Where does Rickey Henderson fit?

This year Rickey Henderson is on the Hall of Fame ballot for the first time. To commemorate this occasion, I want to play a little game: Here is a list of players. Tell me the first thing that comes to mind.

Pete Rose, Barry Bonds, Ty Cobb, Carl Yastrzemski, Hank Aaron

I doubt you said, "The only players ahead of Rickey Henderson in at least one of: games played, plate appearances, runs, walks, stolen bases, or times on base," but if you did, you would have been right. Henderson is, respectively, fourth, fourth, first, second, first, and fourth in each of those categories - of all time! Somehow, Rickey, as I will refer to him, is consistently left out of the conversation all of those players seem to be in - who are the best baseball players of all time?

Rickey Henderson is getting into the Hall of Fame. There is no question or argument to be had there. But there are players that are better than Hall of Famers. Two of them entered Cooperstown in 2006 - Cal Ripken, Jr. and Tony Gwynn were first ballot Hall of Famers. I will argue that there is an even higher level of player yet (possibly including one or both of Ripken and Gwynn), and those are the elite players of all time. Truly the "best baseball players of all time." Regardless of the number of votes he gets this year, Rickey Henderson belongs in that category.

Aside from the statistics I listed above, Rickey is second all time in career power/speed number (to Bonds). Rickey also has 297 home runs, 1,115 RBI, and over 3,000 hits. As a leadoff man, peaking in the 1980s. Oh yeah, he played in four decades too. That's kinda cool.

Below I have multiple plots comparing Rickey Henderson to, who else, the player he is most compared to: Lou Brock.

With this third stolen base of 1991, Rickey Broke Lou Brock's record of 938 career stolen bases. He then stole 55 more, an increase of nearly six percent, that year. Then, 101 more stolen bases in 1992 and 1993 combined. Then he stole over 300 more. Rickey Henderson has 1,406 career stolen bases. Lou Brock is still second. He broke Brock's record by nearly 50%, and was caught less than 30 more times. Had Barry Bonds done that to Hank Aaron's career home run mark, he would have 1,132 home runs. Rickey Henderson is not just "the greatest" base stealer of all time, be puts everyone else to shame. Kenny Lofton is the current active stolen base leader. If we double his total, he will still have 162 stolen bases to go. Carl Crawford and Jose Reyes need over 1,100 stolen bases each to match Rickey. It just isn't going to happen.

Rickey Henderson led his respective league in stolen bases twelve times, including eleven of the twelve years from 1980-1991 (in 1987 he only played in 95 games but still finished fifth with 41 SB).

Rickey wasn't one-dimensional, but I felt like I needed to mention those numbers because no one ever does. He more than doubled Lou Brock's home run total. He's second to only Barry Bonds all time in walks. Third? Babe Ruth, by 100. And how is baseball most critically quantified? Runs. Rickey Henderson has that record too, with fifty more than Ty Cobb and seventy more than Barry Bonds. Rickey Henderson accomplished the fundamental goal of offense more often than anyone in the history of baseball.

I was a little harsh to baseball fans earlier. Rickey is considered agruably the best leadoff hitter baseball has ever seen. As the best of his breed, Rickey Henderson needs to be considered with those few elites, the best baseball players of all time.

A summary of Rickey Henderson's career numbers: