Youth Baseball Parks Blog

Unlikely Words rounds up some great stories about Rickey Henderson.

Bill James’ response to Rickey setting the single season stolen base record in 1982 was exactly what you would expect. Curmudgeonly grumbling about how the stolen base isn’t an extremely effective offensive weapon and then plenty of statistics to back it up. The early Bill James byline was an exciting find, though. Though, in 2001, James made his feelings for Rickey’s game clear,
“Somebody asked me did I think Rickey Henderson was a Hall of Famer. I told them, ‘If you could split him in two, you’d have two Hall of Famers.’”

I remember that James story. Bill was pointing out that Rickey was thrown out a lot that season in an effort to break the record, and Bill was objecting to wasted outs in pursuit of a record. If you look at Rickey’s career, his stolen base percentage goes way up after that season. In his first four years, Henderson posted a 75.95 stolen base percentage (which is very good). For the rest of his career, his stolen base percentage was 82.29. Sandy Alderson was reading Bill James at the time. I wonder if he showed the article to Rickey?

Source:Rickey Stories