Rickey Henderson Believed In Rickey Henderson

Arrogance is that most remarkable of pejoratives because it wears Janus’s mask—a bad thing in normal society but an absolute requirement in all the arts. It is never enough to have the gift; one must strut it as well. There’s way more money in being the guest of honor and the DJ simultaneously, even if the self-promotional moves are now boilerplate behavior for those who have to pimp their own ride.

Which is why, in the end, Rickey Henderson, who died Friday at 65 years old, was not merely arrogant and justifiably so, but the next step beyond merely arrogant. He had the gift, but he also knew that he didn’t need to sell himself except to himself, because (a) he was his own best audience, as great performers tend to be, and (b) he figured that eventually everyone else would have to see it his way. And in this case, he was right.

You want to see someone do things that have never been done, just to bask in the glow of his work product? Well, there he is—the leadoff hitter with no antecedent and no successor, no template and no schematic to create the next one. Even better, given the length of time he displayed his gifts of speed, power, knowledge and hubris, there was the reasonably founded assumption that he would eventually play for your team. Like his fellow Oaklander Josh Johnson, Quarterback Without Portfolio, he could always find work because someone could always use what he could do.

But he didn’t work the room in search of a crowd the way most of today’s athletic exemplars do. The money wasn’t the same as it is now so the need for paying admirers wasn’t as omnipresent, true, but there was something about Henderson that emanated “I don’t tell you how great I am. I tell me that, because my opinion is the one I trust most.” He didn’t really insist that you say it the way most public figures do; he figured his greatness was on a level that you couldn’t help but notice, and that you’d come around eventually. Maybe it’s just because he was born on Christmas Day—he was the star in the sky everyone went looking for, so he didn’t have to wave his arms and shout, “Hey! You! Look! The Star is over here!”

Rather, he told himself that, and daily. What is more, he may have been the first great player never to use the pronoun “I” because he much preferred the more formal “Rickey,” as though he were standing outside his own body and admiring what he saw. The unrefuted story goes that every day he stood naked before his locker chanting, “Rickey is the best,” which is a more graphic version of Ted Williams doing the same thing during pregame batting practice four decades earlier (Williams was clothed, in case your mind was whirring in that particular direction). He called himself “the greatest of all time” during the on-field ceremony to celebrate breaking Lou Brock’s career stolen base record, and while in fairness this was probably more of a malaprop caused by him not being a polished public speaker than a boast (he once asked a teammate how long it took to drive to the Dominican Republic), it was also an indisputable fact, stated as such.

By then, of course, he had already been named by acclimation the greatest leadoff hitter of all time, an honor never before thought of in those terms because batting orders are a rather fluid measuring stick, and nobody has ever started an argument in a bar over who the best No. 3 or No. 6 hitter was. He made you think about the very notion of lineup position as a measuring stick of excellence, and then he closed all debate by already winning it. Just another case of Rickey being Rickey.

And no published Rickey retrospective worth the effort (and there have been multiple books written about him, most notably Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original by Howard Bryant, and the autobiography Off Base: Confessions of a Thief, which he co-authored with John Shea) can fail to include the story of the famous bonus check he received before the start of the 1982 season, which eventually vexed the Oakland A’s accounting office because it threw their books into an unbalanced tizzy. A quick forensic search came upon the fact the $1 million they couldn’t reconcile was the $1 million they had paid Rickey for signing, because Rickey hadn’t cashed Rickey’s check and instead had framed it and hung it in Rickey’s front room. When Rickey was asked about its whereabouts, Rickey said, “I’m looking at it right now.” Rickey’s logic: There will be more of those coming. And there were—roughly $45 million’s worth from 13 teams if you count the A’s four times, which Rickey did.

So yes, Rickey was indeed arrogant, if that’s the word you require, but in a weirdly understated way. He wasn’t trying to paint a gold brick gold. He had the best product, so he figured he didn’t have to advertise. Rather, he dealt in fact, even if he occasionally did so in his birthday suit. He didn’t hire a marketing team or become a television or streaming icon or really do anything but be what he knew best: Rickey. No life is as neat as this, of course; for that, you need Bryant’s help, which is encouraged. But mostly, he was a self-made man who stridently admired his own work because he knew the work would draw all the admirers he could ever want. He was not only the sizzle but the steak, the chef, the patron, the restaurant owner and the reviewer all at once. He was Rickey as told mostly to Rickey. Circles don’t get drawn neater than that.