Breaking Balls: Revenu... (12/24)
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January 8, 2004 Breaking BallsThe Man of Steal
We don't realize how good some players are, especially when they're changing the game. Babe Ruth is denigrated by some for playing when baseball was segregated. But Ruth in some ways remade the game. There were eight teams in the American League in 1918. On each team, there were about twelve to fourteen guys who got significant playing time (over 100 plate appearances). So figure about sixty regulars, and around hundred total non-pitcher batters who got playing time. Year Ruth HR League HR % of league HRs by Ruth 1918 11 96 11% 1919 29 240 12% 1920 54 369 15% 1921 59 477 12% 1922 35 525 7% 1923 41 442 9% 1924 46 397 12% 1925 25 533 5% 1926 47 424 11% 1927 60 439 14% 1928 54 483 11% 1929 46 595 8% 1930 49 673 7% 1931 46 576 8% 1932 41 707 6% 1933 34 607 6% 1934 22 688 3%Or, in another way: Year Avg HR for Ruth HR non-Ruth regular 1918 1 11 1919 4 29 1920 5 54 1921 7 59 1922 8 35 1923 7 41 1924 6 46 1925 9 25 1926 6 47 1927 6 60 1928 7 54 1929 9 46 1930 11 49 1931 9 46 1932 11 41 1933 10 34 1934 11 22That's utter dominance. If you cloned Babe Ruth today and managed to get him through adolescence (and I would wish you good luck), there should be no doubt he'd be a star. This got me thinking, though--who else have I been missing? And the first thought was Rickey. I'm a little ashamed to admit this now, but I used to hate Rickey Henderson. I grew up following the Giants and the Mariners, and Rickey beat the hell out of the Mariners on his way to making the Giants look stupid. And growing up in a rival city, you hear all the bad and not much of the good: Rickey's arrogant, but not that he's got a sense of humor. Rickey changed baseball, too. Not for the better, unless you enjoy the motions of throwing back to first 20 times to make sure Edgar Martinez doesn't steal second late to ignite a come-from-behind rally in an 8-1 game the M's are losing. We haven't seen much base-stealing lately, for reasons that manage to hurt the understanding of how great both players were. Ruth's marks don't seem so impressive when even the bat boy hits 10 out a year. And power has eclipsed speed. While some (Luis Castillo,Juan Pierre) have gotten into the 60s, it's largely forgotten that there were players like Henderson and Vince Coleman who reeled off a series of years where they swiped over 100 bases a year. We can do the same thing with Henderson we did with Ruth and see: Year SB League SB Rickey's share 1979 33 1497 2% 1980 100 1455 7% 1981 56 913 6% 1982 130 1394 9% 1983 108 1539 7% 1984 66 1304 5% 1985 80 1461 5% 1986 87 1470 6% 1987 41 1734 2% 1988 93 1512 6% 1989 77 1587 5% 1990 65 1503 4% 1991 58 1469 4% 1992 48 1704 3% 1993 53 1549 3%Not quite as shockingly impressive. But where Ruth had eight teams in his league, Henderson had 14 and the DH on each of them, increasing the number of non-pitchers coming to the plate that could run. So compare Rickey to what an average regular would have picked up Year Average SB for Rickey's SB non-Rickey regulars 1979 12 33 1980 11 100 1981 7 56 1982 10 130 1983 11 108 1984 10 66 1985 11 80 1986 11 87 1987 14 41 1988 11 93 1989 12 77 1990 12 65 1991 11 58 1992 13 48 1993 12 53Um, so yeah, there you go. Rickey was just as good a base-stealer in his time as Ruth was a power hitter. It's cool to read box scores from 1982, when he was unstoppable. He didn't steal a base in his first couple of games and then on April 8th, Henderson went 2-3 with a double, drew five walks, and stole his first base of the season. And then he was off: he stole 12 more, at least a base for every day he went to a ballpark until the 19th (one day he didn't swipe one in both halves of a double header). Reading game accounts from that season makes me imagine the frustration of facing Henderson that year. Henderson went 0-2 against the Brewers one day, so they managed to not give him a double (or one of his 10 home runs). Rickey did walk three times though, stealing second base twice and third base once. If you're catcher Ned Yost, wouldn't you be tempted to bean him to save three pitches and then wave him on to second to save yourself the throw? What's funny about this is that my turn-around on Henderson came from the rivalries that blinded me to his achievements when they happened. When Vince Coleman was briefly a Mariner, I looked him up and was shocked to see some of his totals when he was rocket-powered and stealing for the Cardinals. And as I saw more of Barry Bonds after he became a Giant, I started to think past Rickey's differently-flavored rep as a jerk. Rickey got a bad rap early for being a showboat, and once a suitable hat rack had been constructed for him, everyone kept tossing their caps at it. Rickey's much-mocked "now I am the greatest" line is only arrogant when you take it as a couple words from a speech, and don't listen to or read the whole thing--or even much more than that snippet. I've also heard that he was dumb, but since then I've also heard great things about how he's an intense observer of the game. Other players he's talked to about stealing bases talk about it with glazed eyes, as if Henderson had laid bare the secrets of the world and they'd only had time to grasp a couple of answers before their time was up. And you can read the Q&A we did with him--Rickey's no dummy. Who cares if he's up at the plate telling himself "Oh, Rickey shouldn't have swung at that, Rickey waits on that pitch" after a bad cut? I certainly wouldn't like any of my many quirks to be turned into something everyone believes defines me entirely. Rickey Henderson changed the game like few players have. Twenty years after his 130-steal season, teams still employ tactics developed and refined to try and contain a 23-year old who ran like no one before him or since.
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