No suprise here. Rickey Henderson, MLB's all-time stolen base leader, was elected into the National Baseball Hall of Fame today. What some Yankees fans might not realize is that Henderson is still the Yankees all-time stolen base leader, and he did it in just four years. From 1985-1988, it seemed every game started like this: Henderson walks or gets a hit. Henderson steals second. Mattingly or Winfield drive in Henderson. 1-0 Yanks in the first, every game.
Congrats to Rickey. Since he left the game, nobody else has come even close to dominating the basepaths the way he did.
4 comments:
Rickey's pulled "hammy" in 1987 seemed to take forever to heal, which clearly drove Piniella nuts, but overall, his years in New York were amazing. The day in '89 when I heard on the radio that they traded him for Eric Plunk, Greg Cadaret and Louie Polonia, I screamed out car window in pure anger. It was the day I began to hate Dallas "I was really great in Philadelphia" Green and, in my opinion, was the beginning of the "dark years" that lasted until around 1992. The Yankees don't trade stars. They trade for stars.
It's funny, but people used to say that by stealing 100 bases a year, Henderson was changing the game, and that such baserunning would become more common in baseball. Well, that sure didn't happen. Nobody today steals 100 bases a year or even comes close, and besides Henderson, nobody ever did before. He was simply that much better than anybody that came before him and those that came after him. - Mel
Oh yeah ... he also had a nice habit of leading off games with home runs. It was always nice to have a 1-0 lead with nobody out in the first inning. -Mel
i to could not believe the trade for those awful pitchers....lonnie
Base stealing is one of the lost arts of baseball, and Henderson was undoubtably the best at it in my lifetime, and probably in all of baseball history. At a time when everyone is talking about statistics and asterisks, here's one that stands on it's own.
Congratulations to Rickey.
-Rosey
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