Rickey Henderson steals the East Bay’s heart one last time in star-studded memorial

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The bears were huge, Fred Atkins recalled, his voice growing more animated in front of thousands of people at the Oakland Arena who were there on Saturday to mourn his old friend Rickey Henderson. Giant plush bears, practically as big as Rickey was.

As Atkins recounted, this happened one summer when they were kids. That day they’d gone to the Alameda County Fair together. As midnight arrived, the two were separated, with Atkins taking the bus back home, wondering where his friend had gone. Around 2:30 a.m., there he was, outside Atkins’ house, yelling at him through an open window. It turned out Rickey had hitchhiked his way back with two plush bears that could only fit in the back of a pickup truck. He had missed the bus because he was trying to win the biggest toys at the carnival games until the last possible moment.

It was funny to Atkins now, imagining Rickey there in the back of some strange truck, massive bears under either arm, on his way to becoming one of the greatest athletes in the world.

“My mind was going, ‘Why didn’t you just go home and tell [me later]?’” Atkins recalled thinking as he stared at his friend from the window. But of course, he knew the answer. “I think he was trying to show off,” he said.

Sweet and competitive and weird in equal measure, Rickey Henderson, a true American and Oakland original, a legend of Bushrod Park before he was a star of the Coliseum on the other side of town, died in December following a bout with pneumonia. The former Oakland A’s outfielder was 65 years old, just a couple decades removed from his last appearance on a Major League Baseball field.

The celebration of life on Saturday, held by the Henderson family, along with Major League Baseball and the Athletics organization, brought together Rickey’s closest friends in and out of baseball, as well as his biggest fans, on hand to chant “Run, Rickey, run!” one last time. Luminaries across the Bay Area sports landscape were in attendance. Oakland native and former A’s batboy M.C. Hammer performed a musical number.

Dozens of adults who were kids during Henderson’s era brought their own kids to the memorial. Credit: Myron Caringal

“ Rickey Henderson is Black history. Rickey Henderson is baseball history. Rickey Henderson is American history,” Renel Brooks-Moon, the San Francisco Giants’ former public address announcer and an Oakland native, reminded the audience. Brooks-Moon hosted the ceremony, along with former A’s players Shooty Babitt and Bip Roberts.

A couple of Henderson’s fellow Hall of Famers, Dave Winfield and Ken Griffey Jr., spoke movingly about their friend.

“What I really, really enjoyed about Rickey is that every day he came to work full of joy, happiness, energy, positivity,” said Winfield, the Yankees great who spent four years with Henderson in the Bronx.

“Playing in New York wasn’t always a comfortable or nice place. But I would see him, we talked stuff, and it would brighten my day. It hurts me that he’s no longer with us. I can’t imagine him, a person that’s always full of energy and positivity, to be gone even before me.”

Griffey, whose father played for those 1980s Yankees teams, said he thought of Henderson as an older brother or an uncle who pushed him to be better. Even after Griffey had made it as an all-star in the bigs, he recalled, Henderson was still pushing him, once pointing out an error in his approach during batting practice and telling him exactly how he could solve it.

Considered the coolest baseball player of the ’90s because of his backward cap and laconic but violently effective swing, Griffey also paid tribute to Henderson’s cultural influence. He recalled how Rickey’s famously long stroll to the batter’s box, serenaded by his designated walkup song, became “a thing,” imitated by so many players the sport had to create a 10-second rule to speed up the process.

“ Everybody sees Rickey as being fast, but he might be the slowest brother from the batter’s circle to the home plate,” Junior joked.

Ken Griffey Jr., the star of the Seattle Mariners and Cincinnati Reds for nearly two decades, gave tribute and credit to Rickey for making baseball cool for kids of all ages. Credit: Myron Caringal

Former Oakland A’s pitcher Dave Stewart remembered that Henderson had “a way of making life more fun, no matter where he was, who he was with.”

“He never met a stranger,” Stewart said. “Just people he hadn’t made friends with yet. He was always up for a good time. Always had a story to tell.”

Stewart wanted mourners to remember Henderson’s electric spirit. “Tell the stories, live with the same kind of fearlessness and the joy that he did,” he said. “Rickey wouldn’t want for us to say goodbye with tears in our eyes. He would want for us to say, ‘See you later.’”

Among the Bay Area sports idols in attendance were Oakland native Gary Payton, the former NBA superstar; the former San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds; and many of Henderson’s A’s teammates from the ’80s and ’90s, including Carney Lansford, Jose Canseco, and Dennis Eckersley. Former managers Joe Torre and Tony La Russa, the latter of whom often clashed with Rickey over the years, were also in attendance. None of them spoke to the press at the celebration of life, but they gathered at a private ceremony with Henderson’s family at the arena afterward.

Yolanda Shavies, left, and Assata Bilal were two of the long-time Oaklanders who cheered on Rickey’s ’80s and ’90s teams. “ It’s raining outside, so the town is very sad [about losing Rickey],” Shavies said. Credit: Myron Caringal

We spoke to several fans as they trickled into the stadium early in the morning and waited for the ceremony to start. Several teared up as they held the celebration program marking their hero’s passing.

Ken Richardson, born in 1981, couldn’t take his eyes off the career stats that were displayed on the arena’s scoreboards.

“ I’m just in awe of all the things that I got to watch him do. It’s amazing, and it’s sad at the same time, and I’m definitely gonna miss him,” he said. The Oakland native brought his wife and children to the event to give them a sense of Rickey’s importance to the city. Having learned about the legend, Richardson’s young son told us he would pick the number 24 for his next baseball season.

Next door to the arena, the Coliseum through which Henderson ran roughshod lay empty, abandoned by the A’s after this past season. Several old plastic banners celebrating the team’s years in Oakland were still visibly crunched and disposed of inside a vast yellow dumpster behind the left field bleachers. “ I think people are here to really say goodbye. Because this is it for the Oakland A’s. He was a pillar in this community,” said Yolanda Shavies. “So them moving and now he’s gone — who’s gonna keep it up? Besides us wearing our paraphernalia, who’s really gonna represent Oakland as we move on after today?”

“ I feel empowered right now. I really do. This is a proud look for Oakland. We are proud of Oakland, and we wanna build Oakland back up,” said Assata Bilal.

Nearly everyone in the arena wore their old green and gold uniforms and attire. Credit: Myron Caringal

The surly departure of the A’s hung over the proceedings. Some people told us they were frustrated that the ticket system for the celebration made only a portion of the arena’s 18,000-plus seats available — an unwelcome reminder, perhaps, of the tarps installed at the Coliseum to block off upper-deck seating. A stadium worker had heard that people were scalping the free tickets for $500 apiece. One of Henderson’s old baseball friends told us he didn’t doubt the whole arena would have filled up if the team had allowed it.

When Brooks-Moon mentioned John Fisher, the A’s owner, many in the crowd started booing loudly, which led the host to stop them with a reprimand: “Not today. Not today, y’all. This is about Rickey. We can get back to fighting tomorrow.”

As the crowd dispersed and the lights went up after the ceremony, we spoke to several of Henderson’s family members, including his older brother, Tyrone. Wearing one of his brother’s golden-yellow A’s jerseys, he told us while tearing up that he was thankful that people showed up to remember his brother.

“I’m just going to miss my brother, my best friend,” he said.