“Rickey Henderson is a run, man. That’s it. When you see Rickey Henderson, I don’t care when, the score’s already 1–0.”– Henderson’s teammate, Mitchell Page

This week (Aug. 27) in 1982, Oakland A’s outfielder Rickey Henderson broke Lou Brock’s single-season record for stolen bases by stealing his 119th.  At season’s end his stolen base total was 130, still a major league record.  Other major league records he owns include career stolen bases (1,406), runs scored (2,295) and the most home runs to lead off a game (81).  Only Barry Bonds has more career walks, and many believe Henderson still has the most unintentional walks.

Sports writer Joe Posnanski once wrote, “Rickey Henderson walked 796 times in his career leading off an inning. Think about this. There would be absolutely nothing a pitcher would want to avoid more than walking Rickey Henderson to lead off an inning. And yet he did that 796 times.”

Rickey Henderson, deservedly so, is considered the greatest leadoff hitter in baseball history.  He had real power, hitting 297 career home runs, but a “Rickey run,” as they were called, was usually a lead-off walk, a stolen base, an infield out and sacrifice fly—in other words a run scored without a single hit, which drove opposing pitchers crazy.

He was a winner as well.  He broke into the majors in 1979 with his hometown Oakland A’s, and although he was traded to the New York Yankees in 1984 — where he became the first American League player to hit more than 20 homers and steal more than 50 bases in a season — he was traded back to the A’s in 1989. The A’s won the World Series that year with Henderson batting .474.  In 1993, playing for the Toronto Blue Jays, he won his second World Series.

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This week (Sept. 20) in 1998, the last home game of the season for the Baltimore Orioles was somewhat notable because, unlike the previous 2,632 consecutive games he had played for the Orioles, third baseman Calvin “Cal” Ripken decided to sit this game out, ending the longest consecutive playing streak in baseball and sports history.  As baseball fans everywhere know, in 1995, Ripken, nicknamed “Iron Man,” broke the 56-year-old Major League Baseball (MLB) record of Yankee first baseman Lou Gehrig (nicknamed “Iron Horse”) by playing in his 2,131^st consecutive game.  The following year Ripken also broke the world record for consecutive baseball games played, 2,215, held by Japan’s Sachio Kinugasa.

But it is the game in which Ripken broke Gehrig’s record that baseball fans remember, in part because when the game became official after the visiting California Angels’ half of the fifth inning was completed, the stadium erupted with a standing ovation that lasted 23 minutes.  What then followed was among the greatest “feel good” moments in sports history as teammates pushed a reluctant Ripken out of the dugout so that he could take a victory lap around Baltimore’s Camden Yards Stadium, shaking hands with fans and high-fiving them as he trotted around the field.  Major League Baseball later named that the “Most Memorable Moment” in its history.

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