COMMENTARY : A Master Base Stealer Knows His Escape Routes, Too

A savvy baseball player can find escape clauses in any contract he signs. The contract may be binding for four years at $12 million, and the escape clauses may be written in invisible ink. But the eyes of a savvy player decipher these.

Rickey Henderson is today’s savvy baseball player. He fools us with his rapid-Rickey dialect.

But, as Henderson talks and talks and talks and talks, you finally begin to understand that he knows what he’s talking about. He remembers hearing Billy Martin, some 10 years ago, tell him that he wanted to manage the Yankees again, but the A’s would not release him from his contract. Martin made some noise, demolished some of the clubhouse scenery and ran up his expense account.

Within months, Martin went back to manage the Yankees. He got released from his contract, all right. The A’s fired him.

From this, Henderson learned.

“I guarantee, if I’m not happy, I’m out -- one way or another,” he said. “There’s a way I can do anything, if I have to go out there and be a bum.”

Understand, that is not a threat. The A’s and Rickey haven’t come to that. Yet. And it would not seem to be in the interests of the A’s to do so. The A’s lost that battle in 1984. Rickey signed a five-year $8.6 million contract with the Yankees; the A’s contracted a merry-go-round at the top of their lineup.

Rickey would win again today. If the A’s don’t want to supplement the contract Rickey signed just last December, he’ll demand a trade. If he doesn’t get one, he’ll be a bum. If he does get one, somebody else will pay him what he’s worth -- in today’s market, lots more than $3 million a year.

That, to Rickey, is the issue. It’s not: “Jose Canseco is getting $4.6 million a year, so I should get $4.7.” It is, to paraphrase: “If Jose Canseco is worth $4.6 million, then I must be worth a lot more than $3 million.”

“People say, ‘Rickey’s greedy,’ ” he said. “I say, ‘So what?’ I’m worth more. Nobody in baseball is worth as much more than me as the guys above me are making.”

He’s right, and the A’s know it.

Henderson didn’t want to appear greedy last fall, and he knowingly signed with the A’s for less money than he might have gotten elsewhere. He didn’t know, on that December day, HOW MUCH less than he might have gotten elsewhere. For that, he partly blames his agent, Richie Bry.

His association with Bry ended shortly after the deal was signed. Then he spent three days in the hospital with an upset stomach, fearing that second thoughts about the contract signing had given him an ulcer.

The stomach’s fine, now; Rickey’s not. He wants what he deserves. And he doesn’t really care if you think he’s greedy. After all, is anyone really planning to boo him as he breaks Lou Brock’s stolen-base record?

Of course not. But, you say, a contract is a contract. Henderson could have broken both his legs, and the A’s still would have paid him his $12 million. Should he not suck up the salary disparity, in spite of the fact that he’s having one of his best seasons?

The A’s are not sure that he should. You see, they approached Canseco about this five-year deal -- even though Canseco would be ineligible for the free-agent market until after the 1991 season. They wanted to make him happy. They wanted to pay him what he deserved. They wanted to right their salary structure.

They know this deal renders Rickey’s sub-structural.

“We are sensitive to the potential disparity between Rickey’s contract and that of Jose,” A’s general manager Sandy Alderson said. “On the other hand, some of the disparity is explainable.”

You could explain away a disparity of about half a million a year. That would make Rickey worth $4 million instead of $3 million. This year. And the A’s ought to pay him what he’s worth.

Rickey was a $12 million bargain. He knows it and the A’s know it. So, they’ll talk it out.

The A’s must consider Rickey’s feelings. Their swift leadoff man knows the escape routes.