There have always been players who were fast. Harry Hooper, who played for the Boston Red Sox in the early 1900s, was fast. So were Ty Cobb and Jackie Robinson. So was Maury Wills, who, in 1962, stole over 100 bases in a season for the Dodgers, and the Montreal Expos’ Tim Raines, who stole at least 70 bases six seasons in a row back in the 80s. Today there is Billy Hamilton with the Cincinnati Reds, a young player with a lot of stolen bases in his future.
There were also players who were both fast and strong. Guys like Henry Aaron and Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio, Barry Bonds and Mike Trout. There were even a couple of guys who were fast and strong and hit first in the order. Before having a son named Barry, who would become even more famous than his all-star dad, Bobby Bonds had been that type of player. Bobby Bonds hit at least 30 home runs while stealing at least 30 bases five times in his career, most of the time from the leadoff spot. Then there was Lou Brock, who played from 1961 to 1980, mostly with the St. Louis Cardinals. Brock could run and hit for power, too. Though he never hit more than 21 home runs in a season, Brock was consistently among the league leaders in stolen bases, doubles, and triples. When he retired, Brock held the all-time records for stolen bases in a season (118 ) and in a career (938).
Rickey was different from them all. Yes, he was fast and strong and he was a leadoff hitter. Yet baseball had never seen a leadoff hitter like Rickey. Like Bonds, Henderson hit for power. But unlike Bonds, Rickey did not strike out much. Bobby Bonds didn’t just strike out a lot, he led the league in strikeouts multiple times from the position where it was most crucial to get on base. Bonds struck out an astounding 1,757 times over 14 seasons—an average of 125 per season—and hit just .268 for his career. Despite his speed, Bonds seemed to be a hitter miscast in the leadoff role. Rickey struck out 100 times in his career only once—the year he turned 40!
Brock was clearly the preeminent base-stealer of his generation, the one with all of the records. Brock was the engine of the great Cardinals teams that won championships, as Rickey would be with his winning teams.
The difference was that Rickey was an even better player than Brock, who was a Hall of Famer. To begin with, despite leading the league in stolen bases eight times, Brock was caught stealing—or thrown out—25 percent of his attempts, or once every four tries. Rickey, who attempted over 500 more steals than Brock, was caught less than 20 percent of the time. In other words, Rickey took more chances and was significantly more likely to steal a base safely. And unlike Brock (and Bonds), Rickey had a great eye for the strike zone. He wouldn’t swing at balls very often unless they were strikes. The reward for his patience at the plate was that he walked often. Walks meant getting on base, and getting on base was the name of the game for a leadoff hitter. Getting on base meant a chance that Rickey would steal or score a run. In his twenty-five years in the Major Leagues, Henderson had a career on-base percentage of .400. For comparison’s sake, Brock’s career on-base percentage was .343. Rickey led the league in walks four times and in runs scored five times. He also hit close to 300 home runs, more than twice Brock’s figure.
Henderson, in short, would become the greatest leadoff hitter of all time. He would steal more bases than anyone to ever play the game. He would score more runs than anyone to ever play the game. He would walk more times than anyone to ever play the game. And he would hit more leadoff home runs than anyone to ever play the game. Not all of those records would last (most records don’t), but some still stand today.
Like Mays and Aaron before him, Henderson was a five-tool player: he hit for average, hit for power, ran the bases with speed, played strong defense in the outfield, and had a strong enough arm to throw runners out. He had the speed of a center fielder combined with the power of a third baseman. In his first full season in the majors, he led the league in steals with 100, a level he would reach three times. Starting with that first full year, he would go on to lead the league in steals seven straight seasons. In his fourth season he broke Brock’s single-season stolen base record of 118 by swiping a whopping 130.
The numbers, though, tell only a small portion of who Rickey Henderson was or what he meant to the game of baseball. He was the last of a generation of great base-stealers. He was one of the first, however, to spend his entire career in the new world of free agency, where players could change teams when their contracts expired. Rickey would become the most traveled Hall of Famer ever.
Henderson was dynamic and beloved in Oakland, the kind of player the fans came to the ballpark to see. However, as his contract came close to renewal, the A’s decided they did not want to pay Henderson the kind of salary they knew he would demand. In 1985, they traded Rickey to the Yankees, a team loaded with offensive power. Yankees outfielder Dave Winfield, who would be elected to the Hall of Fame, was on that team, as was Don Mattingly, the power-hitting, run-producing first baseman. Don Baylor, the slugging designated hitter and one-time league MVP, was there, too. Not surprisingly, the Yankees scored a lot of runs and won a lot of games.
Yet they did not pitch well enough to ever make the playoffs, and the fans—as well as Yankees owner George Steinbrenner—blamed Henderson and Winfield. They blamed Henderson for making a lot of money and for not playing in as many games as they thought he should. Henderson had always missed games because of his rugged style of play. Stealing bases, diving back to first, diving headfirst into second all put a lot of strain on Rickey’s body.
Henderson had posted great offensive numbers in New York, but he was not beloved by the fans or the team in New York. He was known for voicing his opinions about money. If he felt another player shouldn’t be making more than he was, he would say it, which made him unpopular with the players and the fans.
Midway through the 1989 season, Henderson was traded back to the Oakland A’s, who by that time were on their way to becoming one of the most talented teams of all time. Frustrated, feeling as though he was unfairly blamed for the Yankees not making the playoffs, Rickey took off, going on a tear that pushed the A’s, who had reached the World Series the previous year (only to lose to the Dodgers), into the playoffs.
With Rickey, the A’s were unstoppable. Rickey played 85 games with the 1989 A’s and had 90 hits. When the A’s went back to the postseason, Henderson almost singlehandedly destroyed Toronto in the American League Championship Series, hitting .400 with eight stolen bases and two home runs in a five-game wipeout. He was named MVP of the series.
In the World Series against San Francisco, Rickey hit .474 with a home run and three stolen bases in a four-game sweep.
The next year, Rickey continued the blistering performance he’d delivered in the playoffs. Over the full 1990 season, he won the American League MVP, hitting .325 with 28 home runs, 119 runs scored, and 65 stolen bases, leading the A’s back to the World Series. This time, though, the A’s were swept in four straight by the Reds.
The A’s made the playoffs again in 1992, but lost to Toronto in the ALCS. The next year, the guy who had earned the nickname “Man of Steal” was traded to Toronto and ended up standing on second base for one of the most famous moments in baseball history, when Joe Carter hit a World Series–winning home run to beat Philadelphia. Rickey was a champion again.
At the end of 1998, when he led the league in stolen bases again at age thirty-nine, Henderson was asked by reporters if he planned on retiring. He said “No, not now. Maybe when I’m fifty.” He sounded like Satchel Paige, the great Negro League pitcher who once said, “Maybe I’ll pitch forever,” and in 1965, at age fifty-nine, actually appeared in a Major League game for the Kansas City A’s!
So, on Rickey went, to the Mets for a couple of years, and then the Mariners, Padres, Angels, and even the Red Sox and Dodgers, who signed him at the ages of forty-three and forty-four. Finally, after thirty games in the 2003 season, the Dodgers released Henderson. He was forty-four years old and never officially retired from baseball. He always expected the phone to ring, f
or another team who needed help to give him a call.
It never did.
Rickey Henderson played for nine different teams, for San Diego twice and for Oakland on three different occasions. He played for both New York teams and both Los Angeles teams. Had he played for the Texas Rangers during the latter part of his career, he would have played for every team in the American League West! He played in the World Series three times and won it twice.
Over Rickey’s twenty-five years in the game, baseball began to realize how valuable and rare a talent he was. He ended up playing in four different decades. He amassed 3,055 hits. He was one of the game’s great personalities. And of course, he was the perfect lead-off hitter. In 2008, the perfect leadoff hitter wound up in the perfect place: the Hall of Fame.
Rickey Henderson
TOP TEN LIST
Rickey Henderson was the greatest leadoff hitter of all time. He was also the greatest base-stealer of all time. He led the league in steals eleven times, including seven years in a row from 1980–1986. Here are the all-time leaders in stolen bases:
Rickey Henderson—1,406
Lou Brock—938
Billy Hamilton (not the Billy Hamilton you may know from today’s game; this Billy Hamilton played from 1881 to 1901)—914
Ty Cobb—897
Tim Raines—808
Vince Coleman—752
Arlie Latham—742
Eddie Collins—741
Max Carey—738
Honus Wagner—723
Miracle!
THE 1914 BOSTON BRAVES
Linus van Pelt: “Winning isn’t everything, Charlie Brown . . .”
Charlie Brown: “That’s true, but losing isn’t anything!”
• • •
Six years after the Civil War ended, in 1871, Boston received its first professional baseball team. No, it wasn’t the Red Sox, which would come later, in 1901, but the Boston Red Stockings, a long-lost team nobody’s ever heard of.
Or have they?
The Red Stockings still exist today, but you might not realize it because they play in Atlanta as the Atlanta Braves. Between their inception in 1871 and 1914, the Red Stockings were known for two things: name changes and, after a successful beginning, losing badly. In 1883, they were known as the Beaneaters, a name they carried until 1907, when Bostonians began referring to them as the Doves and after that, the Rustlers, until one name, the Braves, finally stuck through the years in Boston and later when the franchise moved to Milwaukee in 1953 and then to Atlanta in 1966.
Name changes were not uncommon back then. Team nicknames were just that, and they changed often. The Red Sox were originally known as the Boston Pilgrims and the Boston Americans; the Yankees were the New York Highlanders.
What was uncommon was the way the Red Stockings-Beaneaters-Doves-Rustlers-Braves would lose games. Things started off well enough. In two of their first three years of existence, the Red Stockings finished in first place. In 1892, the Beaneaters won 102 games and beat the Cleveland Spiders in the Championship Series. They were first again in 1893 and again in 1897 and 1898.
Then came 1900, when they finished in fourth place, beginning a string of 14 straight seasons of “these-guys-are-the-worst-epic-fail” awfulness. The team finished in last place four straight years from 1909 to 1912 and in the 11 seasons from 1903 to 1913 never posted a winning record and never finished higher than fifth place.
The 1914 season figured to be much of the same. They started the season losing their first three games to the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies, lost 10 of their first 13 games, and before the spring weather arrived were already 10 games out of first place.
Another long summer of losing was on its way.
The Braves were afterthoughts, even in their own city. Two years earlier, in 1912, the Red Sox had built their brand-new ballpark, Fenway Park, while the Braves toiled at the old, run-down South End Grounds. One city, two very different teams.
In their first year at new Fenway Park, the Red Sox won the World Series. In 1914, while the Braves couldn’t win a game, the Red Sox had an upstart rookie pitcher named Babe Ruth, who seemed to have big plans for himself—and the ability to back it up. The Braves had two veteran players, Johnny Evers and Rabbit Maranville, who were once stars and would one day be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, but it was hard to notice them when the team was in last place.
On Monday, June 8, the Boston Braves lost 3–2 to Cincinnati, leaving them in last place with a record of 12–28, thirteen games behind the powerful New York Giants. A month later, on July 4, they lost both ends of a doubleheader to Brooklyn, had lost five games in a row, and were now fifteen games behind the Giants.
Season over. Wait till next year. Right?
Then, something began happening.
Two days later, on July 6, the Braves played another doubleheader against the Dodgers and won both games. And then they won again. And again and again. They won six in a row to get out of last place, and then won nine more in a row to finally reach the .500 mark.
Something else happened. The Braves abandoned their beat-up home field in August and struck a deal with the Red Sox, agreeing to play the remainder of their games at Fenway Park when the Red Sox were out of town.
On August 13, the Braves had climbed all the way to second place when they traveled to New York, to the famed Polo Grounds for a showdown with the first-place Giants. The Braves had shaved 10 games off the Giants’ lead. Boston then beat the New Yorkers three straight.
The Giants’ lead was now only 3 1/2 games. Could the team that never seemed to win actually take first place?
That’s exactly what happened on August 25, when the Braves tied the Giants for first place with a 7–1 win in Philadelphia. A new nickname had begun to take hold by this point: the “Miracle Braves.” And that miracle, it turns out, was just getting started.
By the end of the season, the Boston Braves had steamrolled everyone, beating the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers to end the season and winning the National League pennant by an amazing 10 1/2 games! They had gone 68–19 after July 4. No team in baseball history had come from so far behind to win the pennant by so many games—and none have, even to this day.
The pennant was one thing, but the World Series was another, as the Braves would play one of the great teams of all time: the Philadelphia Athletics (yes, the same Athletics that now call Oakland home). The A’s were stacked with great players across the diamond, from the pitchers Chief Bender and Eddie Plank to third baseman Frank “Home Run” Baker. The A’s had already won the World Series in 1911 and were the defending World Series champs, having beaten the Giants in 1913 to become winners once again. This was the team of manager Connie Mack’s famed “$100,000 infield” of Stuffy McInnis at first, Eddie Collins at second, Jack Barry at short, and Baker at third. This was an A’s team that seemingly couldn’t lose.
The truth was, they couldn’t win. The Miracle Braves, still the hottest team in baseball, destroyed the A’s in four straight games, winning the World Series.
The nickname was an appropriate one. Nobody could explain it. The Miracle Braves had been losers from 1903 to that strange summer of 1914, when they suddenly beat everyone and won the World Series. The next year, the Braves finished second, then third in 1916. Just as suddenly, they went back to losing. By 1917, they were the same old Braves, finishing 25 games out of first. They didn’t have a winning record again for another 15 years, failed to make the World Series again until 1948, and didn’t manage to win another World Series until 1957, four years after leaving Boston and moving to Milwaukee.
Over the years, there would be other miracles; In 1967, the Boston Red Sox reached the World Series after having not enjoyed a winning season since 1957. In 1969, the New York Mets went from having never had a winning season to winning the World Series. The Boston Braves, however, we
re the first. It didn’t make sense then, and it doesn’t make sense now, but for one summer, they were the best team in the world.
The 1914 Boston Braves
TOP TEN LIST
The 1914 Braves staged one of the greatest comebacks in the history of baseball, but they weren’t alone. Over the past one hundred years, more than a few teams have made spectacular comebacks that history will never forget. Remember, the season’s not over until it’s over.
1964 Cardinals: Trailed Philadelphia by 6 1/2 games with 12 to play. Won NL pennant and World Series.
2007 Rockies: 4 1/2 games back with only nine left to play. Reached World Series.
1993 Braves: 10 games behind San Francisco Giants on July 22. Won NL West Division on last day of season.
1978 Yankees: 14 games behind Red Sox on July 20. Beat Red Sox in one-game playoff to win division and went on to win the World Series.
1969 Mets: 9 1/2 games behind Cubs on August 13. Won World Series.
1951 Giants: Trailed Dodgers by 13 1/2 games on August 11. Reached World Series.
1995 Mariners: Trailed Angels by 13 1/2 games. Beat Angels in one-game playoff to win division.
2011 Rays: Trailed Red Sox by 9 games on September 4. Reached playoffs as the wild card team with a win on the final day of season that put them ahead of Boston.
1949 Yankees: Trailed Red Sox by one game with two to play. Won both games, the pennant, and later the World Series.
2011 Cardinals: Trailed Atlanta for the wild card by 8 1/2 games on September 6. Ended up winning World Series.
The Boys of Summer
THE 1947–55 BROOKLYN DODGERS
“IF IT WEREN’T FOR THE YANKEES . . .” How many times over the course of baseball history have those very words been uttered? By how many players? By how many teams? Over how many years? The New York Yankees aren’t just the greatest winners in the history of American sports, but they’re also the greatest party crashers in the history of sport, ruining the dreams of so many other good teams that would have been remembered as great if only they could have beaten the Yankees.
Legends: The Best Players, Games, and Teams in Baseball Page 4