SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — Albert Pujols grew up not 30 minutes from Estadio Quisqueya, a quaint, shaded stadium that has housed Santo Domingo’s two baseball teams, the Tigres del Licey and the Leones del Escogido, for 70 years. When he was 10, and the right-field corner was composed of benches instead of seats, he roamed the aisles selling sandwiches with his mother to earn extra money. His cousins rooted for Licey, by far the nation’s most popular team, and so Pujols took on Escogido, at least in part to spite them.

That was the team he cheered for every winter — the team he promised to play with before his major league playing career ended, the team that gave him his first chance to manage last February, and the team with which he won the most improbable, most thrilling of championships earlier this week, knocking off the Licey team that split his and so many other Dominican families for decades.

“Wow,” he said from an interview room late Monday night, his left arm wrapped around the massive Copa Banreservas trophy after Escogido’s nail-biting 6-5 victory over Licey in Game 7. “It still hasn’t hit me.”

Pujols, now 45 years old, and 28 months removed from his last major league game, aspires to someday manage in the big leagues and decided to cut his teeth in the hotbed that is the Dominican Professional Baseball League, commonly known as LIDOM. The championship round against Licey — the team with a record 24 LIDOM titles, including each of the last two — was regarded as one of the best this island had ever seen.

Two of the games lasted at least 13 innings, and another was undecided until the eighth. In Game 4, Pujols’ best player, promising Tampa Bay Rays prospect Junior Caminero, charged at the opposing dugout. In Game 6, Pujols inserted himself into the middle of controversy by asking umpires to ensure the bat that produced Gustavo Núñez’s two-out, ninth-inning, game-tying home run was not corked. It wasn’t, LIDOM officials determined the following morning, setting the stage for a grand finale.

In a winner-take-all Game 7, Escogido pulled ahead with a 454-foot moon shot by Caminero in the top of the ninth. But Licey threatened in the bottom half, placing runners on second and third with two outs against reeling closer Rafael Montero. Francisco Mejía then sent a sinking liner to shallow right field that seemed primed for a championship-clinching walk-off, but Socrates Brito secured it with a diving catch, sending half of Estadio Quisqueya into a frenzy.

Tying run on 3B. Winning run at 2B. Escogido wins the LIDOM championship, its first in nine years, on a sliding catch. Licey is denied a three-peat. Half of Estadio Quisqueya is going bonkers. The other half, dejected. pic.twitter.com/hAfCEOy5s0

— Alden González (@Alden_Gonzalez) January 28, 2025

“It’s been a long journey,” said Pujols, whose team will now represent the nation in the Caribbean Series in Mexico. “It wasn’t easy to get here.”

Pujols’ Escogido team got off to a 16-5 start, then won just two games over the first 22 days of December, dropping from first place to fourth in a six-team league. Within weeks, fans went from considering Pujols the logical choice for manager of the year to angrily second-guessing his every move. They criticized his lineup choices, clamored for him to be more animated in the dugout, poked fun at his defensiveness with the media and claimed that if his name didn’t carry so much weight on the island, he would have been fired.

“The fans here, they’re brutal,” Pujols said. “When things are going well, they love you. When things are going bad, they want to hang you.”

But Pujols found himself too busy to worry. His roster was in constant flux, as is often the case in this league. His starting catchers went from Martin Maldonado to Reese McGuire to Gary Sanchez to Pedro Severino. For six weeks, from the middle of November to the end of December, not a single Escogido starting pitcher lasted more than four innings. When the regular season ended, his team led the league in errors. But too many of those errors, Pujols said, were mental ones — ill-timed baserunning mistakes, errant throws and so many missed signs.

In this job, as much as anything else, Pujols has learned patience.

“That’s been the biggest challenge,” he said. “I’ve seen some things here you wouldn’t believe.”

Since Pujols’ playing career began in 2001, there have been only five men selected to the Hall of Fame as players who also managed in the big leagues. Only one, Frank Robinson, had a sustained career on the bench. None of the other four — Paul Molitor, Ryne Sandberg, Tony Pérez and Alan Trammell — lasted longer than four seasons, according to ESPN Research.

Every circumstance is different, but a popular notion throughout sports has been that the greatest players tend to struggle as coaches because they also struggle to relate with players who aren’t as advanced in their craft. The game came relatively easy to them. Often, they can’t understand how it doesn’t come as easily for others, and so they find it difficult to teach at what to them are rudimentary levels.

Pujols, all but certain to be voted into the Hall of Fame when eligible in 2028, admits he, too, struggled with that initially. But he had what he described as an epiphany one morning in September, while driving to the facility for the second week of preseason workouts, thinking about what he and his coaches would need to reemphasize to players later that afternoon. He found himself getting angry. Too many of his players weren’t disciplined enough, focused enough, to play at the highest level. He didn’t know how to make that clear to them. He felt hopeless.

“And then I felt that God really stopped me,” he said, placing his right hand over his chest. “I paused and I’m like, ‘Hey, you can’t expect these guys to make the play. You have to teach them. You have to be patient.’ And I think that’s something that has been huge, to be able to be patient. To be able to understand.”

When the Leones slid in December, Pujols reminded them how good they were. When they snuck into the four-team round-robin tournament, requiring three consecutive season-ending victories, he told players their best baseball was approaching. And in the aftermath of a gut-wrenching loss late in Game 6 on Sunday night, his team an out from a championship until Núñez’s home run, he walked into the clubhouse with a smile and declared they had nothing to fear.

“I learned a lot from him,” said Plácido Polanco, Pujols’ bench coach and beloved ex-teammate. “I learned to trust your instincts and to stay calm.”

With the score tied at 5 in Monday’s top of the ninth, and Escogido’s first title in nine years once again hanging in the balance, Caminero launched a Jairo Asencio offering to deep center field — over an 18-foot-high fence commonly referred to as this country’s “Green Monster” and off the scoreboard stationed beyond it. Caminero flung his bat so high it took four seconds to hit the ground. He celebrated with teammates who had spilled out of the first-base dugout, pranced around the infield, stopped for a hug at third base, riled up the fans on his way to home plate and stomped on it twice for effect.

When Caminero was granted permission to play winter ball, Pujols promised Rays coaches they would witness a newer, better version of him when he arrived at spring training in mid-February. Caminero carried Escogido through the round-robin tournament, batting .448 through 15 games, then became a target of Licey fans in the final round, many of whom chanted “MVP” sarcastically when he didn’t come through.

Caminero is 21 and brimming with talent, but often the emotions of LIDOM seemed to overwhelm him. Pujols spent these past seven weeks focusing his attention on Caminero. After their time together was over, he promised to keep in touch.

“He’s going to be a superstar,” Pujols said. “It’s special.”

Pujols — he of 703 home runs, 2,218 RBIs, 3,384 hits, two World Series titles and hundreds of millions of dollars in career earnings — certainly doesn’t need to subject himself to the grind and the second-guessing of a baseball manager. But he wants to. And when many wonder why, Pujols will point to the challenge of helping someone like Caminero — and to the type of moment his swing produced.

“I feel that I can offer so much to players and to teams,” said Pujols, who has yet to interview for a managerial opening in the majors. “And it’s about growing and helping. It’s not about me. It’s about helping others, and having that passion. I have that love and that passion for the game. This was my job, this was my life. For me, that’s why I want to do it. If the opportunity comes, why not?”

The NHL trade deadline for the 2024-25 season is not until March 7, but teams have not waited until the last minute to make major moves.

For every significant trade that occurs during the season, you’ll find a grade for it here, including David Jiricek to the Minnesota Wild, Jacob Trouba to the Anaheim Ducks, the Colorado Avalanche and San Jose Sharks swapping goaltenders, Cam Fowler to the St. Louis Blues, Kaapo Kakko to the Seattle Kraken, the blockbuster deal sending Mikko Rantanen to the Carolina Hurricanes and Martin Necas to the Avalanche, and the four-player swap between the Flyers and Flames.

Read on for grades from Ryan S. Clark and Greg Wyshynski, and check back the next time a big deal breaks.

Late in Rickey Henderson’s career, his Seattle Mariners teammate Mike Cameron would reach for the bus microphone as the team lumbered from airports to hotels, and he read aloud some of the recent achievements of his fellow players from the media relations notes.

Maybe someone was about to hit a round number — 400 career RBIs, 500 strikeouts. In comparison, though, Henderson’s numbers were otherworldly, Cameron recalled. It was as if Henderson were an alien designed to play the earthly game called baseball, and to look great doing it.

During Henderson’s 25-year career, he played 3,141 games with 671 teammates, for 15 managers, against 3,099 opponents. Henderson’s prolific production is indelible: The goal of the sport is to score the most runs, and Henderson did that 2,295 times — more than anyone, ever.

And yet as incredible as Henderson was for his accomplishments as a player — for stealing a record 1,406 bases, for hitting with power, for his physicality — he was almost as renowned for his personality, his style, his irrepressible confidence and devotion to each game.

Henderson died on Dec. 20, five days shy of his 66th birthday, and this Saturday, he will be honored in a celebration of life at the Oakland Arena.

Those who knew him are saturated with stories about the Hall of Famer, about his devotion to excellence, his acumen, his persona and those moments when he transcended the sport. “The legend of Rickey Henderson still lives on through the numbers of the game,” Cameron said, “and the legendary stories.”

Here are just a few.

The art of the steal

In 1988 — although similar conversations undoubtedly took place throughout the 1980s, a decade in which Henderson wrecked conventional managerial strategy — then-Baltimore Orioles manager Frank Robinson said before a game in Oakland that he told pitchers and catchers to not even bother attempting to keep Henderson from running if he got on base.

“Why should we even try to throw him out? We’re never going to get him, and we might throw it away trying to get him,” Robinson said. “Don’t even try to get him. He’s too good.”

Of course, Henderson walked to start the first inning that day, and stole second … without a throw.

Former Texas Rangers manager Bobby Valentine landed similarly. “We used to talk about two outs, nobody on, ninth-place hitter at the plate,” Valentine said of a hypothetical game situation. “Walk him, hit him, let him get on first base [in front of Henderson] because it just wasn’t fair when Rickey got on first and no one was on in front of him. It wasn’t fair to the catcher.”

“He was unbelievable in the ’80s. Oh God. Rickey stopped the game with everything he did. He stopped it walking to the plate. He stopped it when he’d take a pitch. He stopped it when he hit a pitch. He stopped it when he got on base. He was wonderful to watch, except when you knew he was beating your ass.”

Manager Tony La Russa had Henderson in his dugout across seven seasons — but also saw from across the diamond.

“I managed my first 10 years against Rickey, and managing against Rickey was terrorizing. You care about winning the game, as we all do, you were so nervous in a close game, a one-run game, up one, down one, tie game, and in my lifetime, the most dangerous player of our time was Rickey Henderson. He had this miniscule strike zone. If you threw it in there, he’d hit it. If you didn’t throw it in there, he’d walk, and it was a triple. He would walk, steal second and third and score on a weak ground ball. We called them Rickey Runs.”

Cameron had always been a base stealer in his rise to the majors and felt he understood the art, but Henderson gave him a more enhanced view. With a right-hander on the mound, Cameron had been taught to look for the collapsing right leg as the first move. Henderson narrowed that focus: the back heel. With left-handers, watch the left shoulders.

Raúl Ibañez recalled how Henderson seemed to have the tell on every pitcher’s pickoff — some bit of body language that betrayed whether the pitcher was going to throw the ball to the plate, or to first base. And if a pitcher appeared whom Henderson had never seen before, he would go to the end of the first base dugout and watch until he found the tell.

If Henderson played in this era, former manager Buck Showalter said, “with the rules we have now, he would steal 200 bases. … There was a science to what he was doing, he knew exactly how many steps it took to reach second base. And you never knew when he was going. Runners always have a slight bend to the knee right before they were going. Rickey’s knee never buckled. He’s the only one I’ve ever seen who was like that.”

La Russa noted, “They did everything they could to not let him beat them. He was a marked man. All the different strategies to beat him — waiting him out, slowing him down on the bases — he defeated all of them. People tried to intimidate him. My favorite phrase is the one I used years ago: ‘You can’t scare him. You can’t stop him.'”

How he saw the game — on and off the field

Henderson’s stance at the plate was unique, a low crouch that turned his theoretical strike zone into the size of a QR code. “I just remember how difficult it was to make a tough pitch to him with his small strike zone,” All-Star pitcher Roger Clemens said.

Cameron once asked him how he could hit so well from that stance. “That’s how Rickey see the game,” Henderson replied. “I see the game small.”

Everything Henderson did on the field came with his own trademark style. When he thought he hit a home run, he’d pull the top of his jersey — pop it. He ran low to the ground, moving with peak efficiency, and slid headfirst, like a jet landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier. He’d catch routine fly balls swiping his glove like a windshield wiper.

And the panache carried off the diamond, too. Cameron recalled how Henderson always walked into the clubhouse beautifully attired. Dress slacks, silk dress shirt tucked in. When Cameron and teammates went to Henderson’s room to play cards or dominoes, he would greet them at the door wearing the hotel robe and slippers.

“He had his flair,” La Russa said, talking about the time he managed against him. “It didn’t bother me as long as it was normal and natural. What bothered me is when he would get on first, steal second and third, and score on a ground ball. That’s what bothered me.

“His schooling was limited,” La Russa continued. “He did not have a classic education. He talked in the third person. People did not understand. Rickey’s IQ is not just a baseball IQ. Rickey is a very intelligent guy. If you’re around him, you realize how smart he is.”

Henderson didn’t talk a lot during games. “He might’ve talked to the umpires more than [to] anyone else,” Mariners teammate Alex Rodriguez noted. And his interaction with the umpires was more of a monologue, as longtime umpire Dale Scott remembered. If Henderson disagreed with a strike call, he was apt to say: “Rickey don’t like that pitch.” Then he would move on and concentrate on the next pitch.

Henderson was ejected 11 times over his long career, and nine of those were about disagreements over the strike zone, but he was not a serial whiner, Scott said he thought. “He never went goofy on me,” Scott said. Whether he was at the plate or on the bases, he talked to himself — maybe to push himself, maybe to heighten his focus. A pitch could be thrown outside and Henderson might say out loud, ‘Rickey’s not swinging at that.'”

He was a challenging player to umpire, Scott recalled, because of his speed, his acute understanding of the strike zone and the way he crouched in his stance. Bill Miller, who was in his early days as an umpire as Henderson’s career neared its end, guesstimated that Henderson probably had more high strikes called on him than anyone because of his setup at the plate. When Scott worked the bases, he knew every infield ground ball hit off Henderson’s bat carried the potential of a bang-bang play at first, and every time he reached base, there were bound to be pickoffs or close safe/out calls on attempted steals, with Henderson crashing into bases to beat throws.

‘Fueling the machine’

Those around Henderson were awed by his incredible physical condition and the methods he used to stay in shape.

Tim Kurkjian once asked him how he got so strong. “You must lift weights all the time,” Kurkjian said.

“Never lifted a weight in my life,” Henderson said. “Pushups and sit-ups. That’s all.”

Cameron backed this up: “I never saw him lifting weights. The prison workout: Pushups and sit-ups. And a hand grip.”

Showalter said, “I was driving home from a spring training game and I saw Rickey leaving a vegetable stand with three bags of vegetables in his arms,” Showalter said. “He took immaculate care of his body, I don’t think he ever drank. He didn’t eat at McDonald’s; he went to a vegetable stand. He was fueling the machine.”

“He was a very physical runner and slider,” Showalter said. “He had different gears. He was like an airplane coming for a landing, leaning forward while accelerating. The end of the runway was the bag. I never saw him slide off the bag. He took a beating with all the sliding he did. Guys tried to pound him on tags. They’d block the base. He’d just smile at them as if to say, ‘You can’t hurt me.'”

In A.J. Hinch’s rookie season, 1998, he wore No. 23 and Henderson wore 24, so they lockered next to each other. At the All-Star break, they happened to be on the same flight to Phoenix. “I hear him call out with his raspy voice and his cackle for a laugh,” he recalled. “I sit in the aisle seat in the exit row and Rickey is in the window seat. We land in Phoenix, and as we get off, Rickey asked me where I was going. I told him my girlfriend is at baggage claim, to pick me up. He said, ‘No, why are you walking? Rickey doesn’t walk. Rickey needs to save his legs.’

“So we were there for five minutes. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. Almost half an hour, and then a courtesy cart came to get us at the gate. He wouldn’t let me leave so he could save his legs. That was his way of teaching me to be a big leaguer.”

La Russa said, “It is remarkable how often he stayed off the disabled list with the pounding he took. What I learned is that when Rickey said he couldn’t go, he couldn’t go. When he could feel that his legs were getting tight, they were vulnerable, he would take a day off. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to play, he knew his legs and body well enough that it was smarter to give them a day for sure. I learned to appreciate that.”

Cameron once asked him how he could slide headfirst throughout his career without getting overwhelmed by the pounding, and Henderson held up his hands. His fingers pointed in different directions “and looked like spiderwebs,” Cameron said. “I don’t know how he hit so well, with his hands beaten up like that.”

There was a game in that 2000 season when Henderson’s back was sore, Rodriguez recalled, and the Mariners played into the bottom of the 13^th, with Henderson due to hit leadoff. “He would go an entire game and not say a word to anybody,” Rodriguez remembered. “The top of the 13^th ends, and I’m hustling to the dugout to get ready to hit, and Rickey waves me down.”

As Rodriguez related the memory, he moved into an imitation of Henderson’s distinctive voice, as so many of his teammates and friends do. “Hey, hey, Rod,” Henderson said to Rodriguez, mixing in his trademark third-person usage of his own name. “Listen — Rickey’s back hurts. I’m going to walk, and I already talked to [David Bell] — he’s going to move me over. Make sure you get me in. Rickey don’t get paid for overtime.”

Facing a young Roy Halladay, Henderson singled. When Bell dropped a bunt, Henderson beat the throw to second. Rodriguez singled to load the bases, and then Edgar Martinez ended the game with another single. “Now that’s what I’m talking about!” Henderson said happily, as the Mariners celebrated. “Now let’s go get in the hot tub.”

Henderson, the teammate

When Henderson was traded from the New York Yankees back to the Oakland A’s in 1989, Henderson “was very conscious of the perception that he was not a great teammate — an ‘I/Me’ guy,” La Russa recalled. “He was very sensitive to the perception that he was egotistical. He was expressive to the point that he was all about the team. That perception was totally shot. When he came to our team, he made a great team the greatest team ever. We divided the pressure around here.

“Talk to anyone he played with, and he played with a lot of teams, there wasn’t a superstar part of his attitude in the clubhouse, the dugout, the planes, on the buses, He was beloved. When you hear noise in the clubhouse, it was Rickey laughing, he was always in the middle of everything. That truth is not always recognized by fans. Before he played for us, I had no idea he was that way. You see all the flair. But he never played the superstar card with his teammates.”

Henderson was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays in 1993, joining, among others, Paul Molitor. “There are guys, when you play against them, that you don’t care for them, their act or their gait,” said Molitor. “When Rickey came to Toronto, I changed 180 [degrees] with him. We had a pretty good team when he got there, but I found that he loved to be a part of a team, he loved to win. He made no waves whatsoever.”

Ibanez idolized Henderson while he grew up, mimicking the way Henderson caught and threw as one of the very few major-leaguers who batted right-handed but threw left-handed, and during the 2000 season, Ibanez played with him. “One of my favorite teammates I’ve ever had,” Ibanez said. “Hilarious. Thoughtful.”

Ibanez often watched Henderson in batting practice, working through his swing among teammates like Edgar Martinez, making adjustments, sometimes talking to himself. “Rickey is trying to hit like Edgar,” Henderson once said. “Rickey can’t hit like that.”

Henderson’s pronunciation of Ibanez’s first name always included an emphasis on the ‘h’ sound in the middle — Rah-houl — and Ibanez remembers him being open with advice, and instilling confidence from his own bottomless well of it. “Once you get the opportunity,” Henderson rasped to Ibanez, “you’re going to hit, Rah-houl.”

Young players loved Henderson, recalled Bruce Bochy, who once managed Henderson when he played with the San Diego Padres: “Rickey would play cards and dominoes with them before games, and on the plane.” When the Padres acquired All-Star slugger Greg Vaughn before the 1997 season, and in those days before the National League adopted the DH, Bochy was concerned about how Henderson would handle the situation — two very accomplished left fielders. “I bring Rickey into my office to tell him about the box I’m in,” Bochy remembered. “He looked at me with understanding and said, ‘That’s OK. All Rickey ask is that you let him know when he’s playing the night before.”

Problem solved.

Henderson’s communication with Piniella was a little different. Among his players, Piniella was known as a hard-ass, to the degree that Cameron’s instinct to run on the bases was curtailed to preempt a possible chewing out from his manager. When Henderson arrived, Cameron recalled, it was his presence that loosened Piniella, the two of them jabbing verbally at each other while those around them laughed. At one point during the season, Piniella gave Henderson a couple of days off, and Henderson lobbied for a return to the lineup. “Hey, Sweet,” he called out to Piniella in the dugout, using Piniella’s nickname. “Rickey don’t know about two days off. Rickey’s legs are good.”

“They should be good,” Piniella retorted with some friendly sarcasm. “You couldn’t move before.” Henderson “was the only one,” said Cameron, “who could talk s— to Lou.”

It wasn’t always clear to some of Henderson’s teammates if he actually knew their names. Hinch played with Henderson in Oakland, and later in Hinch’s career, when he was with the Kansas City Royals and Henderson was with the Boston Red Sox, some of Hinch’s teammates doubted Henderson would remember him. “So here we are at Fenway Park about to go out for pregame stretching telling Rickey stories,” Hinch wrote in a text response, “when Roberto Hernandez” — the Royals’ closer — said there’s no way Rickey knows my name.”

“I tried to convince him and the others that my locker was next to his. I had scored a lot for him as the nine-hole hitter and him leading off. I had flown with him. I had worked out in the offseason with him at the complex. Yet they were not convinced. Roberto put his money where his mouth was and told me he had $1,000 if Rickey referred to me by name when we went out there. I asked if it counted if he used any initial — JP, DJ, PJ, AJ, any of them. Roberto said, ‘Nope, has to be A.J.'”

“We head out and I go directly to left field and give Rickey the bro hug in front of Roberto and he says, ‘A.J., my man, how are you?’ HE NAILED IT. When I got back to my locker, I had 10 $100 bills in my chair.”

He might not have talked much with teammates during games, but he was talking constantly — in the direction of fans, to himself. Playing center field, Cameron could hear Henderson at his position, just talking out loud: Hey, hey, hey! Baby!

Henderson was a leadoff hitter through his career, but Cameron would see him in the clubhouse only minutes before a game, finishing a game of spades, or pluck. “Never in a hurry,” Cameron remembered. And then he would start to stretch. Cameron, batting second, once called out to his friend from the on-deck circle as the home plate umpire began to look for the first batter: “Hey, Rick, they are ready for you!”

Henderson responded smoothly, “The game don’t start until Rickey goes to the plate.”

Henderson’s place in history

During Henderson’s chase for Lou Brock’s record for career stolen bases, the two became friends. “Close friends,” Brock said. “I really liked Rickey. I loved how much he cared about the game, about winning.”

When Henderson broke Brock’s record, he famously pulled third base out of the ground, held it toward the sky and proclaimed, while being interviewed on the public address system at the Oakland Coliseum, “Today, I am the greatest of all time!”

That was not the plan.

“Together, Rickey and I wrote a speech that Rickey was supposed to read after breaking the record,” Brock told Tim Kurkjian 20 years ago. “He said he would carry it in his uniform pocket, and have it ready for when he broke the record. When he broke the record, he got caught up in the emotion, and just said what he said.”

Brock, who was not angry or upset, called Henderson after the game.

“Rickey, the speech?” Brock asked. “What happened to the speech we wrote?”

Henderson said, “Sorry, Lou, I forgot.”

This was on May 6, 1991. Henderson’s career continued for another dozen seasons.

According to stats guru Craig Wright, Henderson drew 2,129 unintentional walks, the most in history. An amazing 796 times, he drew a walk to lead off an inning, almost 200 more than any other player. There are 152 players in the Hall of Fame elected as position players who played in at least 1,500 major league games. Sixty-eight of them (45%) drew fewer intentional walks in their careers than Henderson did just leading off an inning. “And one of them,” said Molitor, “was in the bottom of the ninth in Game 6 in ’93.”

In that Game 6 of the World Series, Henderson and the Blue Jays trailed the Philadelphia Phillies 6-5. Henderson walked. Paul Molitor singled. Joe Carter hit a walk-off three-run homer.

Late in the 2001 season, Henderson closed in on Ty Cobb’s record for runs scored, and Padres teammate Phil Nevin wanted to be the guy who drove him in. Nevin missed opportunities, and in the first inning of the Padres’ game on Oct. 4, 2001, Henderson flied out. Nevin — the Padres’ cleanup hitter — told Henderson he should get himself on base the next time and he would drive him in.

“You missed your chance yesterday,” Henderson responded. “Rickey is going to drive Rickey in, and I’m going to slide across home plate.”

In the bottom of the third inning, Henderson pulled a ball that hit off the top of the left-field fence and caromed over the wall, a home run — the 290^th of the 297 Henderson hit in his career. With teammates gathered at home plate to greet him, Henderson slid into home plate, feet first.

“He was so misunderstood because of the speech he made after breaking Brock’s record, when he said, ‘I am the greatest,'” Nevin said. “People thought he was a selfish guy, who couldn’t remember anybody’s name. But he was a great teammate.”

Said La Russa: “With Rickey … there’s no doubt you can get to that greatest list of all time, with Willie [Mays] and Hank [Aaron], and Rickey is right in the middle of it. He is right on that club. That’s his greatness. He compares to all of them, Babe Ruth, all of them.”

Said Valentine: “He’s the best player I’ve ever seen. Up close and personal, in the late ’80s, my goodness, how could anyone be better? I don’t know how anyone could be better.”

Henderson played his last major league game on Sept. 19, 2003, and was voted into the Hall of Fame in 2009. Twenty-eight writers did not vote for Henderson.

Myth and legend

The stories about Henderson were voluminous, with some of them seeming improbable, incredible. Henderson made an appearance on ESPN’s morning radio show “Mike and Mike” and was asked about the veracity of a handful of the legendary anecdotes — a game of true or false.

Was it true, Henderson was asked, that he once called Padres GM Kevin Towers and said, “This is Rickey calling on behalf of Rickey, and Rickey wants to play baseball”?

Henderson’s grinned and replied, “False. I like that.”

When Henderson checked into a hotel, was it true that he sometimes checked in under the pseudonym of Richard Pryor? “Yes,” he confirmed. “[Also] James Brown, Luther Vandross.”

In the early 1980s, the A’s accounting department was freaking out because their books were off by $1 million — and as the famous story goes, Henderson had taken a $1 million bonus check and framed it without cashing it, and hung it on the wall in his house. Was this accurate? “That’s true,” Henderson said, laughing.

There was a story that Henderson fell asleep on an ice pack in the middle of August, got frostbite, and missed three games. “Yes, that was with Toronto,” Henderson said. “I was icing my ankle.”

His final days

Last year, in La Russa’s last serious conversation with Henderson, the player asked his former manager: “What record did I obtain that you never thought was possible?” La Russa replied, “‘3,000 hits.’ I didn’t think, with all his walks, that he would get to 3,000 hits. You don’t want to walk him. But if you throw a strike, he hits it on the barrel for a single, double, triple or home runs.”

Last year, Cameron and Nevin attended games in those last days of the Oakland Coliseum. When Nevin bumped into him, Henderson greeted him warmly — “Hiya, Phil!” — and talked about how much he enjoyed getting to know Nevin’s son, Tyler, who played 87 games with the A’s last season. Henderson, Nevin recalled, “still looked like he could put a uniform on.”

Late in the season, Brent Rooker, Oakland’s All-Star slugger, approached Henderson in the clubhouse, where he was playing cards, and told him he had heard an interview with a longtime writer who opined about the best player he had ever covered. “Who was it?” Henderson asked.

“It was you,” Rooker said.

Henderson replied, “Well, who else would it have been?” And for Rooker, it was an affirmation that Henderson’s swagger, his confidence, was indomitable. “He carried that same aura about him all the time,” Rooker recalled, “and he was a blast to be around.”

In early December, longtime Padres hitting coach Merv Rettenmund died, and some of Rettenmund’s friends and former players scheduled a gathering in San Diego. The expectation was that Henderson would attend. But just before the event, Henderson spoke to a former teammate and mentioned that he had been fighting a cold and hadn’t been feeling well. “I haven’t had a cold in 15 years,” Henderson said.

Soon thereafter, Henderson was gone.

“I never saw him have a bad day on a baseball field,” Cameron said. “To get a chance to play with someone of that nature.

“The joy. It was crazy. It was special.”