At 42, Henderson Is Steal of Season

There was the recent night at the triple-A ballpark in Portland, Ore., when Rickey Henderson learned a bit of trivia, helping put his amazing career in perspective.

The question: Who was the oldest player to make his major league debut?

The answer: Satchel Paige, 42.

Now, sitting by his locker in the San Diego Padres’ clubhouse at Qualcomm Stadium, Henderson smiles broadly as he tells that story.

He, too, is 42, a seemingly rejuvenated veteran of 22 major league seasons who is again dashing through the record book on his way to the Hall of Fame, suddenly igniting the resurgent Padres, who signed him almost as a favor after a winter in which he had no other offers.

“People ask me how long I can keep playing and I tell them there is no timetable,” Henderson said. “I’m blessed. I love playing the game. With all the pounding I’ve taken from the stolen bases, I still wake up in the morning with no aches and pains. I feel like I can do the things I did when I was 25. I feel I can go on for years. I guess you can say that Rickey is just a Satchel Paige-type guy.”

Rickey is that and more. Paige cautioned against looking back because someone might be gaining on you. Henderson isn’t worried about anyone gaining on him because he knows “it will be a long time before anyone gets a sniff” at some of his records, some of the records on which he is doing the gaining.

“The last week or so, he’s been as good as I’ve ever seen him,” said Tony Gwynn, who turned 41 Wednesday, which means the Padres have a pair of corner outfielders totaling 83, believed to be a major league record. “He’s hitting the ball all over the place and running like he’s 22. It’s as if he’s always on third base with no outs, giving us easy opportunities.”

The Padres have won 11 of their last 15 games, and Henderson had hit in 14 of his last 16.

In 24 games with the Padres, after a spring training of about a week in Arizona and nine games at triple A, the best leadoff man in history had a .291 batting average and .418 on-base percentage. He had drawn 14 walks, scored 18 runs and stolen seven bases in eight attempts.

With the Padres at 18-18 and only 2 1/2 games behind the high-priced Dodgers in the National League West, Manager Bruce Bochy credited Henderson for the jump start.

“He’s playing terrific baseball, and it’s contagious,” Bochy said. “Even when he struggled after first coming up, there was no sense of panic on his part, no loss of confidence. Guys feed off that.”

Henderson is building a third decade of major league confidence. Then again, he has never lacked it. There has always been a flair to Rickey, a degree of cockiness. He has worn out his welcome at times while playing for seven organizations--he has had four stints with his hometown Oakland Athletics and is in his second with the Padres--but he has long been one of the few players who can singularly control a game when turned on, and there is no denying his accomplishments:

* Since breaking Lou Brock’s record of 938 stolen bases in 1991, Henderson has pushed the total to 1,377.

* He surpassed Babe Ruth’s walk record of 2,062 on April 25 and is now at 2,074.

* With 2,196 runs, Henderson needs only 49 to tie Ty Cobb’s record of 2,245. He also needs only 63 hits for 3,000 and 16 homers for 300, having hit a record 78 in a first-inning leadoff role. He is also one of only five players to have reached base 5,000 times, achieved with a first-inning double last Sunday.

“There are things I still want to accomplish, the records are still a motivation,” Henderson said, adding that the record for runs is the most important because “that’s what baseball is all about and that’s what I’ve been all about. I’ve been a winner, and you can’t win without runs.”

Of course, he said, “If I wasn’t getting on base as often as I have, and stealing as often, I wouldn’t be in position to score as many runs as I have, so Rickey is about all of that as well.”

It appeared last winter that we wouldn’t be hearing much more from Rickey on Rickey.

He had talked, and sulked, his way into a release by the New York Mets last May and was signed by the Seattle Mariners to be their primary left fielder. He stole 31 bases while batting .238 in 92 games, hit .286 in 14 playoff at-bats and then retreated to his Oakland and Arizona homes to wait for a phone call that never came.

“It was as if the game turned its back on a first-ballot hall of famer,” agent Jeff Borris said. “We told people that money wasn’t an issue, he was willing to go to the minors. Rickey has so much pride that if he didn’t think he could play, he would be the first to take the uniform off, but it looked like our only option would be an independent team. Eventually, it was almost like [Padre General Manager] Kevin Towers was willing to do us a favor.”

Henderson signed a minor league contract with San Diego on March 20. He is making $300,000, only $100,000 above the big league minimum.

“First of all, we had concerns about our outfield depth,” Towers said. “We hadn’t traded for [Mark] Kotsay yet, there were no guarantees with Gwynn and we considered Eric Owens as more of a super sub.

“With Rickey, we kind of said, ‘Hey, what do we have to lose?’ We felt he might have a point to prove and be pretty hungry, close to those milestones. We couldn’t know he would play better than he did in his first time here--and that was five years ago.”

Henderson said he was puzzled and disappointed by the lack of interest but didn’t consider retirement because he was determined “to go out playing the game like I played it years ago. I didn’t have a job, but I trained as if I did. I knew there wasn’t 25 guys on every team better than me, so now maybe people will open their eyes and realize it’s not the age that should eliminate the player. It’s satisfying, but the only person I had to prove anything to was myself, in that I was right about what I thought I was still capable of doing.”

Henderson may not know the names of all his teammates and never has--he refers to locker neighbor Phil Nevin as “the third baseman” and led off third in a recent game yelling at Ryan Klesko, the batter, “Drive me in, T”--but he is still capable of doing it on the field because he works at it off the field. He has been on the disabled list only four times and maintains the body of the star high school running back he once was, he said, by staying off the streets and doing 150 push-ups and sit-ups every night before bed. He also tries to eat sushi two or three times a week, thriving on the protein in sea urchins.

Third-base coach Tim Flannery, 43, complimented Henderson on his energy after he arrived at the base recently on a steal.

“I don’t know how you’re doing it,” Flannery said. “I’m sore just from coaching this base.”

How does he still do it? Sea urchins may be part of the explanation but being a Satchel Paige type may be a bigger part.