RIP Rickey Henderson

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It was the Indians in the “Major League” uniforms. If there had been a third game, they’d have given up another. (I think the franchise would like to go back to that design, given the similarities of the City Connect uniforms, but everyone is afraid they are still cursed.)
 
Hermes said:
It was the Indians in the “Major League” uniforms. If there had been a third game, they’d have given up another. (I think the franchise would like to go back to that design, given the similarities of the City Connect uniforms, but everyone is afraid they are still cursed.)
Click to expand...
That same team fell later that season to Jim Abbott's only no-hitter.
 
There have always been dumb voters who vote dumbly.

You'd think modern voters would start enshrining more 100 percenters.

Jay Dunn's ridiculous explanation aside, why would 27 others deny Rickey?

upload_2024-12-22_9-14-15.png


Want to memorialize this thread too.

JAY DUNN: Why I left Rickey Henderson off my Hall of Fame ballot

By JAY DUNN
Trentonian Baseball Columnist

POSTED: 07/23/09, 12:00 AM EDT |

The game on Oct. 19, 1999 was a dilly. The Mets were facing the Braves in Game 6 of the National League Championship Series. Atlanta had a 3-2 lead in the set and appeared to be on the verge of breaking open the champagne when it scored five first-inning runs.

But the Mets began showing signs of life when they scored three in the sixth inning. They put up four more in the seventh to tie the game 7-7, then took the lead when pinch- hitter Melvin Mora drove in a run in the top of the eighth.

The Mets' comeback was remarkable, but it was also exhausting. Manager Bobby Valentine had run through most of his bench and bullpen.

As I watched the game on television, I remember concluding that Valentine needed to make a double move in the bottom of the eighth and put his next pitcher in the leadoff spot. Valentine, obviously, thought so too, because that's what he did. He shuffled his outfielders, leaving Mora in the game and removing left fielder Rickey Henderson.

By then Henderson was 40 years old and in the twilight of a brilliant career. Even at his advanced age he had batted .315 and stolen 37 bases, but he had become a liability in the field.

The Mets manager, of course, wasn't interested in the past. He wanted to force a Game 7, and he was willing to do whatever he felt was necessary to accomplish that goal. That meant putting his best defensive team on the field and putting as many positions as possible in front of his pitcher in the batting order.

Both concerns required Mora, the rookie, to stay in the game and Henderson, the 10-time All-Star to come out.

Henderson didn't appreciate Valentine's managing. It was reported the next day that he stormed out of the dugout, taking an unnamed teammate with him. They both went into the clubhouse and began to play cards.

The Mets eventually lost the game in 11 innings, but my clearest memory of that day was the part that wasn't shown on television. The part that is still difficult for me to comprehend.

Here was a team fighting to get into the World Series. Yet two players on that team weren't interested enough to sit on the bench and root for their teammates. They weren't even willing to sit passively and share with them the emotions few ballplayers are ever lucky enough to share.

They went into the clubhouse and played cards.

Last December Henderson's name appeared on the Hall of Fame ballot for the first time. As always, the ballot came with a supplement that gave a brief synopsis of each candidate's career. Voters were reminded that Henderson had played in the major leagues for 25 years, producing 3,055 hits. He had scored more runs (2295) and stolen more bases (1406) than anyone else who ever played the game.

The synopsis didn't mention the card game. But I couldn't forget it.

As I filled in my ballot, I placed an X next to seven names. Henderson's wasn't one of them. An internal debate was raging inside my head.

The numbers next to Henderson's name told me he was indisputably a Hall of Fame player.

The card game told me he was indisputably a selfish me-first player.

The Hall of Fame is an individual honor reserved for only the greatest players, but baseball is a team game and great players are great assets to their team. A player who would pout over being removed from a game for strategic purposes is not a team player. A player who finds a card game more interesting than his teammates' bid to reach baseball's holy grail is not a team player.

The debate raged inside me. My thoughts bounced back and forth. I wasn't fully comfortable with either decision, but I had to pick one.

Finally I folded my ballot and put it in the mail with seven names checked. Not eight.

It was the 28th time I'd filled in a Hall of Fame ballot. It was the first time I had refused to vote for a player I thought would be elected. I knew most of the other voters had forgotten about the card game or didn't think it was a big deal.

I wasn't surprised in January when the announcement was made that Henderson had overwhelmingly been elected to the Hall of Fame. He had been named on all but 18 of the ballots.

I don't know who the other 17 were or whether the card game swayed any of them.

It swayed me.

I voted according to my conscience and make no apologies for doing so.
 
Exactly why I feel people who use character judgments to fill their Hall ballot should lose the privilege.
 
When Joe Morgan died and Willie Mays died and Hank Aaron died...those were my dad's guys. The players that made baseball for him. They, along with Jackie Robinson, introduced him to the sport and were the reasons that he eventually came to love it. As they each died, my dad's favorite memories of them died as well.

Rickey Henderson was MY guy. That was the first guy I watched and was mesmerized by. My sister would always take me to a Yankees game when the A's were in town and I remember the buzz every time he got on base. You knew what was coming. You knew they weren't going to stop him.

As much as I couldn't stand the Yankees, I was so excited I could finally watch Rickey every day on WPIX, And when Doc Gooden and Rickey led off the 1988 All-Star Game, every kid in my neighborhood was watching. Gooden walked him, of course he did. But Rickey was always Oakland to me and watching him dominate the 1989 World Series solidified that. I guess it makes sense that Rickey wouldn't want to be part of a baseball world that didn't include Oakland.

This sucks.
 
A story from 2012 when Rickey came to teach the kids in Vermont.

Stealing time with Rickey Stolen base legend Henderson in Burlington to work with Oakland farm club

“I know the game of baseball so now I’m going to give something back to the young kids, showing them the ropes like so many of the veterans showed me,” Henderson said Wednesday to a cluster of media at Centennial Field. “Those players showed me stuff when I got to the big leagues and it’s something that I can share with them, a way to give something back.”​
 
Songbird said:
There have always been dumb voters who vote dumbly.

You'd think modern voters would start enshrining more 100 percenters.

Jay Dunn's ridiculous explanation aside, why would 27 others deny Rickey?

View attachment 18812

Want to memorialize this thread too.

JAY DUNN: Why I left Rickey Henderson off my Hall of Fame ballot

By JAY DUNN
Trentonian Baseball Columnist

POSTED: 07/23/09, 12:00 AM EDT |

The game on Oct. 19, 1999 was a dilly. The Mets were facing the Braves in Game 6 of the National League Championship Series. Atlanta had a 3-2 lead in the set and appeared to be on the verge of breaking open the champagne when it scored five first-inning runs.

But the Mets began showing signs of life when they scored three in the sixth inning. They put up four more in the seventh to tie the game 7-7, then took the lead when pinch- hitter Melvin Mora drove in a run in the top of the eighth.

The Mets' comeback was remarkable, but it was also exhausting. Manager Bobby Valentine had run through most of his bench and bullpen.

As I watched the game on television, I remember concluding that Valentine needed to make a double move in the bottom of the eighth and put his next pitcher in the leadoff spot. Valentine, obviously, thought so too, because that's what he did. He shuffled his outfielders, leaving Mora in the game and removing left fielder Rickey Henderson.

By then Henderson was 40 years old and in the twilight of a brilliant career. Even at his advanced age he had batted .315 and stolen 37 bases, but he had become a liability in the field.

The Mets manager, of course, wasn't interested in the past. He wanted to force a Game 7, and he was willing to do whatever he felt was necessary to accomplish that goal. That meant putting his best defensive team on the field and putting as many positions as possible in front of his pitcher in the batting order.

Both concerns required Mora, the rookie, to stay in the game and Henderson, the 10-time All-Star to come out.

Henderson didn't appreciate Valentine's managing. It was reported the next day that he stormed out of the dugout, taking an unnamed teammate with him. They both went into the clubhouse and began to play cards.

The Mets eventually lost the game in 11 innings, but my clearest memory of that day was the part that wasn't shown on television. The part that is still difficult for me to comprehend.

Here was a team fighting to get into the World Series. Yet two players on that team weren't interested enough to sit on the bench and root for their teammates. They weren't even willing to sit passively and share with them the emotions few ballplayers are ever lucky enough to share.

They went into the clubhouse and played cards.

Last December Henderson's name appeared on the Hall of Fame ballot for the first time. As always, the ballot came with a supplement that gave a brief synopsis of each candidate's career. Voters were reminded that Henderson had played in the major leagues for 25 years, producing 3,055 hits. He had scored more runs (2295) and stolen more bases (1406) than anyone else who ever played the game.

The synopsis didn't mention the card game. But I couldn't forget it.

As I filled in my ballot, I placed an X next to seven names. Henderson's wasn't one of them. An internal debate was raging inside my head.

The numbers next to Henderson's name told me he was indisputably a Hall of Fame player.

The card game told me he was indisputably a selfish me-first player.

The Hall of Fame is an individual honor reserved for only the greatest players, but baseball is a team game and great players are great assets to their team. A player who would pout over being removed from a game for strategic purposes is not a team player. A player who finds a card game more interesting than his teammates' bid to reach baseball's holy grail is not a team player.

The debate raged inside me. My thoughts bounced back and forth. I wasn't fully comfortable with either decision, but I had to pick one.

Finally I folded my ballot and put it in the mail with seven names checked. Not eight.

It was the 28th time I'd filled in a Hall of Fame ballot. It was the first time I had refused to vote for a player I thought would be elected. I knew most of the other voters had forgotten about the card game or didn't think it was a big deal.

I wasn't surprised in January when the announcement was made that Henderson had overwhelmingly been elected to the Hall of Fame. He had been named on all but 18 of the ballots.

I don't know who the other 17 were or whether the card game swayed any of them.

It swayed me.

I voted according to my conscience and make no apologies for doing so.
Click to expand...

This is of course nuts, but I'm not surprised Henderson missed unanimous election by 28 votes. He could be a handful to deal with (though rarely in a malicious way) and he spent the last 15 years of his career bouncing around, so the casual voter/fan might correlate him more with his quirkiness and/or his very good journeyman phase than his supersonic peak. There were 535 voters in the 2009 election, so the odds of stumbling into some silly ballots were much higher. Not sure he'd be unanimous today, but with the electorate down to 385 as of last year, he'd be a whole lot closer.
 
HappyCurmudgeon said:
When Joe Morgan died and Willie Mays died and Hank Aaron died...those were my dad's guys. The players that made baseball for him. They, along with Jackie Robinson, introduced him to the sport and were the reasons that he eventually came to love it. As they each died, my dad's favorite memories of them died as well.

Rickey Henderson was MY guy. That was the first guy I watched and was mesmerized by. My sister would always take me to a Yankees game when the A's were in town and I remember the buzz every time he got on base. You knew what was coming. You knew they weren't going to stop him.

As much as I couldn't stand the Yankees, I was so excited I could finally watch Rickey every day on WPIX, And when Doc Gooden and Rickey led off the 1988 All-Star Game, every kid in my neighborhood was watching. Gooden walked him, of course he did. But Rickey was always Oakland to me and watching him dominate the 1989 World Series solidified that. I guess it makes sense that Rickey wouldn't want to be part of a baseball world that didn't include Oakland.

This sucks.
Click to expand...

I feel the same way in what I’m sure soon to come is Sandberg’s death, now that the cancer is back.
 
Starman said:
Yeah, Ty Cobb -- who in retrospect was really not that great a leadoff hitter (didn't draw many walks, his SB percentage fell way off after his several huge years in his prime) -- will have to shove over for Rickey.
Click to expand...

I know this was tongue in cheek, but Cobb only started 29 games as a leadoff hitter in his career. He was in the three hole for an amazing 1,782 games (with a career .380/.452/.536 slash line without the benefit of over-the-fence home runs) and batted cleanup 832 more (during a time in his career when Sam Crawford batted third).

Of course, the dead ball era also meant everybody took an extra base when they could. Cobb just did it better than everyone else.

He was 6-1 at a time when the average man was perhaps 5-6, so Cobb was more Barry Bonds than Rickey Henderson. And at least as surly, although he probably didn't use either the clear or the cream.

Cobb also played right field until Crawford retired, leading the league in outfield putouts and assists in 1907, 1908 and 1909.
 
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three_bags_full said:
I feel the same way in what I’m sure soon to come is Sandberg’s death, now that the cancer is back.
Click to expand...

Struck me last night that it's been a really rough year for Gen X HOFers. Sandberg's cancer returns, Wade Boggs battles prostate cancer and we lose Rickey. (You could count Pete Rose in this group, but I view him as more of a '70s guy) Sucks.
 
My first MLB game was when I was 6 or 7. We lived in VA and dad took me to see Orioles/A's at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. It was around the time Rickey broke the single-season SB record. He swiped two bags that day and I still remember it. Hell, I remember the inevitability of the crowd knowing he was gonna go. That's how big he was.

I mean, I was 6 or whatever. And even I knew he was going.

My first MLB-in-person memory. What a damn fine one.
 
The closest comparison for me, at the time, in terms of excitement was...maybe Vince Coleman? But Vince didn't have the plate patience to get on base like Rickey did and didn't have anything close to the power. Coleman was amazing to watch turn singles into doubles and doubles into triples.
 
Coleman was more in the mold of 60s leadoff guys like Wills and Brock: a lot of stolen bases, BA up around .300, but not really a lot of runs scored because they didn't draw many walks.
 
Vince is the parallel universe Rickey. As noted, he had exactly one tool, and once it wasn't a game-changer, he was done as a useful player. And you could argue he didn't maximize his one tool. Going from the turf at Busch to Shea Stadium was a career-ruining move. While he battled injuries and general misery in New York, he went from averaging 92 steals a year to 33 steals a year. If he had three near-peak years--let's say 72 steals a year instead of 92 steals a year--he's got a real chance at making a run at Lou Brock for second place. Even in his early 30s, he stole 40+ bases for the Royals and Mariners once he was back on the turf for home games.

Plus, Rickey could be mercurial but he wasn't a bad guy or an idiot. He didn't chuck firecrackers into crowds. He knew how to spell six (per the great book "The Worst Team Money Could Buy," Coleman was playing craps with teammates and yelled he needed a six--"C-I-X!"). He didn't get run over by a ******* tarp.
 
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