“This is Rickey calling on behalf of Rickey. Rickey wants to play baseball.”

With Henderson going to the Hall of Fame, now is as good a time as any to relive the greatest Rickey stories of all time. This profile in The New Yorker a few years back was also pretty excellent.

I’m not quite sure why, but I always liked Henderson. When I was a kid, about the only thing I could do capably on the field was stealing bases. I wasn’t fast, and I ran more or less like you’d expect a duck to run if it had slightly longer legs, but I could easily take second or third base whenever the ball dribbled through the catcher’s legs to the backstop. And so in 5th grade, I senselessly tried to model my batting stance after Henderson’s, until my coach asked me, and I quote, “What the fuck kind of stance is that?” Not having a good answer — and “It’s just davenoon being davenoon” would not have been one — I resumed my regular habit of striking out while merely looking like your bog standard, uncoordinated 10-year-old, instead of your bog standard, uncoordinated 10-year-old with a vestibular defect.