On May 1, 1991, Rickey Henderson reached the mountaintop. On a Wednesday afternoon in Oakland, California, on a field that would one day don his name behind home plate, Henderson stole the 939th base of his major-league career, passing Lou Brock and claiming sole possession of the top spot on the all-time leaderboard.
Brock had become the gold standard of base-stealing in the 1970s, setting a new single-season mark with 118 bags in 1974. As Brock’s big league career concluded in 1979, Henderson’s commenced. Just three years after the A’s had drafted him out of a high school located just 10 miles northeast of their home ballpark, Henderson made his major-league debut as a 20-year-old. Having already racked up a staggering number of steals in the minors as a teenager, Henderson demonstrated the rare talent and tenacity necessary to topple Brock’s titanic stolen base total some day. Twelve years later, he did exactly that.
Henderson died at the age of 65 on Saturday. As the undisputed greatest leadoff hitter of all time who played for an astonishing 25 seasons, Henderson’s enormous legacy is difficult to distill into any single statistic or highlight. But if there is one image from Henderson’s career that is likely to sustain for generations, it’s that iconic shot in the moment following Steal No. 939: Henderson, having removed the base from the infield dirt, thrusting it toward the sky to signal a career’s worth of hard work. So many times before, Henderson had arrived at the stolen bag with speed and purpose only to pop back up and remain focused on his expedited journey around the basepaths. This steal, though, was meant to be savored.
Henderson’s record-breaking steal came in the early stages of what would end up being his 10th All-Star season. At that point, Henderson was already an all-time great. The year prior, he had produced one of the most productive all-around seasons in MLB history — 28 home runs, 65 steals, a 1.016 OPS and 10.2 fWAR — en route to the AL MVP award. This, following an epic run in October of 1989 — Henderson hit .441/.568/.941 with 11 steals in nine postseason games — that culminated in his first World Series title with Oakland. Before that, Henderson had been one of the biggest stars in the Bronx with the Yankees for four seasons. And of course, all along the way, Henderson had stolen a ridiculous amount of bases. He led the American League in seven consecutive years in the category while peaking at a record 130 in 1982, blasting beyond Brock’s previous single-season mark set eight years earlier. Henderson averaged 84 steals a year in the ’80s, keeping him on an excellent pace to eventually chase down Brock, which he ultimately did not long after he turned 32 years old.
With so much already accomplished up to that point, Henderson passing Brock in 1991 could’ve reasonably been the final chapter of a legendary career. But Rickey wasn’t finished. He had so much more to give — and so many more bases to steal.
XXXX
In addition to his eye-popping stolen base totals and unrivaled showmanship, the other defining characteristic of Henderson’s remarkable career is its tremendous longevity. Only Pete Rose, Carl Yastrzemski and Henry Aaron played more major-league games or logged more plate appearances than Henderson’s 3,081 regular-season contests and 13,346 trips to the plate. And while a handful of hurlers have reached a quarter century of big league experience, Henderson is one of only two position players since 1900 to appear in parts of 25 major-league seasons. The other is Hall of Famer Eddie Collins, whose final MLB season in 1930 came 28 years before Henderson was born. Having debuted in 1979 and finished his career in 2003 with the Dodgers, Henderson is one of just three hitters in MLB history, along with Ted Williams and Willie McCovey, to hit a home run in four different decades. One of Henderson’s first career home runs came against Mike Marshall, who was once teammates with Al Kaline; one of Henderson’s final career home runs came against Ted Lilly, who would eventually become teammates with Clayton Kershaw.
His outstanding durability and unwavering commitment to continue demonstrating his otherworldly abilities as he aged afforded Henderson the opportunity to impact a wide array of big-league organizations beyond just the one in Oakland he is most famously — and appropriately — associated with. For the first 14-plus years of Henderson’s career, he exclusively played for the A’s and Yankees. But a trade to Toronto in 1993 was the first in a series of transactions over the next decade that ultimately landed Henderson with a total of nine different teams by the end of his career, among the highest total of any Hall of Famer. That first deal brought Henderson to the eventual World Series champions, as Henderson was on base when Joe Carter hit his memorable walk-off home run to win it all for the Blue Jays in 1993. He starred for the Mets at age 40 in 1999. He reached the ALCS with the Mariners in 2000. He collected his 3,000th hit with the Padres in 2001, and stole his final base with the Dodgers in 2003. The last decade of Henderson’s career also featured cameos in Anaheim and Boston, as well as third and fourth stints with Oakland.
Had Henderson’s career abruptly stopped for whatever reason after he had passed Brock, there’s a good chance no one ever would have caught him. Instead, Henderson kept on running for another decade, stacking a stupendous amount of steals on top of what was already likely an unreachable total. Henderson stole 467 bases after passing Brock. For reference, since baseball was integrated in 1947, only 23 players have stolen at least 467 bases over their entire careers.
Henderson’s 1,406 career steals still stands as one of the game’s most unimpeachable records. For years, the prospect of any player even remotely approaching Henderson’s final total seemed downright laughable. The unbreakable nature of Rickey’s records resurfaced recently when MLB instituted new rules in hopes of reinvigorating a running game that had largely gone dormant across the league. The bases were enlarged and restrictions were put on pitchers’ ability to make pickoff attempts, in theory enhancing baserunners’ chances when attempting stolen bases. In one of MLB’s commercials promoting the new rules in April 2023, actor Bryan Cranston suggests that this new era of baseball could enable this generation of players to “run like Rickey,” an explicit reference to the standard-bearer of stolen bases, hinting at hopes that his electric style of play could return in some capacity.
Stolen bases have indeed risen across the league over the past two seasons relative to recent campaigns, as the league had hoped. But so far, any notion that Henderson’s records could be in peril remain remarkably farfetched.
Consider Reds dynamo Elly De La Cruz. No player has seized the opportunities present within the new state of play more than Cincinnati’s shortstop. De La Cruz’s spectacular combination of sizzling raw speed and an aggressive mentality has enabled him to steal 102 bases over the past two seasons, the most in MLB — all before turning 23 years old. It’s a tremendous achievement in the early stages of an ultra-promising career.
But compare the start of De La Cruz’s career — with the added benefits of baseball’s altered base-stealing landscape factored in — to the beginning of Henderson’s. Rickey stole 33 bases in 89 games as a 20-year-old rookie. The next season, he stole 100 in 158 games. Before he turned 23, Henderson already had 189 steals to his name — a massive margin ahead of where De La Cruz sits now with his 23rd birthday coming up next month. And if Rickey’s edge over Elly early in their careers isn’t damning enough for De La Cruz — or any other player’s — dim hopes of ever chasing down Henderson, here’s an even more astounding parallel:
De La Cruz led MLB in 2024 with 67 steals and was caught 16 times. He was 22.
Henderson led MLB in 1998 with 66 steals and was caught 13 times. He was 39.
Speed wasn’t Henderson’s only tool — it was the headlining feature of an all-around skill set that made him one of the greatest players of all time. Henderson’s breathtaking quickness and fearlessness on the basepaths virtually redefined the limits of one of the sport’s most fundamental features. And no matter what rules the league changes in hopes of spawning another generation of fearless baserunners, the reality is that we’ll almost certainly never see anyone quite like the “Man of Steal” ever again.
