Rickey Henderson was a remarkable player, and his loss is a shock to the baseball world, and to me since he was just a few days shy of his 66^th birthday and I’m just a few months shy of my 65^th.

Even though as a Giants fan, I paid scant attention to the American League, it was impossible to avoid recognizing his greatness as a player who could hit for average and power while drawing an incredible number of walks and then destroying opponents on the base paths.

Because he three times stole a 100 bases in the early 1980s, when the media had lost its perspective of the stolen base and was treating it like baseball’s new secret weapon in an era of artificial turf stadiums, the focus on Henderson was all about his steals.