http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...PGF5KH4V41.DTL
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Looking fit at his new field, Rickey says the fire still burns
Ron Kroichick, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Rickey Henderson returned to his domain Friday. He strolled onto a baseball diamond looking fit and trim, stepped atop the mound at newly christened Rickey Henderson Field and zipped a ceremonial first pitch into the glove of a kid wearing a shiny, white A's jersey with Dennis Eckersley's name and number on the back.
Henderson came to the Arroyo Viejo Recreation Center in East Oakland because the A's and the Good Tidings Foundation, a Bay Area children's charity, renovated the field over the past two months. They dedicated it in Henderson's name Friday, complete with a giant scoreboard banner beyond the left-field wall depicting him in mid-flight, during a signature head-first slide.
He will turn 48 on Christmas Day, but Henderson remains relentlessly kid-like himself, as if he were one of the Babe Ruth League players who took the field after the ceremony. He last played in the major leagues in 2003, but Henderson still cannot bring himself to officially end his long and illustrious career.
"I can't say I will retire," he said. "My heart's still in it."
Henderson played for the Newark Bears of the Atlantic League in 2004 and the San Diego Surf Dawgs of the independent Golden Baseball League last year. Now he's dabbling in coaching: He spent spring training as an instructor with the New York Mets, and he twice has joined the Mets during the regular season to offer baserunning guidance, with another stint planned later this month.
"It's a learning experience," Henderson said. "It's been fun."
That still doesn't equate to crouching in the batter's box or dancing off first base. Asked the last time he went a summer without playing baseball, Henderson paused, briefly contemplated his youth in North Oakland and said, "I might have been 8. Oooh-eeh, that's amazing."
Henderson repeated his long-held desire of retiring with the A's, but he's not especially interested in a one-day ceremonial departure. Neither Oakland nor any other major-league club has expressed interest in Henderson since he played in 30 games, and hit .208, for the Dodgers in '03.
He resisted the Surf Dawgs' overtures this season, no longer convinced he could use the independent league as a springboard to one final fling in The Show.
"It's sort of weird not to be playing, but I decided to take a year off," Henderson said. "I wasn't getting the feedback that someone was going to give me a chance to make their ballclub, and that's what I was trying to get. ...
"I'm just trying to get that fire burned out of me. When that fire is burned out, then I can know it's all over. But I still love the game right now, so I'm going to wait it out and see what happens."
As he waits, optimism slowly giving way to reality, the clock ticks toward Cooperstown. If Henderson does not play again in the majors, he would appear on the Hall of Fame ballot in December 2008. He almost certainly would earn first-ballot induction.
Eckersley went into the Hall in 2004, the first player enshrined from the great A's teams of the late 1980s and early '90s. Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire will appear on the ballot this December, an intriguing tandem given Canseco's admitted steroid use and McGwire's widely ridiculed appearance before a Congressional committee investigating steroid use in baseball.
Asked about his former teammates, Henderson smiled and stopped short of endorsing them, saying, "I think they deserve to be on the ballot. Should they get in? I don't have that vote. Were they great ballplayers? Yeah, they were great ballplayers. As far as what they've done and all this, I can't make that judgment."
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I'm happy to see Rickey doing things like this, and staying active with his charity work.
"If you build it....they will come."
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