Playboy Interview: Rickey Henderson

Ever since he hit the big leagues, outfielder Rickey Henderson of the Oakland Athletics has thrilled his fans--and dismayed his detractors--with his audacious base running and blazing speed. This season, he broke Ty Cobb's lifetime record of 892 stolen bases and, barring injury, could well top Lou Brock's all-time record of 938.

Nor is Henderson any slouch at the plate. Nearing summer's All-Star break, he and slugger teammate Jose Canseco led the A's at the plate, regularly batting in the .333 neighborhood. A lifetime .290 hitter, Henderson can spray to all fields or hit for power into the seats. It's on the base paths, of course, that Henderson, now a grizzled veteran of 31, works his magic. He can still sprint like a whippet; this season, facing the Yankees, he scored from second on a routine grounder to shortstop. And in a game against Baltimore, he tagged up from third base and crossed home plate--on a pop-up to shortstop Cal Ripken, Jr. Orioles manager Frank Robinson was appropriately frustrated. "You see the ball," he told The New York Times, "see Cal drifting, and then you look back at Rickey kind of easing back to third base, like, 'I'm not going to try to score.' But you know he will."

Opposing teams can often do little but stare, knowing he's going to steal but helpless to stop him. The impact of that explosive speed--indeed, of all aspects of Henderson's play--was never more apparent than during last fall's American League Championship Series, which pitted the A's against the Toronto Blue Jays. In the course of Oakland's five-game triumph, Henderson hit .400, stole eight bases (a new play-off record), whacked two home runs, was voted the A.L.C.S.' Most Valuable Player and totally bewitched, bothered and bewildered the Blue Jays. His base running was the single most important factor in the play-offs, much to the chagrin of Toronto outfielder Lloyd Moseby, who has known Henderson since they were both children growing up in Oakland. "Rickey hasn't changed since he was a little kid," Moseby told a reporter. "He could strut before he could walk, and he always lived for the lights. When he was ten, we used to say, 'Don't let Rickey get to you, because that's his game.' Twenty years later, I'm telling my teammates the same thing. But it didn't do much good."

In the earthquake-shaken Bay Bridge World Series against the San Francisco Giants in 1989, Henderson remained red hot: He hit .474 (including a double, two triples and a home run) and surely would have stolen more than three bases if Oakland hadn't swept the Giants in four games. When the dust had settled, he had turned in the most sensational spurt of post-season play since Reggie Jackson's dinger days for the A's and the Yankees.

Yet, if Oakland's victory was sweet, it was also a personal vindication for Henderson, who, during the first few months of the season, had been tagged over the hill and past his peak, even washed-up, by sportswriters; his employers at the time, the New York Yankees, apparently agreed. In one of the worst trades in modern baseball, New York unloaded Henderson to the A's--the team with whom he had started his career--in return for journeymen pitchers Eric Plunk and Greg Cadaret and outfielder Luis Polonia.

Henderson, stunned by the trade--he'd hit a solid .305 the year before--was further bothered by New York sportswriters, who implied it couldn't have happened to a more deserving guy. Henderson was a showboat; he didn't have a good attitude; he didn't hustle; he wouldn't play when he didn't feel like playing. His most vitriolic critics charged him with being petulant, cocky, narcissistic--the embodiment of everything the press abhors in modern athletes whose ability to excel affords them the luxury of becoming multimillionaires.

Then, of course, came that championship season with Oakland. And the M.V.P. award. And the World Series ring. And--oh, yes--the last laugh.

Born on Christmas Day, 1958, Rickey Henley Henderson was one of five sons and two daughters raised by their mother, Bobbie. Before settling in Oakland, the family lived in Arkansas for five years, where Henderson fell in love with football. He was a powerfully built 5' 10-1/2" running back in high school and was named to Oakland's all-city starting football team as a junior and a senior. He received about two dozen offers for college football scholarships and finally picked Arizona State, which had a good football program and also had produced baseball players such as Reggie Jackson and Sal Bando. Fate intervened when Henderson was drafted by the Oakland A's. When his mother insisted that he choose baseball over football, Rickey burst into tears. "I was giving up something that I loved the most," he says today. "No way I wanted to give up football. I'd been timed at four point three seconds in forty yards, which is great speed today, so think about what it was considered fourteen years ago. I think that if I'd stuck with football, I could have played both sports. Sometimes I even think I could've been Bo Jackson before Bo Jackson. And then you would have seen all those ads saying, 'Rickey knows football.'"

To interview the man who knows football well but baseball much better, Playboy sent frequent contributor Lawrence Linderman to Phoenix, where Henderson and the A's had just started a spring training abbreviated by the baseball lockout. Linderman reports:

"In one respect, Rickey Henderson is virtually unlike any other multimillion-dollar athlete today. He is frankly ambivalent about talking to the press and sees no need to employ a phalanx of public-relations types to issue interview turndowns on his behalf; he's perfectly willing to do that himself. When I showed up just before a Friday-night game, Henderson--a great-looking guy, by the way--was more than a little startled and made it clear that he'd prefer not to do any talking. I then reminded him that Kathy Jacobson, the A's director of media relations, had extracted a promise from him to sit for the interview. That changed everything; Rickey takes his promises seriously.

"We began our first session the next day but were forced to cut it short when Rickey announced that he was scheduled to make a trip back to San Francisco for a surprise birthday visit to his longtime companion, Pamela Palmer, the mother of his five-year-old daughter, Angela. Palmer, Rickey explained, was the love of his life; they'd been together for 14 years and were finally getting around to discussing marriage. 'I'm working on it,' he said.

"I joined him on the flight to San Francisco, and that's when our conversations really got going."

[Q] Playboy: Tony La Russa, the manager of the Oakland A's, describes you as perhaps the most disruptive force in baseball today. Don Mattingly, the New York Yankees' All-Star first baseman, says that you terrorize opposing teams. What are these guys talking about?

[A] Henderson: I think they're talking about my aggressiveness on the base paths. When I get on first base, pitchers pay a lot of attention to what I'm doing. They don't want me to steal second on them, and that interferes with their concentration and, sometimes, their choice of pitches to the hitters who follow me--Carney Lansford and Jose Canseco. Make a mistake with those guys and they'll hurt you.

So, yeah, I like to disrupt the pitcher, but the thing I like best is stealing bases and getting myself into scoring position. And sometimes I'm able to create runs. In one game against Cleveland last year, I walked twice, stole second and third twice and scored both times on sacrifice flies. La Russa came up with a name for that.

[Q] Playboy: Which was?

[A] Henderson: He calls it The Rickey Rally: a walk, two stolen bases, and then we score on a grounder or a sacrifice fly without getting a hit.

[Q] Playboy: Why are you so enamored of stealing bases?

[A] Henderson: Probably 'cause I've been doing it all my life. When I was a little-leaguer, I was sort of famous for that--and it started only because my mom wanted to be sure where I was in the afternoons. Mom always used to say, "If you don't come home dirty, you didn't play a baseball game." So I always tried to get in a situation where I had to slide so that I could go home dirty. That's the first reason I started stealing bases so much. Then, when I was in high school, I had a counselor named Miss Wilkinson, who was real fond of baseball and of me. She always challenged me by saying, "I'll give you a quarter for every base you steal." Miss Wilkinson was actually making sure I had a little extra lunch money. And then, when I got out of high school, I signed with the A's and I played rookie ball for Tom Trebelhorn [now the manager of the Milwaukee Brewers] in Boise, Idaho. More than anyone else, he was responsible for making me the base stealer I became.

[Q] Playboy: In what way?

[A] Henderson: Tom made me learn what pitchers do to keep runners close to first base and how to get a jump on them. He spent a lot of time teaching me. When we'd have a night game, I'd meet him at the ball park at one-thirty; he'd rake the infield dirt and then get on the mound and show me the different moves a pitcher would make. After that, we'd go over to first base, and he'd show me how to get a good jump on all those moves. And I got results.

When I played in the minor leagues--and the seasons there are shorter than in the major leagues--my highest number of stolen bases was ninety-five, and I told myself that when I reached the majors, I'd steal a hundred. In '80, my first full year with the A's, I did steal a hundred bases, and that made me very, very happy.

[Q] Playboy: At that point, did you begin thinking you might one day set the major-league record for stolen bases?

[A] Henderson: No, that didn't happen until my second year. Lou Brock saw me steal a couple of bases in a game we played against Boston. Afterward, Lou came up to me and said, "Rickey, you're going to be the one to break my record." That was a shock to me, because I was just starting out and I knew Brock had stolen nine hundred and thirty-eight bases. When he said that, I thought, Wow, that's a record that's never supposed to be broken, but he chose me to do it. That's when I began concentrating on making stolen bases my art.

[Q] Playboy:Is it an art?

[A] Henderson: I think so, yeah. That's why I've always gone out of my way to get tips from the masters--Brock, Davey Lopes and other players who stole a lot of bases. I also picked up a lot from coaches who studied the deliveries and pick-off moves of different pitchers--I just kept putting it all together with what I already knew.

[Q] Playboy: How much of stealing bases is dependent on speed versus technique?

[A] Henderson: I think it's really about fifty-fifty. You need good speed to steal bases, but you also need technique. I see a lot of guys who have tremendous speed but no technique, so they don't steal a lot of bases. Bo Jackson, for instance, kind of takes a two-step lead and then he flat-out runs-- Bo's still just getting into the game and learning. My first year or two in the minor leagues, I used to do the same thing; I'd take two steps off the base and run. But as the years passed and other teams began trying to keep me close to the base, I couldn't rely only on my speed. That's when all the techniques came into play. My real rivalry is with the pitchers; if you can beat the pitcher, you'll always beat the catcher, and that really pisses them off.

[Q] Playboy: The pitchers?

[A] Henderson: No, the catchers--I talk to all of them. [Detroit's] Mike Heath probably gets more frustrated than any other catcher in the league when I steal on him. After I steal a base, the next time I go to bat, Mike will tell me, "I don't have a chance against you--that's why I can't get you. If this pitcher would just give me the ball good, I'd have a good shot at you." He's right, too.

[Q] Playboy: Which pitchers give you the most trouble on the base paths?

[A] Henderson: I lump 'em all into one category: lefties. It's very tough to get great leads on left-handers, especially since they've started pausing before they release the ball. Lefties now keep that right leg up and wait to see if I'm gonna break for second or not, and only then do they throw the ball to the plate. That used to be a balk; pitchers had to stay in continuous motion. But they don't seem to anymore, so I have to work to get a good jump on them.

[Q] Playboy: It's probably not coincidental that as you've edged closer to breaking Brock's stolen-base record, sportswriters have begun claiming that you're the best lead-off hitter in baseball history. Are you?

[A] Henderson: I'm no baseball historian--I don't really know who did what during the Twenties, Thirties and Forties. There were a lot of great players back then, and if someone said one of them was the best lead-off man of all time, I'd have a hard time arguing about it. But as far as modern-day players--yeah, I feel I'm the best lead-off hitter in the game.

[Q] Playboy: You hold the record for most home runs leading off a game--forty-three, at last count--and a number of baseball insiders believe you could belt at least twenty-five homers a year, instead of the total of eighteen that you hit in 1988 and 1989 combined. Are they right?

[A] Henderson: Yes, they are. In 1985, my first year with the Yankees, I hit twenty-four homers, I had eighty stolen bases and for most of the year, my batting average stayed around .350 until the end, when I dropped down to .314. I felt that was a complete year, and I told myself, You can do it, Rickey. You can hit home runs. That winter, I worked just on hitting home runs. I didn't care if my batting average suffered a little; my goal in '86 was to go out and hit thirty homers. I came close--I hit twenty-eight--so I know I have the power to hit home runs. But my batting average dropped to .263, and as a lead-off hitter, my job is to get on base. And that means drawing walks and hitting for an average.

[Q] Playboy: What's the difference between swinging for power and going for singles?

[A] Henderson: I found out that when you try for home runs, you swing at a lot of high balls and pitches that aren't in the strike zone. In '86, I was more of a free swinger than a lead-off hitter ought to be. As a lead-off hitter, you gotta be patient and take pitches that just miss being strikes and swing at the right pitch to get your hits. In my first at-bat, I'm also trying to show my teammates what the pitcher's got. I try to make him throw every pitch he has. That way, I can tell my teammates, "Hey, his breaking ball ain't working too good," or "Watch out for his fastball." By the time I'm finished at the plate, I'll have an idea of what he's doing, and so will my teammates.

[Q] Playboy: Last year, you had two sets of teammates: You started out with the New York Yankees, and in June, you were traded to the Oakland A's. Were you happy to be joining the defending American League pennant winners?

[A] Henderson: No. I didn't want to change teams, but when the Yankees decided to trade me, the only place I wanted to go was back home to Oakland. The Yankees had made a better deal for me with the Giants--they would've gotten better pitchers and better players than the A's gave up. They told me, "We'd like you to go to the Giants. The A's aren't giving us what we want, so forget about them. We're not gonna trade you to the A's." I said, "Then you're not gonna trade me, period. The only place I'm going to is Oakland." I was in practically the same situation when the A's traded me to the Yankees before the start of the '85 season--I was going to be a free agent at the end of the year, they needed my permission to trade me and I wasn't looking to change teams.

[Q] Playboy: But in the early Eighties, didn't you say you couldn't become a full-fledged star playing in Oakland? Didn't you actually engineer the deal that sent you to the Yankees in 1985?

[A] Henderson: No, I didn't. I did say I'd never get national publicity in Oakland, and that was the truth--the A's were never on national TV. On the road, they didn't draw crowds like the Yankees and other teams did. But that didn't mean I wanted to be traded. The strange thing about it was, I was about the only thing Oakland really had in the early Eighties, and I was a hero all the years I was there. I was a ballplayer kids looked up to and people were proud of. After I left, the fans hated me, but I didn't have anything to do with the trade. I didn't want to be traded.

[Q] Playboy: So why did the A's trade you?

[A] Henderson: I was going to be a free agent after the '85 season--seems like I've been through the same thing twice--and the club didn't want to spend a lot of money to keep me. At the time, the A's just didn't want to invest any more money in the team. The reason was this: In '80, the Haas family--the Levi's jeans people--and Roy Eisenhardt, a part owner and the team's president, bought the club from Charlie Finley just to keep the A's in Oakland. They weren't sure how long they wanted to hold on to the team, so they didn't really want to lay out too much money. Eisenhardt hoped the city would pitch in and give him some financial help, but if Oakland didn't, he was going to sell--that was his intention. A little later on, the Haas family bought him out, so the A's stayed in Oakland. But before that happened, Eisenhardt called me into his office. He said, "The best deal for us is to trade you for some young players so that we can start building something here again. If you don't allow us to trade you and we don't match the offers you get as a free agent, we get nothing." I wanted to be fair with the A's, so I said OK.

[Q] Playboy: How come we've never heard this version of your trade to the Yankees?

[A] Henderson: Probably because I don't talk to the media as much as I should. Anyway, Eisenhardt said the A's had made a deal to accept five players the Yankees were offering for me. I could have said, "Forget it. I'm gonna be a free agent. I might be worth more than I can get from the Yankees right now, which means you're going to get nothing out of it." I didn't, because I understood why he wanted to trade me. But deep down inside, I was sad that the A's were letting me go. And I think we had this unspoken understanding. I felt, If I'm doing this for you, when you get the team back to where you feel it's right, you're gonna bring me back home.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think the A's felt that way as well?

[A] Henderson: I think we all knew that. During the years I was a Yankee, I always thought that if anything good happened with the A's, they'd bring me back home, because I'd been fair with them and given them the opportunity to get some players. The trade was in everybody's best interests. It helped the A's, and I was pretty sure that when I became a free agent, the Yankees were going to get me anyway.

[Q] Playboy: Why? Because you could become a national celebrity?

[A] Henderson: The reason was Billy Martin. Billy had managed me for three of my five years in Oakland, and he used to tell me, "You should be a Yankee," which was the greatest compliment he could give a player. Billy played a big part in my becoming a Yankee. He knew he was going to manage the Yankees again, and he felt that we'd win a pennant together. In fact, it was Billy who made the final decision to get me for the Yankees. He told George Steinbrenner, "Sign Rickey--don't let him loose."

[Q] Playboy: What do you remember most about Martin?

[A] Henderson: The best thing about Billy is that he never stopped trying to teach us. I can remember lots of times when he lost his temper after ball games and came into the clubhouse and threw stuff around everywhere. He'd yell about what we were doing wrong, and then when he was done, he'd say, "I'm not mad at you. I'm just trying to teach you, and I want you to accept what I say and learn from it." And then he'd tell us a joke and make us laugh, and he'd say, "OK, it's all over with. Let's go out and have fun."

Billy was the kind of manager every ballplayer would want to play for. When you gave it your best, you'd get his respect, and once you had Billy's respect, he'd give you the shirt off his back.

[Q] Playboy: You were twenty-two years old when you started playing for Martin. Weren't you at all intimidated by him?

[A] Henderson: I really wasn't, no. But I kept my distance. I just wanted to go out and play, and I didn't want to be petted or to be the manager's favorite guy. I mainly thought, Let me stay away from you, because my job's different from yours. They can fire you, but they cannot fire twenty-five players. So during my first year with Billy, I stayed away from him. But he had decided that he was going to know me better, which he did my second year with him.

[Q] Playboy: How?

[A] Henderson: He played a joke on me and the team. He called a meeting very early in the morning--we hadn't eaten yet. When we went into the dining room, everybody was starving, and Billy was up there in front--and he had food. He started giving us this lecture, and did it while he was eating. All of a sudden, he said, "Rickey! Rickey, are you hungry? Do you want something to eat?" I said, "Oh, yeah, I want something to eat." And then he told one of the coaches, "Go back there and get some breakfast for Rickey." Billy said, "Now, Rickey, you eat your breakfast, and don't give nobody else none." Everybody was mad, but he was just fooling around. At the end of the day, he told me, "Yeah, I wanted to tick everybody off, because I knew they'd get mad at me and go out and play good today." Then he told everybody on the team to go down to this hotel and have dinner on him. I thought that was real neat, and that's when we became close.

[Q] Playboy: What were his strongest points as a manager?

[A] Henderson: Billy was a winner who got the best out of his players. When I played for him in Oakland, we didn't have a great team, and the only way we could win was by scrapping--we bunted for base hits, we squeezed runs in, we hit and ran and we stole bases. That was all Billy's idea--the newspapers called it Billy Ball--and if we had done anything different, we wouldn't have won the Western Division title in '81. It was more fun playing that kind of ball than it was when he took over the Yankees. I just liked the style more, but it suited the A's, not the Yankees, who did have a lot of great players.

Besides getting the best out of the players he had, Billy was also brilliant about strategy in the late innings. We could go out and kind of do whatever we wanted for the first five innings, but he let us all know, "The sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth innings belong to me--I'm gonna make the moves, and you're going to carry them out." He also protected his players. We knew he meant it when he said, "Whatever happens, I'll be there with you." He had that soul that you're looking for. When things go bad, some managers just sit back and stare at you, like, "It ain't my fault you messed up on a play." With Billy, when anything happened--boom!--he was out there. We felt he was behind us all the time. And he was.

[Q] Playboy: And his worst points?

[A] Henderson: Drinking and getting into fights. Billy's problem was that he was a diehard Yankee--that team was his heart and soul, his love, his dream; everything was the Yankees. When he went to a bar, if somebody said, "Hey, Martin, the Yankees suck," he'd fight him.

[Q] Playboy: That's what most of his fights were about?

[A] Henderson: Oh, yes! In his heart, Billy was always a Yankee. Come to think of it, even when he was managing the A's, if the Yankees weren't playing well, he'd get more pissed off at them than at anything bad we were doing. He used to tell me, "I gotta get back to them." And he did get back to them as a manager, because he wanted them to be on top.

[Q] Playboy: After you were traded to New York, how long did you play for Martin?

[A] Henderson: For about a year--and it was spotty. I started in New York with Yogi Berra--who was a great manager, by the way--and then Billy came in when Yogi was fired. Then Billy got fired and Lou Piniella came in, and then Lou was fired and Billy came back for a little bit before he was fired again and replaced by Piniella, who was fired, and then Dallas Green came in.

But Billy was always around, always part of the organization. I used to ask him to come on down to the clubhouse so we could talk, but he wouldn't do that. He'd say, "I'll go out and have something to eat with you, but I'm not coming around the clubhouse." He didn't want to be seen as interfering with the new manager.

[Q] Playboy: What was your reaction to his death in the accident last Christmas?

[A] Henderson: I still get chills and an almost crazy feeling when I talk about it--when I think about it. I lost somebody who I respected as a manager and loved as a man. Billy died on my birthday--Christmas Day--and his death really got to me. I tried to think, Oh, that's a blessing. The Lord took him back home where He wanted Billy to be. But it just hurt. It still does.

[Fights back tears] After it happened, I hated to talk about it, because I'd always start crying. Billy Martin was a part of me, and when I think about him, I always say, "I lost a good man." But forget me--baseball lost a great man.

[Henderson breaks down. We stop our conversation and resume it that evening.]

[Q] Playboy: You were pretty upset this afternoon.

[A] Henderson: I'm all right now, but you brought up a sad, sad day.

[Q] Playboy: Let's stay on the subject of the Yankees a bit longer. Since George Stein-brenner became the team's majority partner, the Yankees have changed managers nineteen times in eighteen years, most recently replacing Bucky Dent with Carl "Stump" Merrill. What's his problem?

[A] Henderson: To tell you the truth, you hear a lot of talk about George Steinbrenner doing this, George Steinbrenner doing that, but I liked playing for him. Basically, George is determined to win, just like a ballplayer is determined to win--ball games, the pennant, the World Series. And he does his best to go out and get enough great players to win it all. It's my opinion that George says, "I'll go out and get great ballplayers to play the game, to score more runs than my pitchers are gonna give up." But it don't always work that way. Sometimes we'd score eight or ten runs, and we'd wind up losing 10--8, 12--10, scores like that. George just isn't into pitching--that's what I think. I mean, he didn't get Jack Morris years ago when Morris was available, and he didn't get Mark Langston last year. I'm not gonna mention any player by name, but when some so-so pitcher would be available, I'd say, "George ain't never gonna sign this guy." And then he'd go out and do just that. Then again, it might be because some of the good pitchers don't want to play for him.

As far as all the management changes he's made, George will tell you, "When I hire my managers, I expect them to bring me a pennant. If the manager does not bring me a pennant, I try somebody else to bring me one." The one thing people don't know about George is that he has a strong sense of fairness. He doesn't just fire a guy and let him go and try to find another job. He's got a lot of ex-managers on his payroll, and he's offered all of them jobs. His feeling is, Hey, I tried you as manager, and it didn't work. I want to make a change, but I'm not throwing you away.

[Q] Playboy: You sound as if you'd play for him again. Would you?

[A] Henderson: I would, absolutely. If I didn't satisfy the A's and George wanted me back, I'd go back. There's one thing I really wish he'd change, though: George was never real critical of me in the newspapers, but I do know that when he comes down on players like Dave Winfield [traded last May to the California Angels] and Don Mattingly, he feels he's motivating them--that part of George will never change, and it should.

[Q] Playboy: How do the players react to it?

[A] Henderson: They feel hurt. They feel that even though they give George their best, he doesn't respect them. This year, Mattingly said, "Yes, George Steinbrenner is paying me a lot of money, but I feel he doesn't respect me as a human being. I don't think the money means that much if he doesn't give you any respect."

But George never really got on me like that, because I think he liked the way I played.

[Q] Playboy: Then why was he so eager to get rid of you last year?

[A] Henderson: It wasn't really George. Syd Thrift, the team's senior vice-president, thought I was washed up, and so did Dallas Green, last year's manager. I started slow in '89--we had cold, terrible weather in April and May--and right away, I heard people in the Yankees organization saying, "You're on your way out. You can't do the things you used to." I sat back and said, "How can you tell me that? Last year, I hit .305, stole ninety-three bases and scored a hundred and eighteen runs for you. All of a sudden, I'm lousy, I can't play, I've lost everything? Is that what you think?"

[Q] Playboy: Is that what the Yankees thought?

[A] Henderson: That's exactly what they thought. And it bothered me and pressured me and made me doubt myself. I'd go up to the plate thinking, I've got to prove myself, I've got to prove I can still hit. Instead of being relaxed and letting things flow, I got tense. My contract talks were going on--I wanted to have a great year because I was going to be a free agent again--and I knew that the worse I played, the more people were saying, "Rickey's lost it." I really began pressing. Things got so bad that, before every game, I prayed that I'd get at least one hit--if I went one for four, I'd actually raise my average. I was nervous and I was scared.

[Q] Playboy: Were you worried that you might, indeed, be finished as a player?

[A] Henderson: Sure I was, and the only way I found out I wasn't washed up was through the trade. When I got to Oakland, I was able to relax and breathe easy again, and everything just fell into place. I liked the way the A's handled my situation. When I got to Oakland, Sandy Alderson, the A's general manager, told me not to worry about my contract for '90. "What happens next year is in your hands," he said, "but the biggest thing is what's going on in your head. So relax. Don't put no pressure on yourself." And I didn't.

[Q] Playboy: Was it intimidating going to a team that was the defending champion of the American League and favored to go to its second straight World Series?

[A] Henderson: The A's had a lot of good players, but even though they were the defending champs, I always felt they were missing a piece of the puzzle. Matter of fact, me and my friend Fred Atkins would talk about that. When we saw the '88 World Series--after Kirk Gibson hit that home run to beat the A's in the first game, and the Dodgers went on to win it all--Fred told me, "One reason the Dodgers won was because the A's had all hitters, but nobody got on base or did anything to change the game. And you could have done that for them." Made sense to me.

[Q] Playboy: A number of sportswriters predicted that your presence would have an unsettling influence on the A's. What kind of reception did you get?

[A] Henderson: It couldn't have been better. When I got to Oakland, the A's knew what kind of player I was. They let me know that they respected me and believed in me, and that they understood what I'd been going through. When I walked in, I told 'em, "I'm here to help you get back to the World Series." That was a big day for me--the A's welcomed me and appreciated me, and that gave me even more incentive to do right by the team.

[Q] Playboy: No personality conflicts?

[A] Henderson: No, none, and I'm playing with some very famous guys. Dave Stewart and I grew up together in Oakland and have known each other since we both played Connie Mack ball. Jose Canseco, to me, is one of the best damned guys in the game. People don't have any idea of what he's like, because some stuff about him has been blown way out of proportion. He bought himself a red Jaguar and drove it a little too fast. Big deal. Jose's a good guy, has a good sense of humor. But the real comedian on the team is Dave Henderson--he's always laughing, and he always gets everybody else laughing. Mark McGwire is mellow; he knows what he's got to do and he's there to do it. Mark's real . . . normal. Carney Lansford, our third baseman, is a superprofessional baseball player. He's our leader, our spokesman, our player rep--he's serious out there, always. Everybody's interesting and everybody's different.

[Q] Playboy: How was the A's morale when you arrived? After all, they'd lost the series to the Dodgers the previous year.

[A] Henderson: The A's felt they were the best team in baseball, and when they lost the series, they took it personally. So then they had to go out and prove to everyone, including themselves, that they were the best team in baseball. They were very motivated to get back, but when I got there, the team was hurting. Canseco had broken a bone in his left hand before the season started and didn't return until mid-July. Walt Weiss, our shortstop, was down with a knee injury and [relief pitcher] Dennis Eckersley hurt his shoulder and was out for a couple of months. It wasn't gonna be no joy ride.

[Q] Playboy: So along comes Rickey Henderson and his .247 batting average.

[A] Henderson: Yeah, but I said, "Two forty-seven, that's not me. I'm better than that." And I was and still am. The New York press had been nagging on my new contract from spring training on, and now I was away from all that and it was a relief. I stopped worrying about my contract and just went out and played ball. I hit .297 for the A's, and after being neck and neck with the Angels for a while, we broke away and won the West by seven games.

[Q] Playboy: If the A's were so busted up, why were they in first place when you arrived?

[A] Henderson: A lot of the credit for that has to go to our manager, Tony La Russa. His strength is in taking it to the opponents, rather than letting them bring it to us. Tony's got all these computer charts and knows the game as well as any manager I've played for. To me, he's in Billy Martin's class, and I can't give nobody a higher compliment than that.

I knew how competitive Tony was when I played against him, and he knew I was the same way; when the Yankees played the A's, it was always like a dogfight. But I didn't know him. He really impressed me the first day I got to the A's. I told him, "I really didn't care for you and you didn't care for me when we were fighting against each other, and that's the way it's supposed to be. But now that we're with the same team, we're gonna help each other." He listened to me, and then said, "Rickey, I don't want you to give me your respect. I want to earn your respect." That really amazed me. I had never heard any manager say he had to earn my respect; they had all just demanded it.

When it was all over--the day after the World Series--I went up to him and said, "You have earned my respect, Tony." After that, we got real close. And you know, it shook him up a little that I'd remembered what he'd told me the first day. Tony's a very classy guy.

[Q] Playboy: Did you do anything special during the 1989 play-off games to psyche yourself up?

[A] Henderson: No, I just wanted to get to the World Series. I'd never played in one and I'd been in only one league championship series--that was during the split season of '81, when the A's lost to the Yankees. Seems like every year when we came back home to Oakland after the season, me and Lloyd Moseby of the Blue Jays [now with Detroit]--we've known each other since we were kids--would watch the World Series on television together. We'd tell each other, "Damn, one day, one of us is gonna get to the World Series. Which one of us is gonna get there first?" As soon as we knew it was going to be Oakland against Toronto in the '89 play-offs, Lloyd and I started yappin' at each other like we were still kids: "I'm gonna beat your team; you ain't gonna beat mine."

[Q] Playboy: Did you have any inkling that you'd be such a dominating force in the play-offs and the series?

[A] Henderson: That was something I'd always wondered about. I used to watch the play-offs and the World Series on TV and think, What would you do if you were there? Would you be a Mr. October like Reggie Jackson, who often hit his best in the post-season, or would you be more like [Kansas City's] Willie Wilson, who has had a lot of slumps? I didn't know which it would be. But I wanted to be at my best, and my opportunity had come. That was my chance to do or die. I felt that that was my time. I walked around thinking, The good Lord is with you and gave you the ability to play this game, to show what you are all about, so do it, and do it now. I had all that belief and all that concentration. And when I started doing well, my one thought was, The good Man is shining over me, He is giving me the opportunity, He is bringing the best out of me. I really didn't focus on what I was doing; in fact, I didn't know what I was doing. I was a man on a mission; I was in a rocket on a space shot; I was dreaming.

But I always felt I was in the Lord's hands.

[Q] Playboy: Let's run down just how well you did in the American League Championship Series against Toronto: You hit .400--including two home runs--set a play-off record of eight stolen bases and were a unanimous choice as the play-offs' Most Valuable Player. Had you ever had a five-game performance like that?

[A] Henderson: No, that was the best I'd ever played. I'd been through some streaks when I'd hit .400 for a month, but to put everything together at one time--it was a little incredible.

[Q] Playboy: Experts agreed that that was the first post-season series ever dominated by a base runner. Didn't your friend Lloyd Moseby warn the Blue Jays about you?

[A] Henderson: Yeah, but a lot of his teammates were saying, "Hey, Henderson's showing us up, he's hot-dogging." Lloyd kept telling them, "The guy is playing his game. That's what we should do--concentrate on our game, not his. Forget about Rickey and think about what we have to do as a team." But they didn't, and because of that, they were playing my game.

[Q] Playboy: In what way?

[A] Henderson: Instead of thinking, We have to win, they were thinking, We gotta stop Rickey Henderson. We gotta stop him from getting on base. We can't walk him or let him get a hit. We can't let him steal no more. As soon as I saw that they were focusing on me, I knew I had them in the palm of my hand.

[Q] Playboy: That doesn't seem logical to us. If the opposing team is doing its damnedest to prevent you from stealing bases, how is that playing into your hands?

[A] Henderson: I'll tell you how: When I go up to the plate in that situation, I talk to the catcher. I'll say stuff like, "As soon as I get to first, I'm gonna steal second on you. I know you're back here and that you want to get me, but you ain't goin' to." I did a lot of talking to the Jays' catcher, Ernie Whitt. My aim was to get him so pumped up that when I broke for second, he'd be thinking, I got the ball, I got you in my sights, I know I'm gonna throw you out, you're dead! By then, he'd be so tense he couldn't throw the ball the way he can when he's relaxed. And that's what happened to Whitt. I had him all the time.

[Q] Playboy: We're sure he'll be pleased to read all about it. You said winning the play-offs was your happiest day in baseball. Why?

[A] Henderson: Because it finally gave me the chance to play in the World Series. That's what every player--rookies, veterans, everyone--works for. I'd been working toward that for ten years, and when I knew we were going to the series, I had this wonderful feeling going through me. You get that last out of the play-offs, you know you're going to the series--that's the peak of baseball. That's what you play for.

[Q] Playboy: Hold on. You're an athlete who makes millions of dollars a year, and all you really want out of baseball is to play in the World Series?

[A] Henderson: [Laughs] Really, is this man crazy, or what? Let me remind you of something: Ernie Banks, who played for the Cubs, once said, "I would have given back everything I made in baseball if I could have played in the World Series just once."

[Q] Playboy: OK, so what turns you on about the World Series?

[A] Henderson: Wondering what the great players are going to do. What are they going to pull out of their sleeves this time? Something dramatic's going to happen--what'll it be? Great pitching, a great catch, a home run in the clutch? The World Series always has its share of excitement and thrilling moments that fans remember for years and years. And as a player, you want to be in on it, because it's the height of the game. That's why you always hear players say, "This is what we've been fighting for and working on the whole season long--all one hundred and sixty-two games. This is the joy baseball can give us."

[Q] Playboy: How would you characterize your rivalry with the San Francisco Giants, your opponents in last fall's World Series?

[A] Henderson: We don't have a real big rivalry with the Giants. The A's biggest rivals are in our division--the Kansas City Royals and the California Angels. I know that when the Giants and the Dodgers were in New York, they hated each other, but this is California. The A's feel that we take care of business on our side of the bay and that the Giants take care of business on their side. We don't pay that much attention to each other or worry about who's gonna take over the town.

[Q] Playboy: But you did take over the 1989 series in four games straight. Were you surprised by that?

[A] Henderson: After the second game, no. I knew--we all knew--we had them. Our guys said, "There's no way they can win. Hey, in spring training, we beat the Giants eight out of nine times." But the Giants have good hitters like Will Clark and Kevin Mitchell, and I knew they were getting up for the third game. They were going home to Candlestick Park, thinking they did have a chance to come back.

[Q] Playboy: At 5:04 P.M. on October seventeenth, minutes before the scheduled start of game three of the World Series, Candlestick Park and much of Northern California was rocked by a massive earthquake that registered seven point one on the Richter scale. Where were you when it hit?

[A] Henderson: In the locker room. You know, I thought it was just a shake; I didn't know any damage had been done. When I went out onto the field, all the guys were talking about the earthquake. One of them told me, "On the morning of Bob Welch's last start when he was with the Dodgers, there was a big earthquake in Los Angeles [5.1 on the Richter scale], and that night, he went out and pitched a one-hitter against the Giants." When I heard that, I thought, Oh, man, Welch is starting for us tonight. We are gonna beat them to death. It's over for them. The Giants are in trouble. But we couldn't play game three--it was canceled, and really, everybody was a little scared. Some of the players who weren't from San Francisco or Oakland--or who hadn't been born in California and had never felt an earthquake--were deathly afraid. New Yorkers, guys from the East, Midwest--they were really worried that the ball park would cave in.

[Q] Playboy: Did you agree with baseball commissioner Fay Vincent's decision to resume the series ten days later?

[A] Henderson: No, not at first. People had lost their lives, families had lost their possessions--it didn't seem like a good time to play a baseball game. But then again, when they finally got it going, the Bay Area needed something to cheer it up. Instead of thinking about what had happened and how they were going to survive it, people thought, Let's go out and enjoy this day. But there was a lot to get through before you could feel that way.

[Q] Playboy: You were even hotter in the World Series than you were in the playoffs--you hit .474. But the series' M.V.P. award was given to Dave Stewart. How did that sit with you?

[A] Henderson: I was surprised--but not upset--that I didn't get it. The A's played tremendous ball, and the whole team probably deserved the World Series M.V.P. Still, as an individual, I felt I was the best and that I'd earned it. But it was a more competitive choice than during the play-offs, because I had done everything perfect in the play-offs. In the World Series, I did everything well, but so did a lot of other players. After Dave Stewart won the third game, a lot of reporters came up to me and said, "Right now, it looks like you or Stew is gonna win the M.V.P. But if the A's sweep the Giants and you get two hits and steal a base in game four, it's gonna be you, Rickey." Then they told the same thing to Stew, and when I saw him in the locker room before game four, he said, "Rickey, I want you to go out there and go 0 for four, no stolen bases, and maybe both of us can win the M.V.P." I said, "No, Stew, I gotta go but there and get a couple of hits, because I have a chance of winning it. From what I hear, they want to give it to you, and this way, I'll at least make sure that both of us get it."

So before game four started, I went out there determined to get the two hits the reporters told me were all I needed to become M.V.P. My first at-bat--boom!--I hit a home run. I trotted around the bases thinking, I got it--but maybe I don't. I need one more hit.

My second time up, Mike Moore was on second base; I got another base hit and Moore scored. It's over. I'm on first thinking, I got it, man! And then, in my next at-bat, I hit a triple. I slid into third base, got up and dusted myself off, and thought, This is the icing on the cake. I'm gonna be the series' M.V.P.

When we got the last out, I didn't have the award in my mind--all of us were too caught up in the glory of winning the World Series. Back in the locker room, I was doing an interview with a reporter when Dave Stewart yelled over to me, "Hey, Rickey, I won it." And all of a sudden, it was back in my head, and I said, "What do you mean, you won it?" I thought that both of us would at least share it--I'd seen that before--but I let go of my disappointment real quick, because I had to be happy for Stew. I was proud of what he'd done, and I knew he'd never really gotten the recognition he deserved. Stew couldn't have been nicer; he called me up to him right away and we shook hands, and we both felt good. He got the trophy, but inside, I knew I had won it. And I bet that deep down inside, he knows I could've won it just as he did. So my pride came away intact.

[Q] Playboy: After the series, you signed a four-year contract with the A's for twelve million dollars, which made you the highest-paid player in baseball at that point. Did you take pride in that?

[A] Henderson: Oh, sure, it made me feel good. Actually, I wasn't the highest-paid player when I signed: Kirby Puckett makes the same amount of money I do per year, but his contract runs three years and mine runs four, so technically, the press was right in reporting that I was baseball's highest-paid player. I'm not anymore, that's for sure.

[Q] Playboy: No, you're not. After you sealed your deal with the A's, the Giants signed Will Clark to a four-year, fifteen-million-dollar contract, and then Steinbrenner outdid everyone by signing Don Mattingly to a five-year deal worth a reported nineteen point three million dollars. Now, the truth, Rickey: Did those contracts make you feel underpaid?

[A] Henderson: The truth, huh? Well, I do feel underpaid based on what Will got and on what other players have since signed for. I know what I've achieved and where I stand as far as my level of play, and when I see guys who haven't played on that level getting as much money as me--or more money than me--why wouldn't I think I'm underpaid? When I signed my contract at the time, it was a fair contract. But now, a lot more players are making more money than I am, and they haven't done what I've done.

[Q] Playboy: Does this have to do only with money, or is it more about being as competitive off the field as you are on?

[A] Henderson: I think it's being competitive as a man. Listen, I know that people get pissed off about the money players make. But if they're out there producing like superstars, they deserve the money. Now, players who just get by and earn as much as the superstars--they're the guys who are overpaid.

[Q] Playboy: What are you going to do about it? Ask to renegotiate your contract?

[A] Henderson: [Grins] Look, I can see some humor in this, but I don't think I'm a greedy man. But if baseball's pay scale shoots up to where average players are making what I am, then I will go in and ask to renegotiate my contract. Just about every free agent has signed for more money than me. And last year, I could have sworn I was the best player out there in the free-agent market.

[Q] Playboy: One final question on compensation: What's the deal with the Testarossa?

[A] Henderson: My idea about the A's giving me a Testarossa came about after I saw what had happened when Walter Payton rewrote pro football's record book. When Payton broke the N.F.L. record for rushing yardage with the Chicago Bears, he was presented with a Lamborghini. I decided that if the A's were thinking about maybe giving me something when I broke Lou Brock's all-time record for stolen bases--hey, I'd like to have a Testarossa. I mentioned that during a conversation with a reporter, and the next day, it was all over the newspapers, like I was making some kind of demand. Let me be real clear on this: It wasn't no demand. It's just a dream I have, that's all. If and when I break Brock's record, I'd like to get a car, but instead of the Lamborghini that Walter got, I'd like a Ferrari.

[Q] Playboy: So the A's general manager, Sandy Alderson, now knows what you want for Christmas.

[A] Henderson: I happen to think Sandy will do something to show that the team appreciates what I've done, though it may not be what I want. I've put my heart and soul into this long chase after Brock's record, and if I break it, I'd like to know that the club respects it. A pat on the back and a "Thank you" may be enough. Maybe they'll give me a Schwinn--but if they do, it had better be a ten-speed.

[Q] Playboy: Enough about money. You were born in Chicago; when and how did you wind up in Oakland?

[A] Henderson: I lived in Chicago till I was two years old. I think my mom didn't like the cold, so she moved the family to Little Rock, Arkansas, and then we stayed in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, until I was seven. Then we moved to California.

[Q] Playboy: What about your father?

[A] Henderson: My father left when I was two years old. He and my mom couldn't get along; they broke up, and then we moved. I never really knew my father. From time to time, he sent money to try to take care of us, but I never saw or spoke to him. As I grew up, I always used to ask about him. I always felt, Hey, where's my father? I need my father to guide me as a son.

My momma and my grandmother raised us--I was the youngest of five sons and two daughters. Mom supported us good. She was a registered nurse, and my grandmother also had a job, and we grew up in a working-class section of Oakland. Mom was like my mother and father, and my grandmother was the backbone of us all. But I missed not knowing my father.

[Q] Playboy: Did your dad try to contact you?

[A] Henderson: No, we were never in touch. After I broke into the big leagues in 1979, I hired detectives to look for him. I wanted to know, Hey, do I look like my father? Am I like him in any way? Can I see him? I just wanted to meet him.

And so I looked for him for a few years, and eventually, the detectives discovered where he was staying. He drove a truck, and very soon after they found him, he died in a traffic accident. The detectives got back to my mother about it the day he died. Mom told them she would tell me what had happened, but she knew it would make me break down, so she didn't tell me for more than a year. In the meantime, I kept asking her, "How come the detectives haven't gotten back to me? You said they found my father." One day, she finally sat me down and said, "Your father is dead." So I never got the opportunity to see him or talk to him. That might be the biggest hurt you get as a man, never to know your father. Didn't matter if he was good or bad, or whatever--I just wanted the chance to see him. Never did.

[Q] Playboy: Throughout our talks, you've been thoroughly likable--yet based on what has been written about you, we were prepared to meet a pampered egotist who plays only when he feels like it. How did you get that rep?

[A] Henderson: I never had that reputation until I injured my right hamstring and missed sixty-seven games with the Yankees in '87. Lou Piniella was the team's manager then, and he thought I was babying myself and that I didn't want to play for him. I still don't know why. Lou and I were never really on the same wave length, but how could he have thought I didn't want to play? I'd gotten off to a tremendous start in '87, to the point where I was walking around thinking, This is my M.V.P. year. And then I hurt my hamstring, and the team started losing ball games and fell out of first place. Lou just didn't realize the damage that I'd done to my leg, and I felt he was pushing me to come back too early. My leg was giving me a lot of pain, but he didn't really believe it and neither did the New York press--they really ate me up. The whole thing finally hurt me more than anything else that's happened to me in baseball. Don't those guys know that the one thing ballplayers hate to do is sit on the bench and see somebody else playing their position? And because I was willing to play through the pain, I asked the Yankees' trainer to wrap the leg.

[Q] Playboy: You were playing with a pulled hamstring?

[A] Henderson: Let me tell you, because you ain't got it all yet. I kept playing and I kept going in to see the trainer, and then, one day, when we were playing Cleveland, I stole third base, and when I slid, I felt a sharp pain. And that's when I knew something was wrong with my leg. I knew I had to back off and I told Lou I couldn't run in full gear. Eventually, I laid back for four days and they treated the leg and then told me, "Go back out there and play. You don't have a pulled muscle--there's nothing wrong with you." So I said, "OK, fine."

We went to Milwaukee, and I played with my leg bandaged up. I told myself, I'm not going to run full-out until I feel I'm absolutely back to form. In the seventh inning, we were losing by seven runs; even though we were trying, the game was out of reach. Well, I was on first base, and Lou gave me a steal sign. I'm thinking, Why are you giving me a steal sign when I told you that my leg hurts? But he's the manager, and I told myself, OK, if he gave me a steal sign, I gotta try. So I took off, and Willie Randolph, who was at the plate, fouled the ball off. And I thought, Fine, I ran and I didn't hurt the leg. It may be getting better. Before the next pitch, Lou gave me another steal sign. Willie fouled the ball off again. After I came back from second base, I looked in the dugout. Lou gave me the steal sign again, and I thought, Oh, no, you can't do that. Now the whole Milwaukee team knows I'm gonna run. I didn't want to, but I knew I had to try to steal second. I took off, got halfway there--and I think everybody in the infield heard something snap. My teammates said they'd heard it in the dugout. Lou didn't give me an argument that day--he knew I had a pulled muscle.

[Q] Playboy: Why was he so insistent on having you steal on a bum leg in such a meaningless situation?

[A] Henderson: You'd have to ask him that--I never did. Anyway, the Yankees put me on the fifteen-day disabled list, took X rays, told me my hamstring was pulled and that I'd be fine. But when I went back after fifteen days, I wasn't fine--I couldn't run at full speed. The team gave me another few days off and I tried running some sprints, but the muscle popped again. When I told Lou about it, he said, "Rickey, you are faking. You're scared to play. You're jaking it. You don't want to play." I kept saying to myself, What are you talking about? I want to play. My leg is ruined. Things got worse: The team called my agent and told him they thought I was faking my injury and that I was jeopardizing my contract.

I was shocked. I knew I couldn't play, and I just refused to jeopardize my career. I finally talked to Billy Martin, who was then scouting for the Yankees. He said, "If your leg hurts, don't play until it gets better." He was the only one in the whole Yankees organization who believed me.

[Q] Playboy: What was George Steinbrenner doing while all this was going on?

[A] Henderson: Getting himself all worked up that I wasn't playing. George was so mad at me that he came up to me and said, "OK, Rickey, I'm sending you to a specialist, and he's gonna put you in a [magnetic resonance imaging] machine and prove once and for all if you're hurt or not."

When I got to the hospital, they closed me up in this machine for an hour, and afterward, the doctor said, "Rickey, come inside and I'll show you what's wrong with your leg." He had a picture on a light box and pointed to a part of it and said, "This is what's wrong with your leg. You have torn three or four inches of the top part of your hamstring off your behind."

The next day, when George went to the ball park, I was in the training room, getting treatment. He patted me on the back and said, "You get well." He'd finally got the truth that I was hurt. I'm still amazed that when I went through all that, nobody except Billy believed me. And even afterward, the press continued to say that I'd pulled my hamstring--for whatever reason, it never came out that I'd really torn it.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think you've generally been treated badly by sportswriters?

[A] Henderson: I think they've given me more than my share of cheap shots. The thing we just talked about? Guys still write that "Henderson plays when he wants to play." And I know that every year, I am going to read that "Henderson didn't run at full speed to first on that ground ball--he isn't hustling." Listen, when I hit a sharp ground ball to second base, overall, you know and I know that I'm out. All right? I'm moving fast just in case the guy bobbles it, but I don't run flat-out like if I get a base hit and I'm rounding first and seeing if I can get to second. You're telling me I'm not hustling? Come on, now--I'm a base runner. You think it's possible that sometimes, when I know I'm out, I just might want to save some energy for when I really need it? Not many sportswriters believe that. They'll write things like, "Rickey didn't run that ground ball out, and maybe if he'd shown some more hustle, the A's might've won the game."

[Q] Playboy: You certainly don't seem to be a favorite of the sport's traditionalists. In its 1989 baseball yearbook, The Sporting News zapped you with the honor of the "biggest waste of ability," and said that if you had "Kirby Puckett's personality and attitude, no records would be safe." Ever wonder what the press wants from you?

[A] Henderson: I always wonder what the press wants. I think some of it probably has to do with my style of play: I may make the game seem a little easier than most players do, and because of that, some people think I'm not working hard enough. The truth is, I work as hard as or harder than anybody else, so I don't understand that kind of criticism, but that's what I get. In a way, I'd like to have one person representing the media just sit down and tell me what they'd all like me to do. Let's say the guy says, "I want you to go out there and steal a hundred and thirty bases and score a hundred and thirty runs." OK, I'll go out and do that. You gonna tell me that's all you want? No. The next time around, you're going to tell me I gotta do something else and do it better. When sportswriters ask me, "What do you want to do this year?" I tell them, "I want to stay healthy enough to be able to go out and give a hundred percent every time I play." And that is all I really want. And whatever the sportswriters feel, that's their business.

[Q] Playboy: What about your other reputation--as baseball's leading hot dog?

[A] Henderson: Well, another word for a hot dog is a showman. I'll tell you this: Ain't never been a guy out there called a hot dog who couldn't play this game. And really, what are we talking about? If you play the game with a little style and people see that you're having fun, they call you a hot dog. People started calling me a hot dog when I'd draw a walk, and instead of running down to first base like most guys, I'd walk down, cool. Boom--I'm a hot dog. In the outfield, when a fly ball comes, a lot of players catch it with two hands; I snatch it out of the air with one. That's the main reason I'm called a hot dog--my snatch catch.

[Q] Playboy: Was that trademark maneuver of yours a long time in the planning?

[A] Henderson: It was, yes. I developed it well before I ever used it in a game, but I was so afraid of trying it.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Henderson: Because I didn't want to drop a fly ball. I just didn't want that held against me, so I didn't try it. But I knew I could catch the ball that way; I would not miss it.

I'll tell you the first time I did it in a game. Back in the early Eighties, the A's were playing the White Sox, and Mike Warren, one of our good pitchers, had a no-hitter going. In the ninth inning, two out, a fly ball was hit to me in left field, and I snatched it out of the air for the final out. And afterward, all my teammates came up to me and said, "If you'd dropped that ball, we would've killed you." That was the first time I tried it. After that, I had faith in it and knew I could catch it like that.

[Q] Playboy: Which brings us to the obvious question: Why bother?

[A] Henderson: I think it goes back to watching Willie Mays when I was a kid and really liking his basket catch. I guess there was something that I wanted to do different, too. And when I dreamed it up and then believed that I could do it--and then knew I could do it--it was like, "OK, let's do it." The kids liked it and the fans loved it. And sure, the press called me a hot dog, but really, whenever I catch balls the regular way, a lot of our fans will go, "Rickey, please--snatch it." And when I tell them that a lot of people don't like it, they say, "Forget 'em--snatch it. I love it, my kids love it." Of course, I've heard from other parents who say, "My kid tried your snatch catch--the ball hit him in the head." [Laughs]

The thing is, I'm very aware that, although people want their teams to win, they're mainly out there to see action and a great performance, and I try to give it to them. I've said this before and I mean it: People don't pay ten dollars a ticket to watch robots perform.

[Q] Playboy: You think of yourself as a performer?

[A] Henderson: Of course I do. Baseball is entertainment for people, so in a sense, we're really entertainers. When people go to a ball game, if they feel the players haven't entertained them, they won't be coming back. I think players should realize they are entertainers. I go out and do the best job I can, but I like to do it with a little style, a little flair, because I know that certain things I do will catch the fans' eyes, and that's why they'll want to see me play.

[Q] Playboy: By the time this interview is published, you should be closing in on Lou Brock's all-time stolen-base record. Have you made any special plans about when and where you want to break it?

[A] Henderson: I'd like to break it by the end of August, and if we're on the road and I'm one base shy of tying it, I'm gonna wait to do it in Oakland for our fans, for the A's organization, for my family and friends and for all the people who've been behind me since I was a little kid.

[Q] Playboy: Have you thought how high you'd like that number to go eventually?

[A] Henderson: Yes, I have. When I got above eight hundred stolen bases and knew I was on a pace that would move me beyond Brock's nine hundred and thirty-eight, I realized that if I could play nineteen seasons like Brock, I could wind up with fifteen hundred to two thousand stolen bases. So I've looked at that, and I know what I'd settle for. In the time I feel I have left, fifteen hundred stolen bases would be a tremendous goal for me to go after and to actually attain.

[Q] Playboy: So you've already decided that when your present four-year contract expires, you'll re-up for another tour?

[A] Henderson: I'll be thirty-five when the '94 season starts, and I won't be too old for this game--Brock set his record when he was thirty-nine. I also have a surprise in store for everybody. I set the single-season record of a hundred and thirty stolen bases in Oakland in '82; if I haven't broken it by the time I'm thirty-five, I intend to shoot for it that season. I keep myself in good shape, and my body's holding up, and even if I'm not able to steal a hundred and thirty-something bases when I'm thirty-five, I believe I'll have a shot at coming close. That's going to be one dramatic season. I'm hoping to steal so many bases that maybe my record won't ever be broken.

[Q] Playboy: But aren't records made to be broken?

[A] Henderson: Yes, they are, so I won't worry too much about that, though I hope mine will stay in the record books for a good long time. But all that's down the road. Until I retire, I'm really going to have fun. I mean, think of it: Every time I steal a base, I'll be setting a new record--every time. I'll come off the field and tell myself, I set a new all-time record today; maybe I'll set another one tomorrow. I'm doing a lot of talking here, but really, I have no idea of what that stolen-base record is finally going to be. I think the only thing I know is that the good Lord has kept me strong and healthy enough to reach this point, so I'm satisfied and I'm grateful. I've had a good run, and at this point, I just feel very lucky that it isn't over yet.

"After the game, Lou came up to me and said, 'Rickey, you're going to be the one to break my record.' That was a shock."

"Some of the players who had never felt an earthquake were deathly afraid, really worried that the ball park would cave in."

"One day, she finally sat me down and said, 'Your father is dead.' So I never got the opportunity to see him. That might be the biggest hurt you get as a man."

"I may make the game seem a little easier than most players do. The truth is, I work as hard as or harder than anybody else."