Henderson inspired a generation to 'run like Rickey'

The tributes to the great Rickey Henderson are pouring in after we learned of the Hall of Famer’s sad, sudden passing, just days before his 66th birthday. Baseball’s “Man of Steal” has been rightly celebrated here, there and everywhere for his place in history as the all-time stolen bases and runs scored leader, a member of the 3,000 hit club and, above all else, an endearing and endlessly entertaining figure in the sport.

But the greatest tribute to Henderson came in deed, not word. And it came prior to his passing, in the measures taken by MLB to reverse engineer a game that looks a lot more like the one Rickey played -- a game in which speed and athleticism are incentivized and charisma is accentuated and celebrated.

“When we considered new rules for the game in recent years,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in his statement, “we had the era of Rickey Henderson in mind.”

Now, before we go any further, let’s be clear: There’s no replicating Rickey. He was one of one.

• Rickey's top moments

Start with a biographical basic: Rickey batted right and threw left. Who does that? In MLB history -- including the old-timey 1800s -- only 70 position players have done that. Of those 70, only nine played 1,000 games. And of those nine, only one played well enough to make it to Cooperstown.

• 10 incredible Rickey Henderson stats

Rickey broke records and darn near broke the game. He didn’t just usurp Lou Brock’s steals mark; he did it in his age-32 season. His 1,406 steals are 49.9% more than the second-place Brock’s 938! This sort of thing just doesn’t happen in a major statistical category ... unless somebody’s going to come along and hit more than 1,100 career homers to blow right past Barry Bonds’ 762.

No one would ever tell you Rickey Henderson was the greatest player who ever lived. We tend to reserve that discussion for the likes of Babe Ruth and Willie Mays. But with his special blend of power, speed and on-base ability, Rickey was the greatest run scorer who ever lived, in a game in which the object is to score runs. And he did it with a flair all his own.

So, no, you can’t recreate Rickey. But you can summon his spirit.

And that’s ultimately what the league at large recently tried to do.

When MLB unveiled its pitch clock and accompanying pitcher pickoff limits, as well as bigger bases, prior to the 2023 season, Rickey expressed his distaste for the new rules as only he could.

“I wish the game would be just left alone,” he told The Athletic’s Brittany Ghiroli, “but if they’re going to [make these changes] they got to add 50 or 60 [steals] on mine. That’s the new rule.”

• Will anyone ever threaten this Rickey record?

Obviously, that’s not how it works. Ty Cobb didn’t retroactively gain any hits when MLB adopted a lighter, livelier ball, sans spit.

But Rickey’s aversion was understandable. After all, he didn’t need the extra assistance of pickoff limits and bigger bags on his road to those 1,406 steals. And should that sacrosanct number ever be challenged in the era of easier thievery (doubtful though that may be), there wouldn’t be any official asterisk attached, because that’s not how MLB operates. Rickey would undeservedly be sent to second ... this time, against his will.

Still, it was telling that MLB unveiled the new rules along with a Bryan Cranston-narrated ad that encouraged current players to “Run like Rickey!” It’s harder than ever to hit (in the single season of 2024, Aaron Judge and Juan Soto were the only players to eclipse the .401 on-base percentage that Henderson achieved over his entire career), so creating the base-stealing opportunities that Rickey made for himself is difficult/impossible enough. But when you do reach, “running like Rickey” is now incentivized in ways it simply hadn’t been in a generation of risk-averse, analytics-driven stagnancy.

Henderson played his last big league game in 2003 (he continued on in independent ball in 2004 and 2005), right around the time the game at large was re-orienting its approach to the stolen base. Because front offices had gained a greater mathematical appreciation for the value of an out, they increased the threshold for what is acceptable from a stolen base success rate standpoint. In short, they ran less, and, ultimately, invested less time and money in developing base stealers.

In 2022, the last season before the changes, the Rangers led all MLB teams with 128 steals -- or two fewer than Henderson had all by himself in his record-setting season of 1982.

The new rules have only been in place for two seasons, and yet we’ve already seen a seismic change. In 2024, the average number of steals per team was all the way up to 121. So we’ve come -- actually, run -- a long way in a short time. And that’s before we even start to see the results of the drafting and developmental changes taking root in the new environment.

Run like Rickey, please. It’s what the people want.

• When Rickey passed the Babe

But there was so much more to Rickey’s game than steals alone. It was that violent way he’d uncork his bat … and then flip it. It was that way he’d pop his non-existent collar, post-homer, then “run” the bases with a deliberately, deliriously slow, wide, hot-dogging trot. It was the way he’d snatch a fly ball with that semi-circular wielding of his glove that, when replicated on Little League fields across the continent, would always seem to end with the ball slipping away and rolling away from the fielder. Only Rickey could pull off that kind of cool.

So, again, one of one.

But it’s been rewarding in recent years to see the game get over itself, to see players gradually reduce the self-policing of personality and let people be themselves. When Elly De La Cruz declares himself “the fastest man in the world” or Soto stops to pound his chest in front of his dugout after hitting a go-ahead homer in the ALCS, that’s real Rickey energy.

We’re also seeing a sport that, thanks to the new rules, is trending younger and more athletic. The return to a 1980s pace -- the pace Rickey played in -- and the elimination of extreme defensive shifts in the infield rewards those who keep themselves in the kind of physical condition that Henderson somehow maintained for 25 seasons (he last led the Majors in steals at age 39).

Rickey Henderson knew what this baseball business was all about.

“I am a performer,” he once said. “I give entertainment.”

It's hard to believe we now have to refer to him in the past tense, because everything about Rickey was so present, so alive, so in-your-face. Ripping all those leadoff homers, successfully swiping the base that everyone in the building (you, the catcher, the pitcher, the pitcher’s mother, etc.) knew he was intent on swiping and playing the game with such energy and enthusiasm, he made baseball the most vibrant version of itself. And it says a lot that, as MLB sought to increase its appeal and inspire new generations of fans, it turned back the clock to a different style of game:

Rickey’s game.