That Bitch was Special: Howard Bryant's Rickey Henderson Book
It's remarkable how so much of baseball in the middle of the 20th century is defined by the actions of Black players. Jackie Robinson breaks the colour bar in 1947, ushering in the first era of integration. Hank Aaron breaks Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1973, bookending the first era of integration — a Black player breaks the most sacred of all records set by the most sacred of all players.
Curt Flood challenges the reserve clause in 1969, ultimately arguing his case in Flood v. Kuhn in front of the US Supreme Court in 1972. Flood lost the case (and his career), but it led to the establishment of free agency.
Reggie Jackson was one of the first, and splashiest, of the big free agent contracts in the era following Flood, contracts that have come to define the game. On Nov. 29, 1976, Jackson, the prize catch in the first-ever batch of MLB free agents, signed a five-year, $3.5 million contract with the New York Yankees. Reggie was a star and the Yankees, like how Yankees do, threw money at him.
That tidy package of information juxtaposed held up against the fact only 7.2% of MLB's Opening Day rosters in 2022 were Black. How has a group that once driven the change all but disappeared?
It was those kinds of things that circled in my head as I read Howard Bryant’s Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original (2022). Rickey Henderson was born and came of age post-integration, from a generation of Black players that grew up knowing that their race wasn’t going to prevent them from playing Major League Baseball.
The best thing about Bryant’s books, other than the fact that they are so well-written and full of detail, is the context that is provided. This book is about Henderson the player: the eye-popping stats, the style, and what he contributed to the sport. But it's also about the time he played. This era, the 70’s, and 80s marked by being the first era of free agency but before steroids, is an under-explored one by baseball writers in general. An examination of it is certainly welcome.
Bryant also explores the Oakland Rickey grew up in, and the book, in some ways, is also about the second great migration west of the mid-20th century. Black Americans left the segregationist South for better employment opportunities in California.
Baseball, as it often has, reflects changes in American culture and history, and also moved west. Starting in 1957 with the Dodgers moving out of Ebbets Field in Brooklyn to Los Angeles, and the Giants moving out of the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan to San Franciso.
Oakland, and the Bay Area in general, was fertile ground for developing baseball players in the ’50s and ’60s. Oakland was also the birthplace of the Black Panthers, and it was that rich environment that begat Rickey Henderson, in addition to several other notable baseball players.
And now, a place once so fertile is having trouble keeping its ball club, as the Athletics are seriously considering a move to Las Vegas. The contrast is notable.
In some ways, a book about Rickey Henderson might seem easy to write. “Rickeyisms” has legendary status and the man’s speech patterns and behaviour are almost as famous as his base stealing. The book could be a rehashing of those stories, padded with stories about the arrogance and aloofness that the media was preoccupied with while Henderson played. Henderson could almost be a caricature.
But that isn’t this book. It’s not a soft portrait of this player. Respect is given for his greatness as a baseball player, but it doesn’t shy away from the more challenging parts of Henderson’s life and persona. For instance, Rickey is completely preoccupied with money and sees so many interactions and relationships as transactional. Money is respect; money is a means and an end, something that either continues or concludes a conversation; money is a symbol within relationships. It’s relentless.
Henderson is a player that hasn’t been examined in a nuanced way very often and this book does that. It’s a well-written and refined book about one of baseball’s true originals.
P.S. It’s also, at times, hilarious. Ron Washington, describing Rickey Henderson, “That bitch was special.” In my headcanon, “Rickey Henderson: That Bitch was Special” is the official title of the book.
Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original.
By Howard Bryant.
I was originally waiting for this book to show up on the shelves in Canada before writing about it. The book came out in June and there is no sign. It’s available digitally at Indigo.ca if you want to buy from a Canadian source, but the physical book didn’t come north.
Now it’s time for some disclosure. I did a little bit of work on this book.
Howard Bryant asked me to be his Toronto researcher, specifically in terms of Rickey’s time on the ‘93 team. The key context for that was Rickey was a key part of Oakland A’s teams that dismantled the hopes of glory for the Blue Jays teams preceding the ‘92 breakthrough and he was brought over. It also marked a change in Rickey’s career. Henderson had once been a centrepiece on longer-term contracts in Oakland and New York. The trade to Toronto was the first stop in what defined the rest of his career: short contracts, role-playing, and record-setting.
My major contribution was my interview with John Olerud. It was the summer of 2018 and the Blue Jays were celebrating the 25th anniversary of the ‘93 team a bunch of alumni were in attendance, including Olerud.
Olerud is the co-star in one of the most famous “Rickeyism” of all time, and I wanted to get the context from the source. And the most enjoyable thing about it was that this notoriously reticent ball player talked to me for a solid ten minutes, which he seemed to enjoy. People enjoy talking about amusing co-workers as a rule.
Reading the interview as it appears in the book was a bit surreal. I used to go out to events more often, I used to go to Toronto and hustle a little bit and try to get my name out there. COVID has dried a lot of that up, so talking about it now is a little strange.
It feels like a different person did it.
2Pac’s breakthrough, featuring Digital Underground’s Shock G and Money-B, two legendary Oakland MCs.
Shock G died in 2021 of a drug overdose.
Another Oakland original.