A Candle for Rickey | Baseball Prospectus

I discovered a lot from watching Rickey Henderson. I discovered important truths about baseball, in regards to the sang-froid that permits for informal greatness, about my very own father and his susceptibility to surface-level propaganda. I discovered to observe my pen. A author with out a pen is sort of a hitter with out a bat, and Rickey had taken mine.

My solely private interplay with Henderson—and it was barely that—got here one gray morning when the Yankees’ Previous Timers Day festivities had been delayed by rain. The baseball grampas had retired to the auxiliary clubhouse (actually the unique locker room, the pre-renovation den of Ruth and Gehrig) and have been simply killing time, typically in dialog with me. I wished to talk with Henderson—Rickey—not as a result of there was a particular matter I used to be pursuing, however as a result of I had by no means earlier than had the possibility to have interaction with the participant who had dominated the baseball of my New York-area youth, and I wasn’t going to move up the possibility. The issue was that Rickey wasn’t all that , so I stood subsequent to him with my recorder, pad, and pen on the prepared, and like Christopher Reeve enjoying Clark Kent, shuffled my toes and stuttered in his common path, ineffectually attempting to get his consideration.

What Rickey actually wished to do was play hearts. He knelt on the ground and (if I recall appropriately) Ken Griffey père and Jesse Barfield joined him as he shuffled playing cards. As Rickey started to deal, Griffey reminded him that they’d no approach to hold rating. The best leadoff man of all time appeared up, noticed me, noticed my pen and pad, and prolonged his hand. Reflexively—who was I to say no to a God of the Sport?—I handed over each. He tore a bit of paper and handed again the pad. He stored the pen.

I watched as Rickey wrote out the names of the gamers on the web page. Did I politely wait out a recreation of hearts, or hand over? Then an incredible factor occurred: I witnessed the Rickeyness of Rickey. Somebody walked previous—I by no means noticed who—and shouted, “Hey, Rickey!” Whoever it was will need to have mattered to him, as a result of he smiled and answered in form. In some way the momentary distraction fully derailed his prepare of thought. It appeared to me that for a second he had no concept what he had been doing simply seconds earlier. He appeared on the pen in his hand as if he had no comprehension of the way it had gotten there. He appeared down on the piece of paper with a equally bemused expression. He appeared up at me, ready. He drew a logical conclusion: He autographed the web page and handed it to me.

I hesitated for an important second. Though I had seen different writers ask gamers to signal issues, I understood that this was thought-about a spectacularly unprofessional factor to do, an act that will get your press move revoked in case you have been noticed. The web page hovered between us for an extended second, quivering within the air. My resolve to not take it weakened; I unclenched my hand and—however no, for in that second, Rickey remembered. Shaking his head like he was clearing an Etch-a-Sketch, he withdrew his hand, flipped the web page over to the clean facet, and rewrote the names of the gamers. I watched, bereft of each pen and Corridor of Fame signature, as the sport of hearts started. I by no means did get both of them again.

***

Should you adopted Rickey’s profession in actual time, then you definately’re in all probability conversant in the type of story I simply informed. Protection tended to be break up between acknowledgements of his greatness and jokes about his eccentric, seemingly airheaded tendencies. What was not often thought-about, if in any respect, was that one was predicated on the opposite. Rickey’s character and his multifarious areas of excellence between the foul strains went hand in hand. You could possibly no extra divorce his expertise from his character and anticipate him to have been the identical participant than you can subtract Ty Cobb’s depth and retain the 12 batting titles, or extract Babe Ruth’s joie de vivre and hold the 12 home-run crowns. This was a participant who participated in additional major-league ballgames than anybody in historical past aside from Pete Rose, Carl Yastrzemski, and Henry Aaron, and in contrast to Rose he didn’t have the privilege of placing himself within the lineup. He merely took himself from group to group, a brand new one nearly yearly from the mid-Nineties on, not an All-Star or an MVP candidate however nonetheless retaining sufficient of his previous abilities to be playable into his forties. Have bat, will journey—the stress may eat you alive in case you let it. He didn’t, and if any of it ever bought to him he didn’t let it present.

Rickey was not above self-aggrandizement—he wasn’t precisely humble on the day he broke Lou Brock’s profession stolen-base document, and he in all probability shouldn’t have been—however in an age wherein some in public life are continuously reminding us of how nice they’re, the concept that one may simply play the sport at a excessive stage with out indulging in any performative nonsense about how they have been slogging their means via a grinding, joyless struggle is retroactively refreshing. Moreover, Rickey didn’t slog and he didn’t trudge. He burst. He nearly definitely wasn’t the quickest participant within the recreation based mostly on uncooked working pace, however nobody was ever quicker on their first step out of their lead. Even the perfect baserunners must financial institution up a head of steam earlier than reaching their most. Rickey bought there immediately. That was the 1,406-stolen base distinction.

“Retroactively” is vital, as a result of on the time, significantly within the Yankees years however often at different instances as nicely, Rickey acquired a substantial amount of grief for not eager to play—as a result of his hamstrings have been sore, or he had a headache, or he wasn’t mentally ready. I don’t know (and don’t care) if Lou Piniella was a Corridor of Fame supervisor or not, but when his therapy of Henderson in 1987 is maintaining him out of Cooperstown that will be a simply reward. In 1987 the new new baseball time period, courtesy of Piniella and George Steinbrenner, was “jaking it,” faking an damage.

“I wish to play,” Henderson mentioned, “however my leg doesn’t let me play.” That ought to have been it—nobody ever questioned Don Mattingly’s again the best way they questioned Henderson’s hamstrings—however the papers and the discuss radio hosts turned in opposition to him. The temptation is to see the distinction when it comes to complexion, a type of reflexive information of American life that some commentators have been in all probability acutely aware of and a few weren’t, nevertheless it acted upon their perceptions however.

The mid-Eighties have been uncertain financial instances. My father, immigrant striver, well-compensated when he labored however struggling to remain afloat in an unstable discipline as center age and altering know-how put him on the sting of obsolescence, absorbed a few of that hostility. He didn’t comply with the sport carefully however he absorbed the anti-Rickey commentary as a result of it was unavoidable. He would stumble upon me watching that day’s Yankees recreation, see Rickey plainly having fun with himself, and suppose he was getting away with one thing. He would ask me why this jerk who clearly didn’t care about his occupation was making $1.5 or $2 million a yr—roughly $1.5 or $2 million a yr greater than he was making—when he labored so onerous.

I at all times tried to elucidate. I informed my father how good Rickey was. At different instances I pulled again the digicam and mentioned that ballplayers are like film stars, and if 50,000 individuals a day purchased tickets to observe my dad work then he could be compensated at the next stage too. He would appear to get it—after which Rickey would snigger within the dugout, stick out his tongue for no specific motive, make a snatch-catch, or spend half an inning arguing with the followers within the left-field stands—after which my father would begin the argument yet again.

That was a quirk of my father’s character; he tended to not lose arguments as a result of even when he appeared to lose a degree he would press some type of psychological reset button and make you argue it yet again. This spring, practically 40 years later, as my father was dying, I attempted to resolve this argument. Rickey meant rather a lot to me as a baseball fan, however I don’t suppose he mattered to me a lot that I took the battle up once more as a result of I wanted my father to validate my opinion—I do know I used to be proper. It was, I believe, extra about the necessity to discover yet one more patch of widespread floor earlier than we parted ceaselessly. I informed him the now-famous Mike Piazza story about Rickey’s generosity with postseason shares—“Full share! Fuck that! You may change someone’s life!”—and ask him if that modified his opinion. He couldn’t say; his sickness had so degraded his reminiscence that he not remembered who Rickey was, or—extra painfully for me—our many, many conversations about him.

***

Some moments of grace stay ceaselessly past us, however it’s pleasing to consider every part that Rickey did after 1987 as his revenge, his rejoinder to Piniella and the New York media. An overdue MVP award got here after that, an entire e-book filled with information, Corridor of Fame enshrinement, and 1,899 extra video games—greater than Piniella performed in his whole profession. (Candy Lou lastly discovered to understand Rickey greater than a decade later, when he arrived at midseason to shore up an ALCS-bound 2000 Mariners membership. After Rickey left, Piniella found what a real head case appeared like, in new starter Al Martin.) Didn’t wish to play? He wished to play so damned badly that he caught round till he was 44 after which went to the impartial Newark Bears and the San Diego Surf Dawgs. His dedication wasn’t reluctant, it was chic.

I discovered a lot extra from Rickey, together with the contextual nature of the RBI (Don Mattingly in 1985 and 1986: Roughly the identical participant. Rickey had an off-year within the latter season and Donnie Baseball dropped 32 RBI; how will we account for this?) and a batting stance I futilely tried to mimic in neighborhood ballgames (it’s not simply crouching so that you’ve got a strike-zone, as Invoice James mentioned, the dimensions of a cigarette packet; you additionally should have lots of capability). I miss him as a participant so very badly, not within the regular means, as a result of I additionally miss my youth, however as a result of there isn’t any one else like him. There have been different nice gamers, however given his distinctive qualities nobody has been nice in the identical means.

I miss the duck below a excessive pitch that will have been on the letters for anybody else, the sudden explosion of the bat from a place seemingly too compactly coiled to provide a leadoff house run, but so typically did. I miss my father. I miss my pen. This shedding and lacking is within the nature of issues till such time as it’s one’s flip to hitch the misplaced and the missed. Understanding that doesn’t make it any simpler to bear. Have been the universe simply, time would by no means have caught Rickey stealing. It’s onerous to think about that he would have acknowledged that it had any energy over him in any respect. That ultimately it did shouldn’t be a shock, however so stark a reminder of inevitable destiny is nearly an excessive amount of to bear.