The news during the weekend of December 20 that Rickey Henderson had died just a few days shy of his 66th birthday on Christmas Day hit the baseball
world very hard. It was another hard blow after the recent loss of near-Hall of Famers Luis Tiant and Fernando Valenzuela and estimable Rocky Colavito and earlier in 2024 the departures of Hall of Fame immortals Willie Mays and Orlando Cepeda.
I never engaged in a one-on-one with Rickey, but when he was with the Mets in 2000 and I was a WNYC sports commentator, I saw him in the clubhouse taking issue with a NY Post reporter who had questioned his hustle on the field. Rickey didn't stoop to the physical threatening of Bobby Bonilla or the bleach-spraying of Bret Saberhagen (both onetime Mets), but he said firmly that nobody should ever question his playing hard or his love of the game.
I have always thought that Rickey's time in New York got off on a wrong note in 1985 when he was on the disabled list for the first weeks of season and he reportedly said to an inquiring reporter, "I ain't got no time for no press." Meanwhile, across town in Queens, another newcomer, Gary Carter, blasted an extra-inning Opening Day walkoff HR against the St. Louis Cardinals, and the next year he was one of the leaders on the 1986 World Champs. Rickey's NYY teams were always good but never made the then-shorter playoffs and he was traded back to Oakland in mid-1989.
Of course Rickey's statistics were worthy of first ballot Hall of Fame election in 2009. Not only the all-time base stealer but 3,055 career hits, .401 on base percentage and .820 OPS on-base + slugging average. But the outpouring of sympathy comes from the unique character of the man. Check out Rickey's Hall of Fame induction speech in 2009. It is a classic in which he began by noting that if Satchel Paige could start in the majors at age 45, he would play as long as his body held out. His last major league season was 2003, making it 25 in all (not counting his 2004-2005 in independent ball.)
Rickey went on to praise his mother Bobbie who had insisted he give up football although he wanted to play for his adopted home town Oakland Raiders. "I guess mom knows best," he said, smiling and nodding to her, his wife, and his daughters. He thanked his Babe Ruth League coach for bribing him with donuts and hot chocolate to get him out of bed and to the ballpark. And his HS guidance counselor for giving him a quarter for every hit, stolen base, and run scored he made in a local game.
He thanked Jack "JJ" Guinn, the scout who signed him for the Oakland A's and ignored the nay-sayers who thought a position player couldn't succeed throwing left and batting right. He praised his first minor league manager Tom Trebelhorn, a future Milwaukee Brewers skipper, for teaching him how to slide and take leads from first base. Remembering the day in July 1979 when A's owner Charlie Finley phoned and told him to report to the majors, Rickey chuckled, "Charlie, wherever you at and that donkey, thank you for the opportunity."
RIP Rickey Nelson Henley Henderson - maybe his entertaining originality was preordained when he was born in a family Oldsmobile in Chicago as his mother was being rushed to the hospital and Ricky Nelson music was on the car radio.
HERE'S A COUPLE OF TOUCHING MOMENTS FROM THE END OF THE BASEBALL SEASON:
**At the end of the Yankees-Royals divisional baseball series, Yankees DH Giancarlo Stanton put a consoling arm around a tearful Bobby Witt Jr. after the Bronx Bombers had eliminated KC. Giancarlo must have been telling the rising superstar shortstop that there will be other chances for him to be on the winning side.
**Isaiah Kiner-Falefa, Pirates (and former Rangers-Yankees) shortstop turned down a $250,000 bonus for playing in a certain number of games so that Pittsburgh rookies just called up from the minors could see some major league action. In this age of blatant greed on all sides, Falefa's gesture deserves a tip of the cap. Last I looked, Isaiah, who will turn 30 in March, was still a free agent - he is the kind of grinder that every winning team needs.
My first post of the New Year will speculate more deeply on off-season maneuvers by MLB teams. I must say now that I don't know what the Cleveland Guardians are doing in trading superior middle infielder Andres Gimenez to the Blue Jays and slugging first baseman Josh Naylor to the Diamondbacks without a seemingly adequate return. Gimenez's bat has slipped but his defense is world class. The reverse is true about the burly but productive Naylor who is still only 27.
But I must take the time now to list the Sydney Greenstreet films celebrating his 145th birthday that will be on TCM Fri Dec 27 from 845A until 8P. The day is sentimental for me because it is my half-birthday and also the birthday of my late sister Carol Ann Lowenfish Norton who would have been 86 on Dec 27. She always knew the game was in my blood although after attending an Orioles game with me in Baltimore, she looked around at the crowd and wrote in a suburban newspaper that the national pastime was not baseball but eating.
845A "That Way With Women" (1947) with Dane Clark and Martha Vickers, Lauren Bacall's precocious little sister in "The Big Sleep" from the year before.
*1015A "The Maltese Falcon" (1941) the first Greenstreet-Peter Lorre collaboration. Starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor. John Huston's first directorial hit and watch for his father Walter Huston making a cameo as the man that brings the falcon to Bogart's office.
12N "Background to Danger" (1943) set in Turkey directed by Raoul Walsh with Brenda Marshall and George Raft
130P "Conflict" (1945) with Bogart and the underappreciated Alexis Smith years before she became a Broadway musical star
3P "Mask of Dimitrios" (1944) with Zachary Scott (just before he treats Joan Crawford and Ann Blyth badly in "Mildred Pierce") and Faye Emerson (several years before she hosts with then-husband bandleader Skitch Henderson "Faye and Skitch", a NYC talk show in the early days of TV
*445P "Three Strangers" (1946) with Geraldine Fitzgerald. Ireland's temporary gift to America (she played a memorable bitchy character in Siodmak's "Strange Affair of Uncle Harry" that I saw last week at the director Robert Siodmak Retrospective) and Peter Lorre. A wish for the new year is made by three strangers.
630P "The Verdict" (1946) based on an Israel Zangwill story about a prosecutor who sentences an innocent man to death. With Lorre & Joan Lorring.
Sun Dec 29 has quite a lineup, too, starting at 12:15A with Noir Alley's "Postman Never Rings Twice" (1946) James Cain's classic story directed by
Tay Garnett with John Garfield and Lana Turner as the illicit lovers/Cecil Kellaway as the victimized husband/Leon Ames as the prosecutor. Repeated at 10A
12N "Ball of Fire" (1942) the original one directed by Howard Hawks with tough gal Barbara Stanwyck loosening up the linguistic professors including Gary Cooper. Dana Andrews in a rare comic role as Stanwyck's mob boyfriend.
And the day ends back-to-back:
8P "Mildred Pierce" (1945) followed I hope by Carol Burnett bringing along her spoof of the movie
1030P "Double Indemnity" (1944) with Fred MacMurray/Stanwyck as the illicit lovers and Edward G Robinson sadly figuring it out - the Noir that started it all although I'd vote for Alan Ladd/Veronica Lake in "This Gun For Hire" (1942) with Robert Preston years before his Harold Hill days in "Music Man". One senses the hand of screenwriter W.R. Burnett all over this movie
That's all for now. Here are the mantras, please follow them in these turbulent years of history that I hope won't engulf us all. But understanding and appreciating the history of baseball, movies, and music will certainly help if only for consolation.
So all together now: Stay positive, test negative, and a new one: stay healthy and stay sane.
And as always, take it easy but take it. Happy New Year!!