Rickey Henderson Brought Baseball’s Past Into the Future
The sport lost of one its truest trailblazers this week.
Much will be written in the coming days and weeks about Rickey Henderson, the Hall of Fame outfielder, leadoff hitter and all-time steals leader who died on Friday at age 65. The word “legend” doesn’t do Henderson justice — he was one of the most electrifying, talented, fascinating, swaggy and flat-out iconic players to ever step on a baseball field. But I’ll leave the stories about Rickey’s one-of-a-kind personality and refusal to give up on the game — he was still playing professionally as recently as 2005 at age 46 — to others more qualified to tell them.
Instead, I wanted to focus on Henderson’s transformative place in history as it pertains to his playing style.
Everyone knows that Henderson is the greatest leadoff hitter MLB has ever seen, and that goes hand-in-hand with his outrageous stolen base totals: At 1,406, the gap between Rickey and No. 2 Lou Brock (468) is the same as the gap between Brock and No. 46 Jimmy Rollins. Henderson took a lot of flak for calling himself the Greatest of All-Time after breaking Brock’s record, but screw that — he was right. Stealing that many bases is something to be proud of, and it fits within the classic archetype of the leadoff man as a speed merchant first and foremost.
Later, though, Henderson had a great quote about all of those steals that speaks to his evolutionary role in the leadoff hitter’s development:
“People ask, ‘How do you steal all those bases?'” he said. “But they never say, ‘What do you do to get on base?’ The first thing is, can you get on base a lot to give you the opportunity to steal so many bases? That’s what the guys are not doing. They’re not finding a way to get on the basepaths. A lot of leadoff hitters, they’re free swingers — they’re not patient enough to take a pitch or two knowing that they can hit with two strikes and get themselves a chance to get on base more.”
“As a leadoff hitter, you’ve got to be patient. A lot of times, you’re giving your teammates an idea or vision of what the pitchers throwing, what pitches he’s getting over the plate, basically because you’re being a little more patient and you’re seeing what he’s got. The leadoff hitter always has to learn how to hit with two strikes. To be successful as a leadoff hitter, you’ve always got to be able to hit with two strikes.”
Over the span of his prime years (1980-1995), Henderson only tied for sixth in batting average (.292) from the leadoff spot — with a minimum of 600 games as a leadoff man — per SportRadar. But he ranked No. 2 in on-base percentage (.410), trailing only Wade Boggs at .416. His OBP was 24 percent better than league average during that span, a testament to his excellence in the one skill that sabermetricians would come to prize above all others by the early 2000s.
Another way in which Henderson was far ahead of his time for a leadoff man was in his power hitting. Going back to our 1980-95 leadoff leaders, Henderson’s slugging percentage of .447 was the best of any qualified No. 1 hitter, beating out Paul Molitor (.444). Only a handful of leadoff hitters in that era were actual home run threats of any kind, but Henderson led off a game with a HR 81 times — still the all-time MLB record by a wide margin.
In that sense perhaps more than any other, Henderson embodied baseball’s future in addition to its past. One of the biggest changes in lineup construction as the analytics era took hold of MLB was a push for more power — and better hitters, generally — at the No. 1 spot in the order. Here’s a plot of leaguewide OBP/SLG/OPS for leadoff hitters, indexed relative to the overall MLB average (set to 100 each year) over time since 1950:
While the leadoff role usually featured good OBP hitters — if not exactly as stellar as Henderson — it traditionally featured subpar power hitters and average hitters overall, at best. Look at the top leadoff men of 2024, however, and you’ll see more above-average sluggers than not, from Gunnar Henderson and Jarren Duran to Francisco Lindor and — sometimes — Shohei Ohtani. (And a year before, Ronald Acuña Jr. had basically the modern version of a peak Rickey Henderson season, with the first 40/70 campaign in MLB history out of the 1-hole.)
Henderson was so good, so ahead of the curve, that he could bridge the gap between baseball’s past and its future — performing all of the traditional roles of the classical leadoff hitter while also embodying all of the traits that subsequent iterations of the game would prize from the top of the batting order. He wasn’t just the greatest leadoff hitter of all time; he was the blueprint for what a leadoff hitter could be, redefining the role for generations to come.
Filed under: Baseball
This is the first I'm hearing about this, and I am - and I use this word very rarely - devastated. I first saw Rickey Henderson play in his rookie season with my father and we were both absolutely captivated by him. The unique batting stance, the threatening leadoff from the bag...the pure speed and power of the man.
I came to Cleveland Municipal Stadium in 1979 to see Dwayne Murphy and left with a different hero, whose stature in my mind (unlike with so many of our heroes) only grew throughout the years. It seemed if each season every team wanting to win it all acquired Rickey at the deadline because they knew... knew that he was a force unlike any seen in baseball before or after. Even in the beginning, he made watching the lowly A's required television.
Sadly, baseball has never been entirely fair to Rickey Henderson in my view. His quirky personality, glove snapping at fly balls and carefree style distracted from the sheer awesomeness of his play, which the media seemed somehow to take for granted over the years.
It was often said that Henderson could have hit 500 home runs - if he wanted to - and to those who saw him in person actually try on the first bat of the game it was clear the answer was "absolutely." When asked why he didn't try more often, he said that it was runs that mattered and that getting on base was more important to winning as a leadoff hitter.
His focus was always on winning. Yes, rarely has such a historic talent been so forward looking as your beautiful tribute makes clear:
"...Henderson was so good, so ahead of the curve, that he could bridge the gap between baseball’s past and its future — performing all of the traditional roles of the classical leadoff hitter while also embodying all of the traits that subsequent iterations of the game would prize from the top of the batting order. He wasn’t just the greatest leadoff hitter of all time; he was the blueprint for what a leadoff hitter could be, redefining the role for generations to come."
It seems time that we now stop saying that every player with above average speed who steals a few bases is the "next Rickey Henderson." This minimizes who he was and what he accomplished on the field. There has only been and will only be, one Rickey Henderson.
In the inevitable end, it's less about what you do, and more about the legacy you leave behind in inspiring others. From that long car ride home in 1979, it truly has been my privilege to see this man play baseball.
Rest in peace hero.
The rare player who was very famous, and thought to be very, very good . . . but was still underrated.