The Athletics ‘ hall was where I last saw Rickey Henderson in late September when the last, terrible homestand at the Oakland Coliseum ended with its last game.
I’d known him since 1979, when he first started out with the A’s in the major leagues. He was 20 years old and a member of Rickey, Murphy, and Armas ‘ Oakland lineup’s next-generation lineup. It was the perfect field of brilliant, young people at the time, and it cost the always-penurious user Charlie Finley less than$ 100, 000.
No one at the time had any idea who Henderson would be: the greatest basic grabber and lead-off striker in Major League Baseball history, making$ 44.5 million in his 25-year career, a pitiful sum in comparison to the$ 51 million that Juan Soto lately received as a season signing with the New York Mets.

On the September morning, Rickey was upset that the A’s would leave Oakland, move to West Sacramento second period, and possibly move to Las Vegas in 2028 or later. But he said as a traveling manager, he intended to go with them.
” It’s a damn shame”, Henderson said. ” Heartbreaking. I’m a local of Oakland and we’ve lost anything. It’s almost like it’s going to be a ghost area. That’s the unfortunate point about it”.
Everything said Oakland sports more than Rickey, I wrote up next. He grew off it. played his high school game it. In his much occupation, he frequently appeared in the A’s in that same tower. And on Friday he died there, at 65, in an Oakland hospital, the prey of pneumonia and bronchitis that caused him to drown on his own liquid.
Due to the fact that he appeared to be in perpetual fine health, his death shocked those closest to him.
” I still didn’t feel it. He was a portrait of fitness”, Ken Korach, the long-time A’s play-by-play broadcaster, said in a text information. ” Rickey’s departure was a dramatic final grammar for the A’s last year in Oakland”.
Henderson’s dying was not baseball’s even reduction in 2024 or the subsequent years before. Since Al Kaline passed away on April 6, 2020, during the first month of the COVID-19 crisis, he is the 17th person to pass away in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Ten of those excellent people died within a month of Kaline, including Tom Seaver, Whitey Ford, Tommy Lasorda and ending with Hank Aaron. The most in a month in Hall story was it. Willie Mays and Orlando Cepeda joined Henderson in sports sky this year, just this year.

Luis Aparicio, at 90, and Sandy Koufax, turning 89 on Monday, are the oldest remaining people left in the Hall. Bud Selig, a previous director, passed away as well.
We have lost a whole new era of great players. This year also brought the departure of non-Hall of Famers Fernando Valenzuela, Pete Rose and Luis Tiant, among others.
Henderson was not that old by today’s standards. Neither were Tony Gwynn and Kirby Puckett, for that matter. After battling for years with the symptoms of peritoneal cancer, Gwynn passed away in 2014 at the age of 54. Prior to his death at age 45 in 2006, Puckett had a injury.
Those are the exceptions. For the others, time is simply taking its burden.
Henderson played for the A’s four days and the San Diego Padres twice in his seemingly limitless career, and he brought his fascinating play and winning way to the A’s and the Padres half.
Past general manager Sandy Alderson said in a recent speech that” I traded Rickey half and brought him back more days than that.” He was the most effective participant I’ve actually seen play.
Some of those deals resulted from Rickey becoming unwelcome and slack on his arrangements. But he was always a compelling person to bring back.
In a deal with the New York Yankees only in time for the A’s to push the cross-bay San Francisco Giants in the earthquake-stricken World Series, Alderson reconnected him in the middle of the 1989 season. He dominated that postseason, winning MVP of the American League Championship Series victory over Toronto, and batting .474 in the World Series. He was 15-for-34 general with nine excursions, 11 stolen bases, eight of them vs. the Blue Jays.
Rickey helped the Braves reach the postseason for the first time since 1984 when the delayed GM Kevin Towers signed him in San Diego in 1996. In 1997, Rickey was therefore traded to the Angels. In a recent Washington Post row, George Will recalls that he received a voicemail from Rickey shortly after he left the Seattle Mariners as a free agent in the spring of 2001.

“KT! It’s Rickey! Calling about Rickey! Rickey wants to play football”!
Rickey was renowned for using third-person terms to refer to himself. Towers signed him once on March 21, 2001.
That was Gwynn’s next season, ending with his remaining leg in such bad condition he was relegated to pinch hitting. However, he was also able to hit, and Bruce Bochy would soon take his place with a squeeze runner when he reached center. Gwynn and Henderson both scored double in the final match of the same year against the Colorado Rockies at the old Jack Murphy Stadium. It was Gwynn and No. 3’s final of 3, 141 job hits. 2, 999 for Henderson.
The next day was Gwynn’s last game, and large ceremonies were planned at the venue. In honor of Gwynn, Henderson went to him and said,” Do you mind if Rickey gets his 3, 000th hit in your last game?” ( I know this is a true story because I was there. ) Because if you do, I didn’t play”.
Rickey was advised to go for it by Gwynn.
On October 7, 2001, Rickey hit No. 1 with a bloop twice to appropriate field in the first game. 3, 000 and instantly left the game. In his last at-bat, Gwynn pinch-hit in the eighth inning and grounded to quick in the eighth. Henderson would end with 3, 055 visits and a history 1, 406 stolen foundations.
Then they’re both gone. However, they still have legacy.
” Nine different groups, one remarkable person”, Alderson wrote. ” Sandy gonna lose Rickey”.