The first section concludes with the 1981 MLB season, when the Athletics won the AL West and Rickey earned his second consecutive All-Star nod and finished as runner-up in the MVP voting to reliever Rollie Fingers (which seems so weird in retrospect). Rickey was drafted out of high school by his hometown A’s and after some up-and-down experiences in the minor leagues made it to the majors in 1979.

This left Rickey remarkably self-conscious about his vocabulary and being seen as unintelligent by the media which helped drive his perpetually rocky relationship with representatives of the fourth estate.

Henderson was also carelessly hurtled through the Oakland public school system, leaving him unable to properly read a newspaper until he was 20. It also describes Henderson’s childhood growing up as a star football player (he mainly shifted his focus to baseball out of injury concerns and even contacted Raiders owner Al Davis for a tryout in the late 80s). Completely understandably, this portion was the heaviest on non-sports content and at times reads more like a history of Oakland and black migration (think something akin to Boom Town by Sam Anderson). Its opening chapters cover Henderson’s early years and the impact the Great Migration of blacks from the south to northern and western cities had on Henderson’s family and Oakland in general. The book is structured into 3 roughly equally-sized sections. It doesn’t shed much new light on Henderson’s personality or private life (and I’m fine with that), but it does chronicle the life of a stellar athlete (Bill James once said splitting Rickey in half would leave you with two Hall of Famers) and places his career in context. In the end, my reluctance was somewhat justified but I’m still glad I read Rickey. But was Rickey Henderson an interesting enough subject to hold my engagement for over 400 pages? I like baseball well enough but I never was a huge A’s or Rickey Henderson fan and I mainly remember him from playing forever, stealing a ton of bases, and being portrayed as a prickly and aloof personality by the media. The book’s author, ESPN writer Howard Bryant, deftly explores the intersection of sports with race, history, and culture in his books and articles and was a former A’s beat writer during Henderson’s tenure with the team. I came into Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original with a bit of trepidation.

Rickey howard bryant