The Greatest of All Time

Congratulations to Rickey Henderson, who, if Al gives out Cloaks of Immortality to baseball players, would surely get one.

I've been trying to find an embed-able video link, but you can watch his induction speech here.

Money quote:

"My dream was to play football for the Oakland Raiders," Henderson said. "But my mother thought I would get hurt playing football, so she chose baseball for me. I guess moms do know best."

I bet if Rickey had played football, he'd have been one of the greatest return men of all time. And probably a shut-down corner, known for his speed and trash-talk skills.

Anyway, congratulations, Rickey. I'll never forget watching you play.

P.S. The Raiders better have a Rickey Henderson day at the coliseum this season.

Hater of the Week, Literary Allusion Edition: Tom Weir

This blog item started well enough, discussing Rickey Henderson's having his number retired by the A's. Then, Tom Weir goes on to muse about other franchises, like the Celtics and Yankees, that have retired so many numbers (because they have had so many great players) that they're running out of them. Then, we get this:

Mathematically speaking, the teams in the best shape are the Dallas Cowboys and the Oakland Raiders. Both have great traditions (Or at least the Raiders did, until Al Davis started imitating Captain Queeg), but neither has ever retired a number.

Captain Queeg? Are you kidding me? Sure, he's weird, and his men hated him, but he wasn't exactly a great Captain. The U.S.S. Caine was his first command, and he fucked it up. Al Davis, when he took over the Franchise, Dominated for parts of three decades. Loyal CLOAK readers (both of them!) will know that if Al can be compared to a figure in literature, it's to Simon Bolivar in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel, The General in His Labyrinth. Just read that description of the General and tell me that doesn't sound like Al, other than the premature aging.

Rickey Henderson in HOF: The Greatest Player I Ever Saw. (UPDATED)

We take a break from the playoffs and Raiders' coaching search to point out this: Tim Kurkjian has a wonderful article on Rickey Henderson's election to the Hall of Fame over the weekend, coming to the conclusion that Rickey was too good. Rickey might also be the funniest baseball player of all time:

Everyone has his favorite Rickey story, none of which is flattering: He framed, but didn't cash, a $100,000 signing-bonus check because, he said, "I was waiting for the interest rate to go up." He asked for a Winnebago as part of his contract with the Mets. When some player on the bus said that players with tenure got to sit wherever they wanted, Rickey said, "Tenure? I got 15 years in the big leagues." And there is the apocryphal story about John Olerud, who always wore a helmet in the field because he suffered a brain aneurysm in college. When Olerud joined Henderson with the Mets, Henderson told him that he'd played with a player in Seattle who also wore a helmet when he was in the field.

"Rickey," Olerud supposedly said (but really didn't), "that was me!"

In 1983, the Contra Costa County library had a summer reading program. I was 9. If you read a certain number of books in a certain amount of time, you got a card stamped, and they gave a free ticket to an Oakland A's game. My mom took my brother and me to the library twice a week. This was how I went to my first major league baseball game. The A's were playing the Indians. In the bottom of the ninth, the Indians ahead 2-1, Rickey came up and hit a three-run, walk-off bomb. I was hooked; Rickey became my favorite player.

Now the A's are bringing my other favorite player, Jason Giambi back. I understand why he went to the Yankees; he wanted to get paid and play on the biggest stage. But I never understood why people in the Bay Area thought he was going to rock the same personality in New York that he had here. To me it was like Samson cutting his hair and losing his power. In this case, Giambi lost his swagger.

Get that hair long, Jason, and show those tats.

UPDATE: ESPN.com has a great list of Rickey Memories.