In case you ever need a reminder of just how prolific Rickey Henderson was during his Hall of Fame career at stealing bases, here is a number that will boggle your mind.
How long was Rickey Henderson the best in Major League Baseball at stealing bases? Here is the statistic to let you know.
In honor of February being Black History Month, Major League Baseball tweeted out a statistic about Henderson that had many stopping in their tracks on Twitter to do the math.
Rickey Henderson holds the @MLB record for SB with 1,406.
— MLB Stats (@MLBStats) February 3, 2022
In order for someone to break his record they would need to steal 60 bases a season for over 23 seasons! #BlackHistoryMonth pic.twitter.com/ZL4su1ZGdY
That’s right. Henderson’s all-time record for stolen bases is very likely one that will never be broken because of not only the amount of bases he grabbed during his 14 years with the Oakland A’s, five seasons with the New York Yankees, three seasons with the San Diego Padres, two years with the New York Mets, and one other season (full or partial) with five other franchises. That is 25 years of excellence at the art of stealing bases wearing nine different jerseys.
Henderson stole 100 or more bases in three different seasons, leading all of MLB with 130 swipes in 1982, 108 in 1983, and 100 in 1980. He also paced MLB in three other seasons while leading the American League by itself in six other campaigns.
In Henderson’s rookie season of 1979 with Oakland, when he was 20 years old, he stole 33 bases. In Henderson’s third-to-last season in 2001 with the Padres, when he was 42 years old, he swiped 25 bases. That is a career from start to finish of terrorizing pitchers and catchers because of sheer speed.
Henderson is also the only MLB player to ever steal more than 1,000 bases. Who is second on MLB’s all-time stolen base list? That would be Lou Brock with 938, joining Billy Hamilton (who stole 914 between 1888-1901) as the only other players to top 900 career stolen bases.