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Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original
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About This Book
From the author of The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron comes the definitive biography of Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson, baseball's epic leadoff hitter and base-stealer who also stole America's heart over nearly five electric decades in the game. Few names in the history of baseball evoke the excellence and dynamism that Rickey Henderson's does. He holds the record for the most stolen bases in a single game, and he's scored more runs than any player ever. "If you cut Rickey Henderson in half, you'd have two Hall of Famers," the baseball historian Bill James once said. But perhaps even more than his prowess on the field, Rickey Henderson's is a story of Oakland, California, the town that gave rise to so many legendary athletes like him. And it's a story of a sea change in sports, when athletes gained celebrity status and Black players finally earned equitable salaries. Henderson embraced this shift with his trademark style, playing for nine different teams throughout his decades-long career and sculpting a brash, larger-than-life persona that stole the nation's heart. Now, in the hands of critically acclaimed sportswriter and culture critic Howard Bryant, one of baseball's greatest and most original stars finally gets his due.
Reviews
"What Howard Bryant is doing here in his biography of Rickey Henderson is to assert the primacy of the box score over the sportswriter's craft."
"Rickey's career is part of a common thread in the history of Black Americans in baseball, but also—perhaps more so—is uniquely his own ..."
"A readable, appropriately fast-moving portrait of a baseball giant."
"This is not a personality book."
"The book most succeeds in its rich historical context, underscoring Rickey's outsize influence in a new vanguard of 'great Black talents' that shook up the hallowed white halls of baseball."
"Bryant does some of his best work along the fault line of race and culture, an area he covers well in most of his writing."
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