Well. Baseball's All Star Game is tomorrow night, a showcase for
the best in the game that gives us a moment to look back at one of
the sport's all time greats, but one who is hardly a household name
these days over the course of her career that lasted more than two
decades, Rickey Henderson was arguably the greatest leadoff hitter
in history and is officially the all time leader in stolen bases
with more than 1400. He also had 3000 hits, 2000 runs and 2000 walks.
A new book by sports writer Howard Bryant makes the case for Ricky
Henderson as an underappreciated historical great. It's called Ricky
the Life and Legend of an American original, and I spoke with Bryant
recently about his latest work.
Howard Bryant. Welcome back to the news hour. Good to have you here.
So Rickey Henderson played his last game back in 2003. What made
you want to tell his story now?
Well, I think the biggest reason I wanted to talk about him is because
he is under appreciated, if if it's possible to steal 1400 bases
and be underappreciated, and to have 3000 hits into really obliterate
the record book, as he did. I just felt like there aren't as many
people as we think, who can really carry a full biography and especially
one that is not completely tainted by drugs. And when you write about
baseball these days, it feels like it's steroids, steroids and more
steroids and I wanted to get back in to write a story of
About somebody who really was a giant in the game and was really
going to allow me to dig into some of the issues that really built
this last sort of half of the sport where money sort of dominates
and where you're looking at a certain type of player that really
in a lot of ways doesn't exist anymore, and they don't steal bases
in baseball anymore. It's a totally different game. He was one of
the most exciting electric unique players and I really felt like
it was, as he would say. As a player. I thought it was Ricky's time.
Did he want his story told
You have to convince him.
A lot of convincing. Not really sure he wanted, his story told And
what I tried to appeal to him was to say that the stories they get
told are not always the best people. The stories that get told are
not always the most important. The stories we remember are the ones
that get repeated and to be remembered is to have your story repeated
over and over again to make sure people don't forget your greatness,
and he's one of the top 10 15 players who ever played the game. They've
been playing baseball since the end of the Civil War.
For and to be in the top dozen. It's pretty good company. Let me
ask you about his story. He grew up in Oakland, right. His family
moved there from Arkansas in 1969. He was just 10 years old. He thought
he would be a raider. You wanted to play pro football, right? How?
And why did he end up in baseball instead?
Ended up playing baseball because his mother thought he was too small
to play football. She was afraid he was going to get hurt, and that
baseball was the faster path to the major leagues, And it was also
the fact that he was just physically gifted. There are so many people
who make the big leagues and small percentage of them from any given
place, but he comes from a spot where there were so many great players.
The legacy of Oakland Sports Bill Russell, Frank Robinson and Curt
Flood and beta pension and so many players. I asked Ricky once, when
did you believe
You had world class ability. When did you think you could play in
the major leagues? And he said, Oh, I don't know. Sixth grade.
So you were 12 years old, And so he just had this unbelievable confidence
that he was destined to be a great great player and really saw himself
in the Muhammad Ali mold of it ain't bragging. If you can do it Well,
he went on. He did do it. He became the greatest based dealer of
all time. Rod Carew actually shared a funny story. Last year I saw
when he said right before he stole Ricky would always say out loud.
Ricky's got to go and then take off and that and that was just it,
so he didn't lack confidence. But, you know, Howard, a lot of
People said he came off as standoffish or egotistical. He referred
to himself in the third person. What did he say about that?
Well, I think that you ask Ricky himself. He'll tell you that he
came to win. He came to compete. He came to beat the other guy and
one of the reasons why I wanted to do this book was because it is
one of those American stories where he was not a popular player.
Despite his greatness, despite everything he did, this really is
a story of a of a player who was one of the more disliked players
in the early eighties people and back in the eighties, there was
so much fighting between the Players Association and the league strikes
and lockouts fighting over.
Money. It's fascinating to me that back then people were so angry
that these players that Ricky was actually asking for the princely
sum of $500,000 in his contract, and now you look at the NBA and
the NFL and baseball. You have a guy like Russell Westbrook today
who just opted into a $47.1 million contract, and people were calling
Ricky greedy back then because he wanted to half a million. But the
story are really is of a guy who wasn't that popular. But by the
end as he goes on as he grew on us as he obliterated
The record book.
Now people want to tell stories about him, and now he's beloved,
and they treat him like he's this combination of Satchel Paige and
Yogi Berra, where everybody has a Ricky story, just like Rod Carew's
and I wanted to tell that arc of of what happens when your greatness
sort of wins the public over how much of that personality narrative
do you think looking back on that was attributed to mostly white
sports writing core and any underlying racism looking at a black
player who was among the first to really publicly advocate for himself.
That's a huge piece of it because who tells your story is as important
as the story itself. It's also important to remember once more that
when Ricky first came in in 1979 free agency was only five years
old. The public wasn't used to that and the and, and it certainly
wasn't used to now having these African American players be the public
face of your franchise.
And people viewed them as greedy and selfish. And we all say we want
capitalism. And then when you see how much players are actually able
to make them the public didn't love that so much. Howard. The game
is different today than when Ricky was playing right. The art of
the steal mattered so much more back then do you think will ever
see the likes of Ricky Henderson play the game again?
3000 hits 2000 runs, 2000 walks 1400 stolen bases You're never going
to see it again. They don't steal bases anymore. People have said
to me during this book tour. What is Ricky's legacy? And sometimes
I think he doesn't have a legacy. He's a unicorn. No one ever. No
one's going to do what he what he does or what he did, because the
game is so totally different. Ricky's work started when he got on
first base, so it would be nice to see that again, but that's not
how baseball is played anymore.
The book is Ricky the life and Legend of an American original. The
author is Howard Bryant. Howard. Always good to have you Here. Thanks.