YOU CAN NEVER HAVE ENOUGH RICKEY:

Rickey Henderson Plays on in Baseball's Bush Leagues (All Things Considered, May 23, 2004)

Reporter Nancy Solomon profiles Rickey Henderson, a former major league baseball star who now, at the age of 45, is struggling to stay in the game as he plays for the minor-league Newark Bears.

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BRILLIANT CAREERS: Rickey Henderson: Say what you will about his attitude, he walks the walk. And in the last few days he's walked right into the record books -- twice. (Allen St. John, Oct. 9, 2001, Salon)

For years I've had this ritual. Every morning, I log onto my computer, check for desperate e-mails from desperate editors, then open the bookmark for Rickey Henderson's career stats. I scroll down to the runs-scored column and see if, based on last night's action, the number has inched closer to 2,245.

It's the kind of guilty pleasure only a baseball fan can understand. Baseball is the only sport where stats really resonate, where you can forge a connection with your favorite player based on a page full of numbers. It was about eight years ago that I first noticed that Henderson had a legitimate shot at breaking the longest-standing major hitting record on the books: Ty Cobb's mark of 2,245 runs scored. And this is the week that he finally did it.

Being a Rickey Henderson fan is a guilty pleasure in itself. Friends -- smart baseball fans, some even baseball writers -- view any mention of my Rickey Watch as an open invitation to trash him. "He is the biggest jerk," goes the chorus. No, it's not personal -- he didn't refuse to sign an autograph or blow off an interview. It's simply a style thing: '80s retro notwithstanding the snatch catches, the wraparound sunglasses, his "I am the greatest of all time" speech, they simply rub people the wrong way.

But as Ty Cobb -- or was it Freud? -- once said, "It ain't braggin' if you can back it up." Say what you will about Henderson's 'tude, he walks the walk.

-Inside Rickey's World, he marches to own beat (Tom Weir, 9/26/01, USA TODAY)

Rickey Henderson is all alone at his locker, getting organized for a game. But it sounds like someone else must be there with him. Why else would he be chattering in that low, frenetic tone, muttering indecipherable words and sounding like a bee is buzzing in his mouth?

Ask Henderson about this habit, a habit friends and teammates say has been a career-long trademark, and Henderson says you're mistaken.

"Do I talk to myself? No. I just remind myself of what I'm trying to do," he says. "You know, I never answer myself. So how can I be talking to myself?"

Welcome to Rickey's World, a baseball-shaped planet that orbits serenely on a tilted axis while passing untouched through meteor showers of conventional thought.

-Get up and cheer: Rickey deserves it (Tim Kurkjian, 8/23/01, ESPN The Magazine)

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 17, 2004 7:56 AM