And once he got on base, look out.

“He didn’t distract. He destroyed the confidence of pitchers,” said Steve Palermo, who became an AL umpire in 1977, two years before Henderson made his debut.

“In those early days, if you were umpiring at second base and he got on with a single or walk, you just got down on one knee and waited for him to go,” he said. “Sometimes, if the other team met on the mound, you’d ask Rickey if he was going to run. He’d say first pitch or maybe the second. If you had time, you’d walk down to the umpire ahead of you and say, ’Hey, be ready, he’s coming in the next couple of pitches.”’

Eckersley remembered the first time he saw Henderson. It was a day game and the rookie was a shadow of himself, so to speak.

“I shouted at him. He was out there in the outfield, checking out how his shadow looked. Stylin’. I was like, ’What are you doing!”’

Henderson managed only a .226 on-base percentage against Eckersley, his worst showing versus any pitcher he faced at least 30 times. Yet the Eck recalled how it felt to see Henderson on base.

“He’d start jumping around and I’d be like, ’Just take the bag, I’m trying to concentrate,”’ Eckersley said.

It’s when Henderson reached second base that he really became difficult.

“I thought it was a lot easier for him to steal third,” former second baseman Steve Sax said. “Even if you held him close and made a perfect throw there, you had to be lucky to get him.”

Sax played with Henderson on the New York Yankees, then was playing against him in 1991 at Oakland when Rickey stole No. 939 to break Brock’s record. Henderson made a headfirst dive into third base, yanked the bag out of the ground and held it over his head.

With Brock in attendance, Henderson told the crowd: “Lou Brock was a symbol of great base stealing, but today I am the greatest of all time.”

Standing in the middle of the infield, Sax laughed.

“It was funny,” he said, “but Rickey was right.”

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