When I heard about the passing of the legendary Rickey Henderson, at first I blamed myself a bit. The overuse of the word “unique” has become a bit annoying here. Each individual, by the very definition of the word, is unique. There are no copies of ourselves and, after all, we are all unique. I’ll hear people in the sports media say something is “so unique” or something and it almost makes me want to scream. You are either unique or you are not No very. However, with Rickey, I’m willing to be a hypocrite and throw my problems out the window. He was a special person and baseball will never see anything like him again. It’s not just how good he is, although that is a key component. There are a lot of surprising statistics given by Henderson. He led the league in steals 12 times, including when he was 39 years old. He led the league in runs five times. He got on base more times than all but three players in history. He scored more runs and stole more bases than anyone, ever.

Rickey Henderson is undoubtedly the greatest opener in baseball history. It’s not just because he’s so good at getting on base, stealing bases and scoring runs. He was a powerful threat as a table setter, a concept often unfamiliar in his era. He squatted so low in his batting stance that even though opposing pitchers were eager to keep him at first base, he walked more than anyone not named Barry Bonds in history. More than all that, however, Rickey has a remarkably confident demeanor. Back before home run celebrations became common, he would pick up his jersey while running around the bases in style. That personality is legendary. Sure, there are official stories about him. Who can forget when he said “today, I’m the greatest of all time” while standing right next to Lou Brock, having just broken Brock’s stolen base record? We’ve all heard the story of John Olerud — it’s not true, but we’ll get to it — a million times, but when we dig deeper into Howard Bryant’s wonderful book, “Rickey,” You’ll find some other gems.