Remembering MLB Legend Rickey Henderson on Christmas Day | Deadspin.com

Rickey Henderson would have turned 66 on Christmas Day.

The operative words here being would have.

Instead, one of the greatest players in MLB history died Friday after a bout with pneumonia. His passing was simply one more cruel blow to Oakland baseball fans, who lost their Athletics when the season ended and now have lost arguably the best player in franchise history.

So instead of musing about Juan Soto signing for a zillion dollars with the Mets or a lot of other guys signing for a lot of money with other teams, let’s try to use some of these 609 words to do justice to a career unlike any other.

First, there were the stolen bases, all 1,406 of them. No one’s stolen more and no one ever will, unless Rob Manfred outlaws pickoff throws (and don’t give Rob any ideas; he’s liable to adopt this before next year).

Or to put it another way, Henderson stole at least 30 bases in 21 different seasons. No one in MLB history stole at least 10 bases in 21 different seasons. So there’s another record he owns that’s unlikely to disappear any time soon.

Were this all he did to put his stamp on the record books, it would have been enough to earn him a spot in Cooperstown. As you might have guessed from the third paragraph of this missive, it was not all he did.

No one scored more runs than Henderson’s 2,295. That’s another record that should be in the annals long after Santa reads this with his milk and cookies. He paced the American League in runs in five different seasons, including an otherworldly 146 in 1985 when he had Don Mattingly and Dave Winfield knocking him in while wearing Yankee pinstripes.

The name of the game in baseball is scoring runs, and Rickey, being Rickey, did it better than anyone. That clearly means getting on base, and he did that more than 5,000 times. His 2,190 walks are second all-time, and his 3,055 hits are 27th in MLB history.

Nor was he some slap hitter just hoping to bloop one over second. Henderson cracked 297 homers, including 28 in 1990. If you could fit a strike in his small zone, it better not be too good, or it would disappear over a fence.

As for his defense? Well, he earned a Gold Glove in 1981, led AL left fielders in putouts four times, and had the second-most putouts of any left fielder in MLB history. Simply put, wherever you put him, Henderson was going to do something to win a game.

And we haven’t even gotten into all the famous stories here because we could fill this site several times over. But the one that tickles my fancy most came near the end of the 2001 season, when he was chasing milestones in the same Padres uniform that Tony Gwynn was wearing for the final times in his Hall of Fame career.

Henderson claimed the all-time runs record in style, lining a homer into the left field seats against the Dodgers. To commemorate the occasion, he slid feet-first into the plate, a gesture that might lead to chin music for some but was greeted with grins and chuckles since it was Rickey.

Three days later, in Gwynn’s farewell game, Henderson doinked his 3,000th career hit on the right field line.

It’s been said that a true original can’t be copied, no matter how hard one tries. 

No one gave it much of an effort here.

Rickey was Rickey. And a sport was damn glad he was for 25 years.