I wasn’t planning on writing about baseball in the middle of December. Nor finishing the year with a downer about somebody who I never met dying.
But Rickey Henderson has always been about disrupting gameplans.
I was saddened last weekend when news started trickling out that the all-time stolen-base leader was had gone off to play in the Field of Dreams. It took a while for it to hit official sources. Somebody sent me something from TMZ, but nothing was on CNN or ABC News. And MLB.com was awash in the Yankees signing Paul Goldschmidt. An important move, I’m sure, but I didn’t think it would trump a Hall of Famer dying.
Unfortunately, before long, everybody was confirming it.
Old baseball players die. Heck, there was another baseball icon that died a few months ago that had everyone gushing over “playing the game the right way.”
The only difference is Rickey never disgraced himself by belittling the sanctity of the game.
Truthfully, I wasn’t much of a Rickey fan for most of his career. Part of that might be because I grew up an Angels fan and he was indicative of everything that was frustrating about those dominant, arrogant A’s teams of the late 1980s.
I mocked him often, as a guy who didn’t realize how dumb he was. He had one talent, being fast, without an ounce of reflection on any shortcomings or the basics of the game that made him a millionaire. He was a Jose Canseco without pop.
Although not even Canseco had the audacity to scream out “Today, I am the greatest of all time.” Except maybe when he was banging Madonna.
I remember one particular play that, to me, defined Rickey. Tie game, runner on third, less than two outs. The batter hit a towering foul ball. Rickey camped out under it. The runner on third tagged up, ready to dart home on a sacrifice fly. Tony La Russa was shouting from the dugout for Rickey to let the ball drop. Guessing the third baseman and centerfielder, and maybe half the stadium (this was back when fans attended A’s games), were yelling for him to let the ball drop foul, because if he caught it, the go-ahead run would score.
He caught it. The team lost. In the press conference after the game, Rickey said his job is to catch the ball, so he caught the ball.
As time went on, as Rickey got older and became an elder statesman, and maybe partly because I moved to Northern California and started watching more A’s games, my opinions of him shifted. I still think he might’ve been dumber than dirt. But I also think he was in on the joke.
Some of the things I thought he was lucky for, or maybe just an idiot savant, actually turned out to be talent. I wasm’t the only person at the time who thought getting walks was more a matter of luck than skill. If it was common knowledge, they wouldn’t have had to write a book about it.
And Rickey’s stolen bases, especially as he got older, had less to do with speed, but n knowing when to run. In an interview, he claimed the elbow on the pitcher’s throwing arm was the tell he looked for. That’s some pretty deep knowledge for a pretty dumb guy.
Then, of course, there’s the “Rickey being Rickey” stories, many of which have been confirmed by multiple players. The fact that when he got his first million dollar bonus, he hung the check on his wall instead of cashing it, which led the A’s to have accounting issues all year. Something they still seem to be suffering from today.
When he played with John Olerud, who wore a helmet while playing first base, in San Diego, Rickey told him about some other guy he used to play with in Toronto who also wore a helmet. “Yeah, Rickey,” Olerud said. “That was me.”
And of course, his propensity to refer to himself in the third person. “Man, Rickey can’t do nothing without breaking a damn cleat.” That gem comes by way of Tony Gwynn, another baseball hero gone too soon. Sometimes i forget he’s dead, and I turn on a Padres game and hear his son, who sounds just like him, doing color commentary and i think “Oh cool, Tony Gwynn” before remembering, once again, that he died.
You know which recently-deceased baseball player I don’t give a shit about? Pete Rose.
Ironically, if I were to assess them during their actual careers, I would have had a much higher opinion of the all-time hit king than the all-time steal king.
I’ve already gone through my opinions of Rickey, and in many ways, Pete was the anti-Rickey. All grit, no flash. A workman instead of a showboat. And even better for kids my age, he was the host of “The Baseball Bunch,” a Saturday morning show that alternated between explaining the game, showing some highlights, and letting the famous San Diego Chicken run roughshod over a bunch of little leaeguers.
Rickey never could’ve done The Baseball Bunch, because I’m not sure he could’ve read and memorized a script. Not even sure he could’ve explained all those nuances of the game he’d picked up through experience, like the pitcher’s elbow and when not to catch a foul ball. There are players who are great at explaining their process, like Greg Maddux, and there are guys who thrive through instinct. It’s why Bill Parcells, not Johnny Unitas, goes on to become a coach.
Plus, if Rickey had hosted a kid’s show, the entire thirty minutes would’ve been bleeped out.
But “The Baseball Bunch” was scripted. And Pete Rose wasn’t actually that calm and collected. He played every single game like he needed to prove the world wrong.
Rhe defining moment of Pete Rose’s career was when he rounded third in the All-Star Game and, instead of sliding, barreled into the catcher, Ray Fosse, to dislodge the ball. Rose scored the run, his team… well, I don’t know if his team won or lost because it was a meaningless exhibition game. But I do know that Ray Fosse dislocated his shoulder and suffered fromongoing back pain that probably shortened his career as a result of the collision.
Who the hell ends another man’s career to win a meaningless game? Maybe he had money on it.
I can’t tell you how many obituaries I read saying Pete Rose played the game the right way. Like a hard-ass. As if the Yogi Berras of the world don’t want to win?
Interesting side note: Yogi Berra won a whole hell of a lot more than Pete Rose did. Pete did win one more than Rickey, but there’s a Kirk Gibson sized asterisk attached to that. And I don’t know how much Pete Rose did for that Phillies team. Three of his for seasons there, he was statistically worse than a replacement player.
That’s what people loved about him. Even though he didn’t have a ton of talent, he still stuck around. Who cares if he fored his teammates to work around his terrible baserunning because he always hit singles!
His fans call that grit. He was just hyper- competitive, you see. He had nothing else in his life except hitting singles!
Oh, and maybe the gambling.
And again, i also loved that about him when he was playing. But I was also under the age of ten. You know what I realize is manly now? Realizing when you’ve lost a step. Not making those around you take a back seat to your ego.
I’m in the wind-down of my career. i sure as hell don’t make others teach the way I used to. Scantrons all around!
Sometimes it’s good to let those with a little less experience take the lead for a bit. You might learn some new skills like interactive timelines or media analysis. Or scoring from second on a single.
In his later years, Rickey took diminished roles on teams. Hell, he played for unaffiliated minor league teams in his late 40s because he loved the game so much. Or, more likely, because he didn’t know what else to do with his life. Maybe he should’ve taken up gambling.
He then became a “roving minor league instructor” for the A’s, which basically meant he going to their minor league teams as a motivator or a fun ambassador. We used to love him coming to Sacramento when they were an A’s affiliate. Here was a fifty-something Hall of Famer playing first base coach for some twenty year-olds.
I know, I know. Pete Rose also stuck around the game. He managed. Until he got banned for betting on the games he managed.
Pete’s defenders say he never bet against his team. And that’s true. He only bet them to win.
But!
He didn’t bet on his team to win every game.
The most damning thing is that he managed the game differently in games where he did or did not bet on his team. So if he had a one-run lead late in a game he hadn’t bet on, he might leave his best pitchers in the bullpen, saving their arms for tomorrow, when he might make a bet. And I’m sure his bookies never took advantage of knowing which games the manager wanted to win and which games the manager was fine losing.
A lot of people who agree that the gambling was bad say it shouldn’t keep him out of the Hall of Fame. The Hall is based on what you do as a player, not a manager. And while there’s no official investigation into whether he gambled while a player, some basic understanding of addiction and human nature says he didn’t wake up one day in 1985 and think, “Hey, you know what I just realized? I have a lot of inside knowledge of baseball!”
The other argument to put him in the Hall is that it’s not the Hall of Nice People. It’s got racists and wife beaters. Even Ray Schalk! What you do on the field is the only thing that matters.
Why does what happens on the field matter? Because fans watch the game. Why to fans watch? Because we believe it’s not fixed. Shitty people make it in the Hall of Fame because they don’t turn the game into a mockery. If we start to think the game isn’t real, we’ll stop paying for twenty-dollar beers. The one thing you can never do in any of the legitimate sports is bet on that sport.
Otherwise it becomes wrestling. Wrestling is fun. Wrestling has its own Hall of Fame. Guess who’s in it? Not Rickey.
I’m sure Pete Rose loved baseball. I’m sure being kicked out of baseball ruined him. I’m also sure that he thought he was bigger than the game and could do whatever the hell he wants.
Pete Rose also came to Sacramento. Before we got an official minor league team, we had an unaffiliated team. To give you an idea of how competitive they were, they played their games at a junior college that didn’t serve beer. Pete Rose was there only as a publicity stunt. For him and the team. He used most of the attention not to talk about the kids he was managing, but to complain about the fate of poor wittle Petey Wose.
Now that Sacramento has grown from unaffiliated to triple-A to, allegedly temporarily, the majors with the A’s coming to town, I was looking forward to Rickey being a staple at the stadium. Some of the others known for showing up at A’s games from time to time, like Eric Byrnes and Dennis Eckersley, aren’t as likely to show up at a minor league park seventy miles away from their former fan base. But Rickey would’ve loved it. If he was happy to be here with minor leaguers, the A’s being here would’ve sweetened the deal even more.
Unfortunately, that ain’t happening now.
What I hope is happening is Tony Gwynn and Rickey Henderson reuniting to corner the outfield of the Field of Dreams. Along with other players like Roberto Clemente and Jackie Robinson, both taken too young.
As an Angel fan, I imagine Nick Adenhart as a pitching equivalent of Moonlight Graham. He pitched a gem to start out what was supposed to be his rookie year, but was killed by a drunken driver before the sun rose the following morning.
Willie Mays probably anchors centerfield. Not saying he died young, but he loved baseball till the day he died, which is the only requirement to get in.
I just hope when Pete Rose asks to be let him, they give him the old Ty Cobb treatment.
“None of us could stand the son-of-a-bitch when we were alive, so we told him to stick it.”
The Writing Wombat 