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| Thursday, October 4 An underappreciated record -- and player By Rob Neyer ESPN.com |
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Let me throw a couple of names at you, and before you continue reading I'd like to you to spend a few seconds digesting the names. Pause to conjure up some images, both physical and statistical, in your mind. Ready?
Hank Aaron Pretty good, huh? Aaron and Ruth, among other things, rank one-two on baseball's all-time RBI list. Runs batted in are somewhat team-dependent, of course, but they're also an indication of talent. Not that anyone would argue that Aaron and Ruth weren't immensely talented, of course, but their appearance at the very top of the career-RBI list suggests both great longevity and great production. Here are two more names for you ...
Rickey Henderson Henderson and Cobb now rank one-two on baseball all-time runs list. Think about that for a moment. Thousands and thousands of men have played major-league baseball, and not a single one of them, not Ty Cobb or Hank Aaron or Babe Ruth or anybody else, scored more runs than Henderson. And if Aaron and Ruth are the game's greatest power hitters, might one also argue that Rickey Henderson and Ty Cobb are, at the very least, the game's greatest table-setters? What's amazing about Henderson is that nobody seems to know, or perhaps care, how great he's been. For many, many years, all anyone talked about was the stolen bases. And with some justification, as Henderson broke the career stolen-base record 10 years ago. But isn't it time to revise our image of Rickey as a one-dimensional threat? Because whether you like him or you don't, Rickey Henderson has now:
Henderson's pursuit of Brock's record captured headlines, yet for some reason his successful pursuits of Ruth and Cobb seem to have brought forth little energy from the republic's baseball scribes or television producers. Ask yourself, how many stories have you seen about Rickey Henderson in 2001, the season in which he set two important and long-standing career records? Another testament to Rickey's greatness ... He is 42 years old, and still ranks as one of the game's most dangerous leadoff men. Consider the following list of No. 1 hitters, all of them younger than Rickey and most of them considered among the game's top leadoff hitters at some point within the last few years: Tony Womack, Brady Anderson, Jose Offerman, Eric Young, Ray Durham, Kenny Lofton, Juan Pierre, Roger Cedeno, Luis Castillo, Craig Biggio, Matt Lawton, Chuck Knoblauch, Johnny Damon, Doug Glanville, Jason Kendall, Marvin Benard, Fernando Vina, Shannon Stewart. Rickey Henderson, at 42, is significantly older than each of those players ... and he also has a higher on-base percentage, this season, than each of those players. In fact, among the players currently leading off regularly, only two -- Frank Catalanotto (.409) and Ichiro Suzuki (.381) -- are reaching base with greater frequency than Henderson. And of course, Rickey can still run. He's stolen 25 bases this season, and been caught only six times. Is Rickey Henderson one of the better left fielders in the game today? No, he is not. But let's not let that obvious fact obscure another, even more obvious fact: Rickey Henderson is one of the greatest left fielders in the game's history, behind Barry Bonds and Ted Williams but right up there with Stan Musial and ... well, right up there with nobody. Rickey Henderson is the third or fourth greatest left fielder who ever lived. And while this might not be Rickey's final season -- he'll play until they won't give him a uniform to wear -- is there a better season than this in which to give him his due? Eleven years ago, Henderson said of Ty Cobb's career record for runs scored, "That's the No. 1 thing I look at now when I think about what I want to do." To which USA Today's Tom Weir responded, "With Henderson just approaching 1,300 that record appears out of reach." Rob Neyer is a senior writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at rob.neyer@dig.com, and to order his new book, Feeding the Green Monster, click here. |
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