Not Just a Dash for Cash

Rickey Henderson, considered by many to be the greatest leadoff hitter ever, wants to be recognized as a complete player.

With 56 stolen bases this season, he needs only 12 more in the Oakland Athletics’ final 25 games to surpass Lou Brock’s career record of 938. He also is closing in on the American League batting title and most-valuable-player award while serving as catalyst of the team with baseball’s best record.

How much more complete can he be?

For Henderson, 31, part of the answer is still a matter of dollars and sense.

Although it obviously has not impeded his performance--he’s hitting .325--Henderson believes that the four-year, $12-million contract he received last winter was outdated almost as soon as he signed it.

He said as much when teammate Jose Canseco was given his five-year, $23.5-million contract, and now Henderson’s ire has been raised by the four-year, $11.2-million deal that Lenny Dykstra recently received from the Philadelphia Phillies.

“I haven’t forced anything about my contract, but it’s about time I go upstairs,” Henderson said before the A’s left on their current trip.

“Now there’s another guy making almost as much as I am, and he can’t fill my shoes,” Henderson said. “I mean, what I do, I do every year.

“I don’t think it’s right for a guy like Dykstra to have one good year and have his contract skyrocket to the point that he’s making almost as much as I am.

“I’m not going to play for this ($3 million) next year.”

Citing the quickly rising market, A’s General Manager Sandy Alderson conceded that imbalance and inequity were certain to result in some cases. He suggested that there are ways to deal with Henderson’s situation, short of violating club policy against renegotiation, but he wasn’t specific.

There have been rumors that if the A’s sign recently acquired Willie McGee, who is eligible for free agency, they may then try to trade Henderson, but all of that is for the off-season--and speculation.

Said Alderson: “I’m not so naive to think Rickey may not have had lingering concerns he would ultimately express, but it hasn’t shown in his work. He’s been very professional.”

Said Manager Tony La Russa: “He’s done everything we’ve asked, and we’ve asked him to do a lot.”

A plastic hot dog hangs by a string from the side of Henderson’s locker. He is the sultan of style on a team known for its swagger, but no one here has suggested that he doesn’t come to play, that he doesn’t give 100% or that he’s a malingerer at times--criticisms raised during Henderson’s five years with the New York Yankees.

Said Willie Randolph, a teammate in New York and Oakland:

“That kind of unfair criticism always bothered me in New York and was the reason New York fans didn’t embrace Rickey. Sure, we all have days when we have to push ourselves to perform, but Rickey always comes to play. He hates to fail. He’s very competitive. He treats a card game like the World Series.

“It may be that he’s a little more settled playing at home now, but I don’t see any change in his approach.

“I think he’s at a point in his career where he wants to be recognized as the best and wants to win badly, to show everyone what kind of leader he can be.”

There has always been more to Henderson than the snatch catch, the headfirst slide, the fluorescent batting gloves, the verbal challenges he smugly lays on catchers during trips to the plate.

He is more than “the ultimate pest,” as Frank Robinson called him, and Robinson knows it.

“There have been other players who dominate, but not the way Rickey does,” the Baltimore Orioles’ manager said. “Rickey can hit the ball out of the ballpark, he can bunt for hits, and when he gets on, it’s almost impossible to throw him out and keep him from doing what he does best--and that’s steal bases.”

Henderson is dominant and destructive, capable of turning a game around with his bat or his legs. “A one-man show . . . the perfect player,” said the late Billy Martin, one of Henderson’s mentors.

History in motion, Henderson has never been as consistent as since his reacquisition by the A’s in June 1989. Consider:

--In 85 games with the A’s last year, Henderson had a combined 160 hits and walks, batting .294, with 52 stolen bases and 72 runs. He led the league with an on-base percentage of .411 and responded to the postseason spotlight with a memorable nine-game performance, getting 15 hits, including three home runs, stealing 11 bases, driving in eight runs and scoring 12.

--This year, in what has been his finest all-round season, Henderson leads the AL in hitting, steals, runs (100) and on-base percentage (.439). He is second only to Cecil Fielder in slugging percentage at .583 and is tied for sixth in home runs with 24, having hit five as the first-inning leadoff hitter to push his major league-record total to 45.

Said Henderson: “I have always wanted to be recognized as a complete player. I have always wanted people to say he does everything well--not just that he’s a great base stealer, which I obviously am.

“I feel like I’ve gotten some of that recognition and respect here, but that hasn’t always been the case.

“I mean, when I’m healthy, I feel like I can do anything, that I can’t be stopped. But the problem is, people never know when you’re not healthy. I had managers in New York tell me that my 80% was better than most players’ 100%, so I gave the 80% and was criticized for not giving the 100% that only a few people knew I wasn’t healthy enough to give.

“People will always be tearing me down, but I don’t worry about it anymore. I mean, I’m called a hotdog because of the snatch catch, but Willie Mays had the basket catch, and no one called Mays a hotdog. I’m trying to have fun, that’s the way the game has to be for me.

“If some pitchers don’t like what I do, I don’t care. I want them thinking I can hurt them more than one way. Bobby Bonds once told me, ‘You’re the guy who opens the game, so concentrate on hitting the ball hard, putting some fear into the pitcher.’

“That’s why I’m looking to open the game with a home run if it’s there.”

Henderson, 5 feet 10 and 160 pounds, has 162 homers and five seasons with 16 or more. He has scored 72 or more runs in each of his 11 full major league seasons and was averaging 84 steals a season at the start of this one.

Henderson’s mother once told her son that the only way to play baseball was to get his uniform dirty, which launched him on a career of basepath crime.

“I always tried to get in a situation where I had to slide so that I could go home dirty,” Henderson said. “And I’d get dirtiest by sliding headfirst.”

The statistics document that he is head and shoulders above other legendary base stealers:

--If Henderson doesn’t break Brock’s record this year, he seems certain to do it next season, his 13th in the majors. It took Brock 19 seasons to set the record.

--When Henderson stole his 893rd base, breaking Ty Cobb’s American League record earlier this season, it was in his 1,515th game. Cobb stole 892 bases in 3,034 games over 24 years.

--Although Maury Wills became the first player to steal 100 or more bases in a season when he got 104 in 1962, he had only three other seasons of 50 or more steals. Henderson has stolen 50 or more bases in nine seasons, 100 or more three times.

--Brock set a then-season record of 118 steals in 1974 but stole 75 or more in only one other season. Henderson has stolen 75 or more seven times, including a record 130 in 1982.

Despite the hotdog reputation, Henderson seldom runs just to run. In fact, he has stolen 75% of his bases within a four-run span--his team either up by two runs or down by two.

“If he ran every time the steal was there, he’d have another 30 this year alone, but he doesn’t do it,” La Russa said. “He runs according to what the game dictates and has since he got here, at least.”

Said Henderson: “People don’t think I’m paying attention, but I am. I’m studying all the time. I analyze the pitchers, catchers, even hitters. All I did when I stole 130 was run. I’m a lot smarter now.”

Smart enough, he said, to understand that staying healthy and injury-free is his primary goal in the final month of the regular season.

“I want to break the record because I set out to do it when I first came to the major leagues, and how often do you accomplish a goal like that,” he said, adding that from the start, Brock “saw my confidence and intensity and has been predicting I would be the one to do it.

“I’d also like to do it this year, to get it done, and I’ll go after it if I have a chance, but there’s no pressure, no timetable. I’m not quitting at the end of the year. The important thing is staying healthy, and my leg is still not completely strong. I’ll have a lot of chances to break the record, but you only get so many chances to win a pennant and World Series.”

Henderson said he is taking the same approach in his pursuit of his first batting title and MVP award. The shot at them, he said, will help him keep his head in the game, but he doesn’t want to be frustrated again as he was in 1981, when he was upset in MVP voting by a relief pitcher, Rollie Fingers of the Milwaukee Brewers.

“To this day, I don’t understand how a relief pitcher could beat out an everyday player and I probably never will,” Henderson said. “I told them they could keep the MVP, I didn’t care if I ever won it.”

In other times and with other players, there may have been moments when Henderson would have had trouble getting support--MVP and otherwise--in his own clubhouse, but third baseman Carney Lansford seemed to sum up the feelings of the A’s.

“Call it maturity, but he’s a different player now than he was when he was here before,” Lansford said. “He might even be a better player, and he was a great player then. He plays hurt, he plays hard. He’s been a perfect fit here--like lightning in a bottle.”