When the musician Prince died in 2016 I remember hearing the following metaphor, that Prince was the Rickey Henderson of music.
Prince wasn’t necessarily the greatest musician of all time (even his fans could point to others), but in certain ways he might have been. His voice, his songwriting, his style, to say nothing of his guitar skills. Every aspect was unique and distinctly him. Just his aura, overall, was so different from his peers it put him in a class by himself. Greatest of all time? Maybe not, but he’s in the conversation, and no one would brush you off if he was your sleeper pick for such.
And that’s Rickey Henderson.
Rickey Henderson was the Prince of baseball.
Sure, Rickey wasn’t Babe Ruth or Willie Mays or Ted Williams. And it’s hard to compare him to those greats because he was so different. If you want to compare Babe Ruth to Ted Williams you can look at their stats. Compare Babe Ruth to Rickey Henderson? That’s like comparing an apple and a book of matches. One really has nothing to do with the other. They’re both useful, I suppose, but in wildly different circumstances.
When I was a kid I fell in love with baseball, the game and its stars. The year was 1989, and on June 21 of that year Rickey was traded from the team of my youth, the New York Yankees, to the best team in baseball, the Oakland A’s. Yeah, the A’s added Rickey Henderson in the middle of their pennant defense. That’s like Prince sitting in with The Beatles. Needless to say the A’s won the World Series that year, as Rickey hit .441 in the playoffs, stealing 11 bases in nine games. Even though he now played for a rival, I allowed myself to still like Rickey Henderson.
At the end of the 1989 season Rickey was about to turn 31 years old. He’d already been in the majors for more than a decade, and some thought his best days were behind him. Sure, he’d break the all-time stolen base record (he would in 1991), but maybe I’d missed peak Rickey.
In 1990 Rickey hit .325 and led all of MLB with a .439 on-base percentage. He also led all of MLB in OPS, OPS+, and WAR, but nobody cared about those things then. His old-school stats were obvious enough, and he won the MVP award over a guy who’d hit 51 home runs, most in the AL since 1961. Rickey just did Rickey things so much better than anyone else, even sexy stat lines of home runs and RBIs couldn’t compete.
Listen to “Purple Rain” and other radio pop songs just sound silly.
Did Rickey hang on too long as a player? Maybe. By the 2000s he certainly wasn’t the player he was in the ’80s. But he was in his 40s after all, still a positive contributor for the 2000 Mariners, for example, a team with A-Rod, Olerud, and Edgar Martinez.
Rickey finally hung it up after the 2003 season, swiping his final few bags with the Dodgers at the age of 44. From 2000 to 2003 Rickey stole 72 bases in 92 tries, his 78% success rate not bad for a guy having completed a quarter century in the league.
Was Rickey Henderson my favorite player of all time? Probably not. Prince isn’t my favorite musician either. But damn those guys were electric, and three days ago when Rickey died the outpouring of tributes made it quite evident he was more than just another old ballplayer.
Rest in peace, Rickey Henderson. I’m sorry the current generation of fans didn’t get to see you play, but damn did you light it up for several generations of fans in your prime.
We’ll keep it lit, for ya.