RIP Rickey Henderson, a singular man, and a player who shattered time

Rickey Henderson said it more than 33 years ago and it is still the best, most emotionally satisfying summation of a moment — and a man — in baseball history.

“Lou Brock was a great base stealer,” he said. “But today, I am the greatest of all time!”

Damn right, Rickey. He was always right.

Back then, he meant that he was the greatest base-stealer ever, which he surely was. Henderson then went on to steal 467 more bases after the 1991 day at the Coliseum when he broke Brock’s all-time record. But those words resonated because of the truer, deeper implications.

Henderson was great in some immeasurable way, beyond statistics and speeches. Many of his A’s and Yankees teams were great, but Henderson, in retrospect, seems greater. He was great in categories we can’t and don’t need to count. He was the greatest and didn’t need to say it. Then he said it for the historical record while he was rewriting it. That is greatness.

With news circulating Saturday of Henderson’s death, just days before he would’ve turned 66 on Christmas Day, I think almost every sports fan feels it — that smile, those raised arms, that kind of legend. When Henderson arrived, the show was about to start. Rickey was good enough to break an all-time record at 32 years old — and then to go out and lap everybody.

Folks, his stolen base record is not going to be broken — ever. The active player with the highest current career total is Starling Marte, who has 354 stolen bases, which is 114 fewer than Henderson’s lead for first. Henderson stole 427 in his first five seasons — including his record-setting 130 in 1982 — when he was a young player bursting on the scene, not so long after he graduated from Oakland Tech.

But there is so much more to Henderson’s legacy than all those stolen bags. Let’s go to another counting stat before I get to other facets.

There’s nothing more important in baseball than scoring runs, right? Henderson also is the all-time leader in runs (at 2,295), edging past Ty Cobb in 2001, when Henderson was in his 40s. Here’s the all-time top five in this category: Henderson, Cobb, Barry Bonds, Henry Aaron, Babe Ruth. Now that’s an immortal list.

But again, the Henderson mystique was always about more than lists and stats. Henderson, who was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2009, his first eligible year, levitated to levels not accessible by others. The joy of watching him snap-catch a fly ball, listen to him speak about himself in the third person, or witness him swagger through a home-run trot was that you could see that Henderson knew he was the man. You could also tell that every other player on the field knew it, too.

Was Rickey the greatest player ever? I think he wasn’t at the very top, but close enough to make sure that there’s a conversation about it. Certainly, he’s the greatest leadoff hitter ever, and one of the greatest outfielders, only behind Ruth, Bonds, Aaron, and Ted Williams, and probably right there with, if not ahead of, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Ken Griffey, Jr., and Mike Trout. (Henderson’s career 111.1 bWAR is 19th overall and 15th among position players.)

But I’m putting Henderson at the top of my own made-up category: He’s the greatest player who would’ve dominated in any era, who fit all styles, and who loved to go toe-to-toe with every single great character of this sport. He’s the player I most would’ve wanted to see playing in 2024 — or in 1924.

Many of the greats feel thoroughly of their time — they define that time. It’s hard to imagine Cobb in any other period. Aaron and Mays are the symbols of baseball’s greatest generation. Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Henderson’s old teammates, Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire, are the faces of the steroid era. They all probably would’ve had great moments in any other time, but probably not as many.

I always felt that Henderson, for the 25 years that he played in the Majors, and in the decades after that, was something different. I think his combination of skills, his overflowing confidence, and his love of the game would’ve made him a superstar in any era, going up against anybody, doing whatever he needed to do to take over games.

I think, if he was born back then and been allowed to play, he would’ve kicked Cobb’s butt at Cobb’s own game in the Dead Ball era. I think Henderson had the versatility to have been comparable to DiMaggio in a later era. I think he would’ve been another legend alongside Mays, Aaron, and Mantle in their time. Henderson obviously wasn’t obscured by the shining stars of his own day, from Cal Ripken Jr. to Don Mattingly to Griffey.

Do you think Henderson would’ve been praised a bit in our age of analytics? He had a career on-base percentage of .401 with 297 career home runs and was a very good defensive left-fielder — all over two consistent decades. And oh yes, he racked up all those stolen bases at an 80.7% success rate. Yes, those stats work for the numbers guys. He would’ve been paid a billion dollars whenever he wanted to sign up.

Think Rickey’s charisma and derring-do on the basepaths would’ve worked in the social media age? He was ahead of his time in the 1980s and he would’ve been a purely modern player right now and into the future.

But I don’t think Henderson actively tried to embody any of this. It was just impossible to deny, even for him. It wasn’t an accident that, in the same 90-second, “I am the greatest” speech, Henderson not only echoed Muhammad Ali, he also thanked Martin, his first MLB manager, who had died 17 months earlier.

Martin was a good friend and teammate of Mantle’s and also was a famous member of multiple Yankees championship eras. And there, connected to it all, was Henderson, who was not just one of the greatest of his time; he was one of the greatest of every time.