celebration of the moment, “I am the greatest of all time.”

His snatch catch — ripping the ball out of the air before it landed into his glove and slapping his hip in one motion — made fielding look like sleight of hand, to the annoyance of baseball purists. He introduced the play on the final out of Mike Warren’s 1983 no-hitter for Oakland against the Chicago White Sox.

Henderson believed his style was preordained. Born in a Chicago snowstorm on Christmas Day 1958, Rickey Nelson Henley was named after the 1950s teen idol Ricky Nelson. According to family legend, his mother Bobbie went into labor before entering the hospital and nurses delivered the child from the car. When his father arrived frantic and late to the hospital, demanding to see his wife, nurses told him, “Calm down! The boy’s already in the back seat.” Over the years, Henderson would relay the story as proof of his destiny to be baseball’s greatest base stealer. “I was born fast,” he would say.

Rickey was the fourth of Bobbie’s five boys. When he was three, she left Chicago and moved the family to her mother’s farm in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. When he was 10, in 1969, Bobbie Earl joined the second Black migration, relocating the family from Pine Bluff to Oakland. In Oakland, Bobbie met Paul Henderson and had two girls.

Henderson attended Oakland Technical High School and immediately joined a dynastic legacy of Oakland talent that included baseball greats Joe Morgan, Curt Flood, Vada Pinson and Frank Robinson, as well as NBA greats Bill Russell and Paul Silas. Along with Dave Stewart, Lloyd Moseby, Gary Pettis and Rudy May, Henderson was part of a second generation of Oakland preps to play professional sports.

At Oakland Tech, when Henderson was beginning his senior year, he met Pamela Palmer, a freshman who kept statistics for the track and football teams. The two dated and would be together for the next 50 years, officially marrying in 1991. They would have two girls.

Henderson preferred football to baseball, but his mother steered him to baseball because she was convinced his body would not withstand the physical contact of the NCAA and NFL. Henderson was drafted in the fourth round by the A’s in the 1976 draft. Three years later, he made his major league debut for Oakland as a 20-year-old in June 1979, the bright spot on a team in the middle of a massive rebuild following Oakland’s World Series dynasty teams under former owner Charles O. Finley from 1971 to 1975.

His dynamism on full display from the beginning, Henderson truly arrived in his first full season in 1980, when Billy Martin was named manager. Unleashed by Martin, Henderson broke Ty Cobb’s 65-year-old American League stolen base record of 96 by swiping 100 bags in 126 tries. The next year, during the strike-shortened 1981 season, the A’s — nicknamed Billyball for Martin’s aggressive baserunning style — made the playoffs for the first time in six years but lost to the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series.

The A’s called Henderson “one of the greatest baseball players of all time” in a statement posted to social media Saturday.

With a propensity to refer to himself in the third person and to be at the center of often preposterous stories that bordered on the apocryphal, Henderson was one of the game’s great characters, in the mold of baseball greats Satchel Paige and Yogi Berra. Stories about Henderson were as legendary as his play, such as the true story of him once framing a million-dollar bonus check and hanging it on his wall — without first cashing it.

Henderson often sneered at baseball’s conventions and did what he wanted to do, which made him a legend to younger baseball fans and players. For the game’s establishment struggling through a tumultuous era of labor strife, however, Henderson represented a new generation of player in the new world of free agency and the millions of dollars now available to players. Unlike previous generations, Henderson was unafraid to demand the high salaries he believed his play merited.

“Beyond the statistics and the awards, Rickey captivated crowds with how he played the game, and it earned him a heartfelt following, especially in his beloved Oakland,” MLBPA executive director Tony Clark said in a statement. “He inspired future generations with his speed, aggressiveness, and trademark neon green batting gloves. Off the field, he never ceased to entertain with his colorful quotes and references to himself in the third person. He was an American original, in every sense of the term.”

After six years in Oakland highlighted by record-breaking seasons and several high-profile contract battles, Henderson was traded in December 1984 to the Yankees, where he brought his particular brand of showmanship to a team bereft of it following the departure of Reggie Jackson. Henderson was traded back to Oakland in 1989, leading a powerhouse A’s team to consecutive pennants in 1989 and 1990, including a World Series title in 1989, sweeping San Francisco in the Bay Bridge Series defined by the Loma Prieta earthquake that struck during Game 3 and delayed the series for 10 days. Henderson led the A’s to another playoff appearance in 1992, a six-game loss in the AL Championship Series to eventual champions Toronto.

“I traded Rickey Henderson twice and brought him back more times than that. He was the best player I ever saw play. … Nine different teams, one unforgettable player. Sandy gonna miss Rickey.”

Former A’s general manager Sandy Alderson

For all the flamboyance and hilarity, Henderson was one of the great players of any era. His best season came with the Yankees in 1985, when Henderson led the league with 146 runs and 80 stolen bases, hit .314/.419/.516 with 24 home runs and finished third in AL MVP voting. Henderson continued to produce, his on-base percentage still regularly hovering around .400, a hallowed threshold generally reserved for Hall of Famers. Henderson finished his career at .401.

When he returned to Oakland in 1989, his signature performance in the 1989 ALCS against the Blue Jays was one of the great devastations of an opponent in playoff history. In Henderson’s MVP season the next year, he tied a career high with 28 home runs, stole 65 bases and hit .325/.439/.577. In 1993, the A’s shipped him out again, sending the then-34-year-old to Toronto. He secured his second championship ring that October, standing on second base for one of the great moments in the game’s history, Joe Carter’s World Series-winning three-run home run off Philadelphia closer Mitch Williams.

For the final 10 seasons of his career, Henderson would crisscross baseball, returning to the A’s twice more, the San Diego Padres twice, the Anaheim Angels, New York Mets, Seattle Mariners, Boston Red Sox and finally, in 2003, the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Part of his aura emanated from his physical appearance. Once, in the 1980s with the Yankees, he won the team’s competition of lowest body fat, at 2.9%. Years later, at 40, Henderson looked the part of a man half his age. He never lifted weights. He would do push-ups and sit-ups nightly, flexing his pipes and flashing his abs to all who cared to see. In 1999, he batted .315 and got on base for the Mets more than 42% of the time. He played his last game at 44 years, 268 days old Sept. 19, 2003, for the Dodgers, and his stolen base total remains more than 1,000 ahead of the current active leader.

True to his reputation as an ageless showman, Henderson never officially retired from MLB — teams simply stopped calling. Pamela Henderson would say Rickey, even in his early 60s, believed he could still play if only another team would give him a chance.

“We would sit there over breakfast, and he would watch the TV,” she once said. “And he would see how much today’s players were making — and he would look at their stats and say, ‘I can do that.’”