The Book of Joe: Remembering Rickey Henderson

In this episode of 'The Book of Joe' Podcast, Joe Maddon and Tom Verducci remember the Hall of Fame career of Rickey Henderson.  Tom recalls covering Rickey at different times of career while Joe played against him in the minor leagues.  After sharing a few of unforgettable stories, Joe talks about managing 'personalities'  and how different today's star players are in the game. There's some doubt that a player like Henderson could exist in the current state of baseball and the media.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
The Book of Joe podcast is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Hey there, welcome back.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
It's the Book of Joe Podcast with me, Tom Berducci
and Joe Ed Joe.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
It's Christmas Week. How you feeling this week?

Speaker 4 (00:25):
Actually pretty good. I'm back up here in Pennsylvania for
the week. It's a little cold, colder than it was
don in Tampa, but I'm enjoying it. Got some great snow,
so we got the Christmas spirit going on. So I'm
doing well.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Cool white Christmas.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
We don't get many of those these days. It seems
like it's just enough to make it look pretty nice.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
I like it.

Speaker 4 (00:44):
Yeah, And I guess it's supposed to possibly snow again tomorrow.
I think that's what it says for our forecast up
here in northeastern Pennsylvania. Perfect. And then I head back
down south on Friday, and then I'll try to get
back into the literal swing of things at Saint Pete
Country Club.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
Sounds like a plan, of course, at the time of
year where not just the holiday coming out, but the
end of the year we kind of look back on
the you know, Players of the Year and all kinds
of awards being handed out later on Joe, I want
to talk about the word of the Year, and I.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Love it and I think you're gonna dig it too cool.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
But first I want to talk about since we are
talking about Christmas Day, unfortunately some really sad news over
the weekend. Ricky Henderson, one of the greatest players of
all time, passed away. This was not expected at all,
and Ricky was actually born on Christmas Day in the
backseat of an Oldsmobile on his way to the hospital

(01:45):
in Chicago. As Ricky once told me, I was fast
from the beginning. And it really is quite a story
the life of Ricky Henderson, one of the great characters,
one of the greatest players of all time. And Joe
I got to say, I don't know want to put
a number on this, but Ricky Henderson easily was one
of the greatest player payers that I ever saw play.

Speaker 4 (02:05):
Totally agree with that. I was striving and somebody texted
me about it. I was really really upset about this one.
I did get the chance to play against him in
the minor leagues when he was a modesto and I
was in Salinas. That's when I first ran into him,
and eventually as a coach with the Angels. He got
to the Angels for a brief period of time and
was able to be around him then also and then

(02:28):
of course working against him when he's in Oakland. That's
really a tough, tough guy to prep against. So many
things that he did well on the baseball field, but
the thing he did more than anything, I think is
his charisma and energy and which led into this base
stealing and his leadoff prowess and the disruption of the
other team, and the fact that he did he was

(02:48):
always in the middle of something good for that team
as on base percentage. You know, he's one of those
guys with the with Scott's normally did not want to
draft with the right hand he hit, and a left
tended thrower that was considered a curse. All the different
things about him was so unique, really funny guy. I
know people have already I've seen some different things written

(03:10):
about him, and he was he was very funny just
by talking because he just had his own way of
expressing himself, which was spectacular. So this one bothered me
a bit, Like you said, unexpected. You know, he's such
a strong looking human being, such a strong not tall,
but strong guy, and so I was kind of impacted

(03:31):
by this little bit.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
Yeah, it's interesting, Joe how and you know this, there
are some deaths and almost always had someone gone way
too soon.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
That just affects you a little bit more.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
He used that word bothered. I felt the same way
years ago. I felt that way when we lost Gary Carter.
But there was something about Ricky Henderson, and for me
it's personal. I went obviously covered a lot of Ricky's career.
I was covering the Yankees on the beat when he
joined the Yankees and had one of the greatest years
ever where he had more runs scored than games played.

(04:02):
I swear it seemed like every night Henderson would start
the game with a walk, he'd steal second base. Willie
Randolph woul hit a ground ball the second to get
him the third, and domattically we hit a fly ball
to get him in. It was like, before you blinked,
it was one nothing Yankees. But later on, I think
this was two thousand and three, I went to go
do a story for Ricky with Sports Illustrated when he

(04:22):
was playing for an independent baseball team in Newark, New Jersey,
and I think he was forty three at the time
and It's one of only two interviews that I've ever
done Joe when when it was over, the subject in
the interview gave me a big hug. I'm not talking
about like a bro hug. You know, it's common that
we see a lot, but I mean it. He was

(04:42):
very appreciative fact that I came to Newark and this.
You know, it really wasn't the nicest place in the
world in terms of facilities, especially for a guy who
was a Hall of Famer, would be a Hall of Famer.
He was just a pleasant, pleasant guy, a sweetheart to
be around with a great heart and if anybody questioned
how much he loved baseball, And I remember this to
this day. When he was playing in Newark, he was

(05:05):
actually renting a place in New York, in Manhattan, and
he would commute to the ballpark. He was being paid
three thousand dollars a month to play for this independent
league team. His rent in New York was four thousand
a month.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
He was literally paying to play independent minor league baseball
at the age of forty three. How cool is that?

Speaker 4 (05:26):
Yeah? Well, then, how could you possibly question someone's desire
to play the game when they end up doing something
like that again. He was, he was. It was funny.
I had conversations with him. I always I just wanted
to get in there a little bit about his base stealing,
base running. Not that he gave me a lot, but
I do remember because I used to keep times to
the plate, and I think I remember properly. The pitch

(05:51):
was like one two or one three, which is really
quick to home plate. And I got him. I got him.
And he's older. I mean, I can't remember the age
he was with the Angels, but he wasn't a spring chicken,
you know. And he gets out there to first, he
does that that crawl where he gets measures the lead
right step, the left foot back to the right foot,
right foot out, left foot back to the right foot,
and then eventually just takes off and gets it easily

(06:13):
on a picture that was relatively and relatively very quick
to the plate. He he was one of those instinctive
You talk about instinctive players in today's world. Well, I
can't even imagine somebody trying to get to him on
a daily basis with a bunch of printouts. I can't
even imagine what that would look like. This guy lived
off of instinct. He was born of instinct, I mean,

(06:35):
to be born in the back of a vehicle moving vehicle. Wow,
that's just that. I never even knew that part of
the story. But he's a tribute to athleticism and instinct.
And you just kind of mentioned his competitive nature because
gotta love the game to do the things that he did.
And furthermore, the guy was always in the dirt, beat

(06:58):
up his body on a nightly basis, and that's a
tribute to how strong he actually was. But to steal
his men basis as he did it, to slide as
many times as he did, and just keep getting up
and brushing himself off and going out to play the
game the next day with the same kind of zeal
and verb. That doesn't happen. And you know, people talked
the last couple of years when the rules changed here
that everyod's gonna start stealing bases. Well it has. It

(07:21):
has increased, obviously, but not to the level I think
that you know, we possibly thought it might, because it's
just hard to do. It's hard to have that much energy.
It's hard to get that jump, lead, study, slide, get
back up, brush yourself off, go and then play every
day and play outfield and everything that he did. He
just kind of underestimate all that he had done for

(07:43):
the game of baseball and how he did it.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
It's a great point, Joe.

Speaker 3 (07:47):
I mean, his body and his energy were just amazing
to withstand what he went through as a base dealer.
Don't forget there's no limit on pickoffs back in the
day as well. Guys thrown over there all the time,
always sliding head first, always, and he talked about he
learned to do that in nineteen seventy nine in Triple A.
He had a teammate named Michael Rodriguez who showed him

(08:10):
how to dive head first, and Ricky said the first
time he did it, he said it because Michael Rodriguez
told him it's like diving into the water. And Ricky
really banged. He got banged up the first three times
he did it. Then he realized that you need to
go in low. And you watch a lot of guys
slide in head first. A lot of guys these days
do not know how to do it. They'll get their
hands out underneath them. They could get hurt. Ricky was

(08:32):
the epitome of how to slide head first. I mean
it was powerful, it was low to the ground, and
he actually said later on it was because of a
flight he took to Kansas City one time where he
realized the proper technique because the plane came in really
low to the ground, and on the previous flight the
flight had come in sharply and banged when it hit
the ground, and he realized, oh, I got to come

(08:52):
in lower to the ground.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
That was Ricky as well.

Speaker 3 (08:55):
And by the way, he once said that he could
hit three p forty with thirty five home runs a
year if he did not steal bases and put his
body through all the you know, the injuries and just
the soreness that he lived through. But he said, Ricky
Henderson is expected to steal. That was Ricky, and Ricky
the famous line.

Speaker 4 (09:15):
It's so good you know. Actually I mentioned I did
play against him in the minor leagues at that time.
It was in Thedesto, and of course Oakland was known
to be very cheap, not even inexpensive. They were cheap,
and they ran out of bats and I had to
have not They asked our side, and I lend him
one of my bats, and as it turned out, they

(09:37):
all came up to the plan and I'm catching, and
they all come up to the plan and look up
and they're using my bat that night, and of course
Ricky did also. It was so strange retrospectively. That's one
of the things I thought about, first of all, is
the fact playing in that that ballpark was not very
deep all around. We could hit a home run there
and the whole team using the same bat, I remember,

(09:58):
at least for the first time through the batting order.
I don't even know if they probably eventually broke it
or not, but that was one of my recollects. The
other one was I did throw him out once. I
did throw him out in Salinas. He was trying to
break the record for the Cal League, and then eventually
did break it with me behind the player. But it
was another guy on that team. I think it was.
Last name was Woodard or Woodward. They stole Ricky Lick

(10:19):
between ninety and one hundred bases, and Woodward was right
around ninety bases. These guys, that was Tom Treblehorne was
the manager at that time. These guys were just if
you're catching, oh my god, I talk about catching anxiety
because there's nothing you can do. I mean, if your
Pitcher's not going to give you any kind of an opportunity,
and you got to be quick and accurate. Whatever. Whenever
you play the Oakland A's minor league modesto team or

(10:40):
Modesto A's, they're going, they're going. So I saw that
in the beginning, and then of course the hitting all
of a sudden, you see pop ball jumped up is bad,
it went far, and it was just such a he
was in my mind's he was very similar build wise,
even at that time as we saw in the big
leagues later. Just a strong human being, but he played

(11:01):
the game hard. The guy was always dirty man. And
that's where it began when I saw that modesto team.
They ran and they ran and they ran, and he
did it all the way to the Hall of Fame.

Speaker 3 (11:11):
Yeah, you mentioned Tom treble Horn, if I remember correctly,
years and years later, it was some milestone. It might
have been the American League stolen base record, a key
stall and base that he got he actually gave to
Tom tremble Horn all those years later.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
Was such an influence on him.

Speaker 3 (11:26):
You mentioned the body, Joe, I mean, he and the
fact that I know for a fact he did not
want any scattered reports on the opposing pitcher. He would
just get in the box and play baseball. It was
a beautiful thing to see. He was not a big weightlifter,
and he was built like an NFL running back.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
It was amazing.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
Ricky would do essentially every day, two hundred sit ups,
one hundred pull ups.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
I mean, that's as old school as you can get.

Speaker 3 (11:49):
And you know, I thought it he was as much
as I talked about him, you know, being great playing
for the New York Yankees, and he really was. There
was a lot of people who didn't understand him, the
fact that he did have some leg injuries there.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
Lou Penelo is the man, George steim Brenner the.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
Owner, and they were getting on Ricky about possibly not
playing as hard he should have played through some injuries.

Speaker 4 (12:11):
You know.

Speaker 3 (12:11):
It's a great example, Joe, to me, of why it's
so different to play in New York, because there's so
much media there and everything gets amplified that there's more
of a stress on the negative than there is on
a celebration of the positive. And I think that was
the case of Ricky Henderson. In his first day he
showed up. It was opening day and the media wanted

(12:31):
to talk to him right before the game, and he
just got to his locker and he said, Ricky, don't
need no press now, man, And like everybody turned against them,
and at that moment, it's like, we're done with Ricky Henderson.
Who was he to tell us that this is not
the time to talk to reporters. So he had a
great line later on, reflecting on his career about playing.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
In New York.

Speaker 3 (12:50):
Of course, Oakland was where he grew up, as best
years probably were in Oakland. He said, you know, everything
is kind of a crisis there in New York, whereas
in Oakland there's more of a feeling of soal dignity.
A person can be himself. I mean, that's pretty wise
observant words for Ricky Anderson.

Speaker 4 (13:12):
Uh, you know much. I love that. That's exactly right.
Nobody stood in a way of his greatness. He was
able to control his own destiny. Really, he had some
mentors along the way. In the fact I didn't know
he gave treble Horn the base that that really resonates.
As you know, if you look back in our history,
as you my history, whatever, there are certain coaches that

(13:35):
mentors that really made an impact on our careers in
our lives and when people, when they eventually become successful,
they take the time to reflect and give credit and
that in that direction, that just screams about the fella.
I mean, like again, Ricky, he talked in the third person.
You know, he was always referencing Ricky and it was funny.

(13:56):
It was absolutely funny. But but god, he had a
heart of gold. Like you're talking to. We've already mentioned
a couple of different things. And the fact that he
would take the time to recognize trev and do that
for him, I think that just screams everything about him
right there. And I love the line when he came
to New York he just they didn't understand Ricky don't
need any press right now, Ricky getting ready for the game.

(14:19):
I love all of that. It's hysterical. And at the
same time, if you were a teammate of his, I mean,
how could you not appreciate the way the guy played
the game every every night.

Speaker 3 (14:30):
Yeah, and he loved the spotlight. I mean, the bigger
the game, the better Ricky played. I watched him all
the time when he was on deck, he was chatting
with fans all the time.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
Postseason, I mean, if you want to.

Speaker 3 (14:41):
Put together a short list of the greatest postseason players
ever in terms of runs created, you've got Babe Ruth,
Ricky Henderson, and Lou Garritt. I mean, he was that
good in the big moments. I'll tell you a quick story, Joe,
and I'm sure you probably saw this. And when you
were on the other side the way he could really
irritate other teams with Ricky being Ricky, right, it wasn't
just that he was so talented, the game was played

(15:03):
at his pace. So it's the nineteen eighty nine ALCS
and Oakland is playing Toronto. It's game one of the series.
He steps in the hit against Dave Steve, and right
before Steve is about to throw the first pitch, Ricky
calls time out. I'm like, right before, I mean, it's
clearly doing it's a bit of gazemanship. The game's gonna
be played on my term. Steve gets upset, walks Ricky

(15:25):
Ricky Steele second base scores.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
The A's are off and.

Speaker 3 (15:27):
Running game two. Todd Stolameyer is on the mound. Right
before stota Meyer is about to throw the first pitch,
Ricky calls time out and he starts erasing the chalk
lines in the batter's box, making Stola Meyer just stand
out there and wait. As he goes about his groundskeeping,
he's singles starts the game's win again game three. Forget

(15:48):
who's on the mount? For game three, I was Jimmy Key.
Jimmy Key's on the mount. In game three, same thing happened,
but this time he calls time out and he says
to Ernie Wit the catcher, Hello, Ernie, how you doing Ernie.
He's like, get in the box, and Ricky says, you know, Ernie,
stealing based on you anytime I want. This is holding
up the first pitch God. And that's Ricky Henderson. I mean,

(16:13):
he was just a joy to watch this teammate. Guys
loved him. But if you were playing on the other side,
how irritating was Ricky Henderson?

Speaker 4 (16:20):
See all that stuff is so beautiful. The game was
really about, you know, people and characters and of character
and sometimes just being a character. The little innuendo, the
little stuff that occurred made his laugh. It's like you
made me laugh right there. That was that was sincere
because there was so not just Ricky, there was so

(16:42):
many guys kind of like that, and the game was
played with a little bit more of a freedom about
it at that particular time, and it wasn't as much interference,
and you saw people able to express themselves in that way.
But it's true he Ernie, Ernie knew that, Ricky knew that,
pictures knew that. And at that time, you mean the
back rolls and throwing like you said, throw over to

(17:04):
first base, not not even coming set, and just kicking
through it. And eventually they changed that rule for a
bit and they came back where you had to have
a discernible pause at the bottom of your coming set.
All this stuff, all these disruptions so interesting, and that's
the kind of stuff, you know, I grew up with
in baseball. Those are the kind of discussions that we had,

(17:24):
and it's kind of stuff that we had to deal
with at that particular time, not so much, you know, rules,
as much as like feel and innuendo and the flow
of the game. How to understand that and beat it.
It beat that kind of a thing.

Speaker 2 (17:40):
It was.

Speaker 4 (17:40):
It was great. It was great, and Ricky I'm so
honored and pleased to have known him and to have
played against him, even it was on a minor league
level because he is, He's a Hall of Famer. He's
one of those characters of the game. But his talent
level was so so big.

Speaker 3 (17:59):
I mean, the name of the game, right is to
score more runs than the other team. Ricky and scored
more runs than anybody who ever played Major League baseball.
I mean, I know, the stolen bases what he's known for,
but the guy was on base all the time, knew
how to run the bases, and played a very long time,
more than two decades. You know, there's no doubt that

(18:20):
he will be missed by many people in many ways.
And I know there's a lot of stories out there
Joe about Ricky. Some of them are actually true. If
you have time, go back and read his story. That
story I talked about in two thousand and three with Ricky.
I compiled a lot of the Ricky stories, the most
famous which is not true. I'd have to preface it.
It's not true. There was a story that he when

(18:42):
he joined the Mets, he was teammates with John Olerud
and John Olarud wear a batting helmet playing first base,
and Ricky said, wow, you know, I can't believe this,
and old Rood's like what he said, Well, when I
was with Seattle, I played with the guy who.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
Wore a helmet. Of course that was ol rude. The
story was not true.

Speaker 3 (19:00):
It was made up by the Mets training staff, but
everybody wanted to believe it was true. And with Ricky
it was entirely believable. But there's enough stories without having
to make them up. It is true that he wants
of just signing a huge contract with Oakland, the accounts
for the A's noticed that his one million dollars signing
bonus check had not been cash for quite some time,
and they they got concerned about it. They called up

(19:22):
Ricky said, is there a problem with the check? He said, oh, no,
there's no problem at all. It's in a frame hanging
on my wall right here. Or the time he's with
the Padres, he gets on the team bus and Tony
Gwynn is up front, and he sees Tony, he sees
Ricky walking towards the back. He says, Ricky, where are
you going? You sit up front here? You've got tenure

(19:43):
And Ricky said, ten I got a lot more than
ten years in this game.

Speaker 4 (19:49):
It's so refreshing, isn't it. It's so so real, so real,
so funny. And I didn't know that there was a
urban legend about the ol Roote thing because I heard
that thing for years and the first time here he
just laughed. Because Ricky really didn't know names. He didn't
he uh, he didn't know names. He would he wouldn't
call you Joe, he wouldn't call me Joe. I'd just

(20:10):
start talking to you, you know. And that wasn't just
because I was with with with him briefly. He didn't
he didn't know names, and it was hysterical. Man, but
every all of his teammates did love him, but that
was that was one of his quirks. Man not very
good with first or last names.

Speaker 2 (20:28):
Yeah, one quick story for you.

Speaker 3 (20:30):
When he was with the Mets, the Mets in the
middle of May, maybe the end of May, made some
coaching staff changes and Tom Robson, the hitting coach, is
one of the guys they let go. Of course, the
writers go around the room asking guys, what do you
guys think of this move? And somebody asked, Ricky, what
do you think that you know the Mets are getting
rid of Robson, And He's like.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
Robson who's that? Who was this hitting coach?

Speaker 4 (20:54):
And that's no lie Man, That's absolutely true.

Speaker 3 (20:56):
One of my favorites though, and this is it speaks
again to his heart of what kind of guy he was.
You know, he had three daughters, and certainly our hearts
go out to them. And I'm sure the whole family
just as devastated as much as we are by baseball fans.
I can't imagine where it's like a family member to
lose someone like Ricky Henderson. But you know, back in
the day, Joe, you got meal money the first day

(21:17):
of a road trip, right, and back then it was
probably you know, about seventy bucks a day and you
go on say a ten game trip. You know that's
not some small money. And the traveling secretary would hand
it to the players in cash. Yeah, there was actually
a thing called cash back in the day. So the
first day of the trip you had a lot of
It's like hitting the first race at the racetrack, right,

(21:38):
you got a lot of money in your pocket.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
Well, Ricky would never spend that money.

Speaker 3 (21:41):
He would take the envelope with the traveling money the
daily the per damn bring it home, put the envelope
in a shoe box, and when his daughters did well
at school, he played a game he called picket where
they could reach into the box and pick out any
envelope that was their reward for good grades, you know,
a good assignment well done. So you know, you didn't

(22:04):
know if you're going to get just a three day
trip or a ten day trip in that envelope.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
That was Ricky Henderson too.

Speaker 4 (22:11):
That's outstanding, And that was that was some big dough.
That was a big deal getting on the plane and
knowing how many days you're going to be on the
road and how much is going to be an that envelope.
Because when you first start out in the big leagues
as a coach, like I did you know I got
zero raised going from the minor leagues that the big
leagues as a coach, you're living in two cities, you
got a family, So that was the kind of money

(22:32):
that money was, like for your clubhouse dues, you you
would save as much of that as you can't use
it at home because you always ate at the clubhouse,
but you would pay clubhouse dues save that dough. It
was not for me, was not to be spent furvously,
and that perviously. But that was not just me. There's
a lot of coaches for years that lived that way.
Since it's been changed the way how much is given

(22:55):
meal money wise, and I was distributed, but there was
a time man that was a really important source of
income for a major league coach. But you made me
smile there because I that's that's such a wonderful story.
And I saw a picture or a video of recently,
I guess where his daughter throughout the first pitch, and
Ricky Cotty was so pleased, and I'm thinking about her

(23:16):
in that moment. That's that's that's pretty special.

Speaker 3 (23:18):
Yeah, our hearts go out to the Henderson family, everybody
who was around Ricky Henderson, even if you weren't a
fan of Ricky Henderson.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
It's a major loss.

Speaker 3 (23:27):
And you know, we wish the family all the best
and and and everybody around baseball should be thankful that
we got to see someone play like again. I say,
Joe one of the best players I've ever seen, an
all time great, all time good person.

Speaker 4 (23:40):
Agreed.

Speaker 3 (23:40):
In the meantime, Joe, you mentioned something about the colorful
nature of that era and the players and the personalities.
I want to dive into that a little more about
what we've lost and maybe.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
What's not coming back. We'll do that right after this.

Speaker 3 (24:09):
So, Joe, I mentioned that nineteen eighty nine Okland A's
team World Series winning team. On that team, they had
not just Ricky Henderson, Dave Parker, Dave Henderson, Jose Canseco,
Tony Phillips, Dave Stewart, Dennis Secresley. I mean, how about

(24:29):
the characters on that team, Joe. And that was just
one team out of thirty. It was not unusual, but
maybe a little more talent.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
But there were.

Speaker 3 (24:37):
Guys you needed to pay attention to on personality alone, No, Lie.

Speaker 4 (24:41):
I mean, I mean I was thinking about that. Also.
We were talking in that first segment about Ricky specifically,
but at Tony Phillips was a really good friend of mine.
Tony called him Anthony. Anthony came to the Angels. I
worked with him a lot because I was the outfield
coach at the time, and he left us way too soon. Also,
David Parker just recently elected to the Hall of Fame.
Parkway was kind of like my personal bodyguard when I

(25:05):
first started out as a coach in the big leagues
with the Angels. Love the guy absolutely loved the guy
Dave Stewart. For those who've never had a chance to
talk to Dave Stuart, what a wonderful human being and
really just he's one of those sincere guys. When you
talk to me, you just feel like you've known him forever.
Achrisley X always, these these were like they were there.
They were the kind of almost a last bashion of

(25:27):
larger than life. I mean, I think, you know the Yankees,
you can get into that right up until like twenty
and tennish, but then it starts taking a different look
or appearances based on the way the game is organized
and constructed right now. But these guys back then, man,
that was it. I mean, these guys they played, they
played hard, they were very there was a way to

(25:50):
play the game, and they all passed it along to
one another. And there was a strong personality about these people.
There was there was nothing subjugated, nobody could really you know,
they had Tony Lewis, says their manager, and nevertheless they
were still these guys. And you know, Tony's pretty strong
personality himself. So it was wonderful to watch all this

(26:11):
and to see these guys and the allure of these people. Again,
I used the word charismatic. I thought our twenty sixteen
Cubs had a lot of charisma about him. That was
one of my favorite parts about managing that group was
the personalities and as well as the talent. I love
that part about that group that you're describing the A's

(26:32):
and the eighties. You go through almost every team and
you start naming the names and you start you start
smiling because there was a lot of that. There was
different methods applied by each organization. They weren't It wasn't
so homogenized in regards to the way people play the
game then as now. There was distinctly different ways to

(26:53):
prepare for different teams based on what they did well,
what they highlighted, and you talk about Ricky with the
base dealing whatever, and then eventually they morphed into the
moneyball a were they were just so stationed in the
station you didn't even have to worry about something like that.
But there was a uniqueness about each group that had
to be paid attention to, and when you went to

(27:13):
a different played against a different team, you thought about that.
And the last point, without getting too long, when it
is were the managers because at that point, the manager
pretty much dictated how this was going to unfold, So
you had to really understand where the manager came from
and what he would think like. And for me, as
the bench coach that did a lot of the advanced scouting,

(27:35):
it was with the advanced got a lot at that point.
If you got a new manager, I could take everything
I just had. Scouting wasn't just throw it in the
garbage camp. Other than like maybe some individual things about
pictures to the play times of the play at whatever,
but methods and how the game was going to be
operator or constructed was completely different from manager to manager.
So there was there was a lot of different things

(27:56):
to pay attention to that I found really interesting and
quite honestly just fascinating and really kept you involved because
each group presented different issues, different problems, different ways to
prepare for them.

Speaker 3 (28:08):
Well, Joe, let's talk about that one word that really
caught my attention to use. That's personality, Because when we
talk about someone like a Ricky Henderson, we don't divorce
the personality from the talent. It's almost his signature as
much as it is his ability to steal basis is
the fact that his personality was allowed to flourish in
this game, and that was not unusual in that era. Now,

(28:31):
think about I'm going to give you some names, Joe,
are the people in baseball that we have lost this year,
and use the phrase when you think about them, Ricky Henderson,
for instance, it puts a smile on your face. Think
about these names, Orlando Cepaida cha Cha, Ricky Henderson, Whitey Herzog,
Willie Mays, Rocky Colovido, Ricocarti, Pete Rose, Luis Tiant from

(28:58):
Nando Valezuela. I mean, it's just incredible, Joe, that you
mentioned every one of those names, and you're probably in
your mind's eye picturing the way they played, the smile
on their face, the things that they did that made
you smile.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
I don't see that happening in today's game.

Speaker 3 (29:15):
The personalities, I can't believe they're not there, but they're
not allowed to flourish in the game that we have today.
Do you see that happening that you know? Letting You
like to always say, don't get in the way of greatness,
So sometimes don't get in the way of personality either.
We tend to tamp it down in the game of baseball.

Speaker 4 (29:33):
Personality and greatness are probably synonymous terms. And as you're
naming all those names, but I'm thinking to myself, wow,
I got to know a lot of these people. Cha
Cha Orlando Cepaida was my favorite hitter in the sixties.
Him and Dick Allen right after that, And actually I
took my playground up, but they won a championship here
when I was thirteen or something, and the standard speaker
took a photograph when the guy came to get my name,

(29:54):
My name was Joey Chascha. Madden actually put that in
the in the newspaper. But you know, you're preaching at
the choir with that, and you know that, I mean,
we're kind of subjugating our personalities for the sake of
sameness or this one method of doing things. And if
you're not, if you don't conform or fit into this method,

(30:16):
you're kind of like ostracizing or not wanted in a way.
And we're going to move on to somebody that will
conform in a sense. And I think a lot of
it has to do with the way information is distributed
and the fact that the players back then were permitted
to think for themselves and do a lot of things
of their own volition or ways, whether it was like

(30:39):
their batting stands, out of hit pictures, throwing the ball.
The influence of the coaches and the manager was so
much more prominent. It's compared to now, where the influencers
are different. The influencer are more constructed technologically, and the mind,
the personality, the charismatic component of the individual is not
really sought after as nearly as much as it had.

(31:01):
Whitey hers All to me, like you said his name,
I had a photograph take with him. I have it
on my on file on the wall here in one
of my Skylight my Skylight calendar, and it pops up,
and you think about Whitey Herzog and what he meant
to the city of Saint Louis and how he transformed
that organization and the style of play that the Cardinals represented.
While white he was the manager there unique successful and

(31:24):
the players that he got, and he had his structure
and he had his way of doing things, but never
got in the way of an Ozzy Smith or a
George Henrik or a Tommy Hurr or Keith R. Nanis
and all these dudes they grew up to be. It's
almost like you're talking about creating your own brand. These
people were their own brand based on their abilities and
who they were. And you listen, they weren't. Nobody was perfect, man.

(31:47):
There was a lot of stuff going on there that
was less than perfect as a human being, but nevertheless
interesting and kept your eyes glued to it. Today, you know,
with the scrutiny involved, it's you know, it's hard. It's
hard for guys to cut loose. It's hard for guys
to go out at night. It's hard for guys to
do maybe pursue things that we're pursued in the past

(32:07):
that sometimes even just as a group of guys getting
together after a game going out, maybe just turn it loose,
having a little fun that doesn't happen anymore. And who
knows to what extent that that leads to this same
method of conformity that is boring. Quite frankly, he could
be very boring. So yeah, the genie's never going back

(32:27):
into bottle. There's too many things that have come down
the road that create this method, and everybody believes this
is the right way to do things right now, And
for my perspective, there's a lot of right, yes, absolutely,
but one thing that's wrong is if we talk about it,
don't forget the heartbeat, really glorify the individual, permit the
individual to flourish, don't always try to control the methods involved.

(32:50):
Let let whomever go out there and make some mistakes,
go and make some mistakes, screw it up a little bit,
but do it based on experience and wisdom and understanding
what you're trying to get done here. So, yeah, it's
it's hard. It's almost impossible to imagine and a group
of Parker Phillips, Stewart both Henderson's. I mean, it's not
You're right, it's probably a thing of the past. And

(33:11):
that's too bad. That's too bad. Right, you could start
getting into rock and roll bands and sounds and all
that stuff where things are really dictated to the point
everything sounds and looks the same anywhere, cars, same color.
Get me going, man, you got me going, because I
truly agree with that. And it's too bad because Ricky
Henderson in today's world coming up probably would not have

(33:34):
been permitted to be Ricky Henderson.

Speaker 2 (33:37):
I think that's right, Joe.

Speaker 3 (33:38):
I mean, just look around the game today and you
tell me where are the personalities?

Speaker 4 (33:43):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (33:43):
Really, I mean you know, I write for a living.

Speaker 3 (33:46):
It's hard for me to come up with names, and
I think, well, people really need to know more about
this guy who's got such a different personality. I think
the game is so process oriented in terms of the
structure of the game, how it's taught and played, that
you don't have pictures like Fernando Vealezuela and Luis Tian
being able to lance. That's part of it. Listen, things

(34:06):
of the world changed when they were able to put
cameras on cell phones, right, and that changed a lot
of behaviors. A question about that, and for the most part,
for the better, I would think. But now you need
to toe the line. People who now are seen as outliers.
It's really not worth their time to be an outlier.
Now to show a lot of personality, you get called

(34:27):
on who does he think he is? I'm talking about
the way the game is covered, or at least the
way it's administered, even within a clubhouse. So the easy
thing to do is stick to the process, toe the line,
and there is a sameness about it. I just I
don't believe people are that much different.

Speaker 2 (34:41):
Joe.

Speaker 3 (34:41):
But in terms of looking at personalities in the game,
of baseball specifically, there's not nearly as many coal for
personalities as there were a decade or generation ago.

Speaker 4 (34:52):
The scrutiny involved outside of even just a general media,
like the media has really evolved into or devolved into everybody.
I mean, through social media, everybody becomes a reporter a journalist,
just like you said, by having a cell phone or
the ability to uh blog or even create your own podcast.
Everybody is pretty much their own brand of journalism these days.

(35:15):
And it's it's slowly, you know, I've talked about that
years ago, where the amateurs are taken over for the professionals,
and it's true. I mean, there's there's so many different
venues items out there where news is transmitted now that
never existed before, and so there's so many people that
want to make a name for themselves. So they could
just slam catch somebody out at night having a good

(35:36):
time via the cell phone. And you know, you can
make that argument that there's a lot of things that
it's done that has made the world better, I guess,
But then again, to really hinder the development of somebody's
personality or there there you talk about you know, kids
in college or they never leave their dorms. They just
can't communicate via text. There's never eye to eye anymore,

(35:58):
eyeball to eyeball, there's there this the social component of
of the way kids go up today, it is very different.
Nobody has to be in the same room with anybody anymore,
and thus you take on a different form of courage
or whatever, just by being able to communicate without having
to be in somebody's presence, where what you say and

(36:19):
how you say it may we'll come across differently as
opposed to you had to say it to somebody face
to face, where that is not even encouraged or done anymore.
So yeah, listen again, Like I said, I guess this
is like dating me a bit right now, just by
what I'm saying. But I don't get it. I don't
get that where we are encourage people to communicate via

(36:39):
technology as opposed to the face to face communication, even
remote working as opposed to reporting to offices anymore thanks
to that nature, I mean, it just encourages a more
of a sterile environment. And I'd love to see somehow
things get back a bit. But like we're talking about,

(37:01):
it's pretty much in this direction. So you have to
learn how to adapt and grow from here.

Speaker 3 (37:05):
Joe, I can't believe it, but you just gave me
the perfect transition to the word of the year.

Speaker 2 (37:10):
I'm not sure you even heard what the word.

Speaker 3 (37:12):
Of the year is, but even without knowing it, you
just gave me the perfect setup for it. We will
reveal the word of the year right after this. Welcome

(37:33):
Back to the Book of Joe podcast. It's Tom Berducci
and Joe Madden back with you. And I mentioned the
word of the year. This was chosen by the Oxford Press.
And it's actually a word I had not heard, Joe.
And it's actually not even one word. It's two words.
And the word is brain rot. Do you know what
brain rot is?

Speaker 4 (37:54):
That's round us all the time.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
You're familiar with it, you recognized well.

Speaker 4 (38:00):
I mean, I can't wait to hear the exact definition.
But God, if you're not challenged to use it, and
if you're going to permit artificial intelligence to think for you,
it should be the end of creative thinking in a sense,
by the fact that we're permitting tech and things and
machines to do our thinking for us. I mean it

(38:22):
has to have something to do with that.

Speaker 2 (38:24):
You're one hundred percent right.

Speaker 3 (38:25):
I mean think of your brain as a muscle, right,
Basically we have stopped using it. So brain is essentially
the over consumption of material, especially online on the Internet,
that is just trivial and meaningless, and the overconsumption of
that it literally does rewire your brain.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
There's no question about that.

Speaker 3 (38:47):
If you use your brain creatively, you strengthen your boundaries,
your imagination, your intellect, your vocabulary, et cetera, et cetera.
The opposite is true too. And this is the word
now that captures what is going on here. It's called
brain rot where your brain maybe not literally rotting, but
think of it as rotting because you're wasting too much

(39:08):
time on stuff that has no value whatsoever. It's like
having a steady diet of potato chips. There is no
nutritional value in what you are consuming.

Speaker 4 (39:19):
Okay, I yesed to. I had a conversation with Wendy
about that. Specifically, I was a voracious reader for so
many years. I missed that version of me so much. Okay,
then why don't you just sit down and read a book? Okay?
Because I have been consumed by all these easy ways

(39:43):
to get received maintain ascertain whether it's Netflix or Prime
Video or just stations in general reading things online. I'm
constantly reading, but I'm not reading novels anymore. I'm not
reading books. I'm not reading some really good stuff that
formulated my mind. I can't even imagine. I don't think
I would have been nearly a six ussils has turned

(40:04):
out had I not got the reading habit from my
uncle Chuck in nineteen seventy four or five, whatever that was,
when he gave me the book Centennial by James Mitchener
and said I needed to read this. So I did,
and God that I fall in love. I fell in
love with James Mitchener. At that point I started reading
all Mitchener. Then I branched out to that started delving

(40:26):
into other guys that I would just absolutely destroy every
book that they had, and it just went on and
on until you get to the point where the advent
of screaming TV and getting whatever you want whenever you want.
And then so for me, you stop reading and you
just start watching. It's easier, it takes less time. And
then I just said with Scotti, Harris is now the

(40:47):
gym with the tigers, and I said to him, my
intention span is rotting away because I don't sit and
just read anymore like I used to. Cause when you
read a book and you're really into it, you start
reading and all of a sudden, you know, of course
you could identify, what did I just read. You've got
to go backtrack because you might get caught in the
thought or you're just you go off into another direction.

(41:10):
Mainly you not even realize you got to go back
and reread it because you want to get the gist.
You want to get every last drop out of what
I just read. And you had there was time involvement,
and you had to really focus and think and project
in your imagination just sort So we talked about that
and how that was a thing of the past, and
that's why we always want to move on to the

(41:31):
next thing, and that's why we get too quick. I
get too quick. I'm always wanted to do something else,
move to another direction, because you just can't sit and
get absorbed in the moment like we had once before.
Because and that's not good. I'll argue that with anybody.
That's not good. If I could do one thing for myself,
and I've attempted, and I've sipted and failed a couple times.
The last book I read was Ken Follett The World

(41:54):
Fall of Giants. I think it was War of the
World's a trilogy a couple of years ago, and I
loved it. I'm a big Kim Fallt fan. But that's
something I'd love to see a re connection with is
not just for me, but for kids and people in general.
Put the remote control down or the Apple device to
streaming device and really just pick up a book and
get lost in that book. That to me, more than anything,

(42:16):
much as much as anything, help control the success that
I had as a baseball person. And I do miss
the fact that I'm not as patient and able to
sit and just drink a book like I had in
the past.

Speaker 3 (42:29):
Well, it's a major difference, Joe. And obviously you're not alone.
This is happening all around us. And think about kids
who grow up and this is all that they know.
Because what's happening is we're becoming a society of passive
observers rather than active participants. Because when you do have
to use your brain, if you're reading, you have to
think for yourself, right, and it spawns other thoughts, Whereas

(42:53):
if you're scrolling on social media, your brain is off.
I mean, how many stupid cat videos are you going
to watch? How many times is somebody going to send
out a meme about some clip from the office that's
going to make you laugh because you know somebody's snarky.
I mean, how many times does that happen. You're not
even using your brain when you're scrolling through these things online,

(43:13):
whereas if you pick up a book, if you read
a newspaper and take your time with something, you're actually
using your brain. And we're losing that ability, not just
for critical thinking, but just to think on our own.
We're letting you essentially the CPUs in our brain. We're
essentially saying we're just gonna have an external hard drive

(43:34):
that will do all of our thinking. Think about the
last time you had to give this is not a
good example, maybe the last time you had to give
examples to somebody or directions to your house. You have
to know the street names, and you know, like go
two miles, go through three miles, small thing, I get it,
And who doesn't love GPS. It's amazing, right, But it's
just one more example in this attrition of having to

(43:55):
think for yourself and basically contracting your thinking out to
external issues.

Speaker 4 (44:01):
Interesting or not interesting. I mean it's a part of
you know, the entire development of you, Tom Berducci, Medio, Madden, whatever,
whether there's a component that should become more interesting just
by having this this foundation base of knowledge, wisdom, whatever,

(44:22):
just through reading someone else's works, And like you said,
for me was always about how does it apply to me?
And what kind of personal rabbit hole is to take
me down? Trying to make what I'm doing better For
years as a young coach with my computer when I
first got it, formulating forms and just trying to set

(44:42):
up a better way to organize practices as an example,
or whenever I taught somebody, how do I put my
work together so that I could reference it? And more quickly,
after I haven't seen a player for a month, how
do I sit down and recapture what we had talked about?
Because I always thought, you know, words were so important
that if I didn't use the same words when I

(45:02):
saw him again a month from then, that I could
miss out on that one that that one seminal moment
that we came together player coach and was able to
help him get beyond that. That that moment that he
was stuck. And so that's why I thought words were
so important, how you put words together. And then I
wanted to organize my work and my words better so
that as a coach, I could put A before B,

(45:24):
B before C, et cetera. But then just conversationally, you
become more interesting, right, I mean, you know what it's
like when when you mosey up to somebody that you
enjoyed because you know the conversation is going to be
interesting and it's going to challenge you in some way.
She's going to challenge you in some way, or they're
gonna they're gonna not attack, but uh, you have to
defend what you said, and they're gonna come back with

(45:44):
different thought. Its interesting, just plain so interesting as opposed
to not. And if there's anything I could encourage young
people to do more than anything, that's pick up a
book and then another one and then another one. And
like you said, you know, regarding the rabbit hole of
uh cat videos or whatever, my god, and I get

(46:05):
you know, I get lost in that. And the way
I read the New York Post and I'll go to
that for a couple of minutes, and then I say
to myself, what are you doing. Just put this down
and get the hell out of here. So that's true.
We're we're all subject to it, we're all victims of it.

Speaker 2 (46:18):
Yeah, it's so easy to do.

Speaker 4 (46:19):
Listen.

Speaker 3 (46:19):
I mean the people who design these algorithms and websites
and you name it, they know what they're doing. It's
designed to be addictive. An addiction is when your brain
shuts off and you stop making decisions on your own.
And that's what happening. You have to be aware of that.
And I realize it's not easy to do. And Joe,
it's only getting harder because I'm going to give you

(46:41):
one of the other words Oxford has that was one
of the finalists for Word of the Year that did
not win. If you want to put that in quoteses
win being brain rod. The other word is slop. Do
you know what slop is?

Speaker 4 (46:54):
Slop? That would be in my mind's I slop would
be something that there's a group that think that it's
very important, but it has no particular meaning whatsoever. It is.
It's it's useless, even though you think it's something that
I want, it's absolutely useless. It's just it's going to
going to drain you of anything that's it's of substance
that's going to make you a better person. It's slop.

Speaker 3 (47:15):
I like that definition, but that's not it. It's essentially
the material that a lot of the machine learning cranks out.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
AI material.

Speaker 3 (47:25):
Okay, like it's AI can write, for instance, say a
high school basketball game story and I put that in
quotes right right.

Speaker 2 (47:34):
That's slop.

Speaker 3 (47:35):
I mean for me, I realized that that's just boilerplate,
boring stuff without the human touch to it. Just multiply
that by everything else that's being cranked.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
Out by the AI AI machines, and you have slop.

Speaker 3 (47:49):
That material created by machine learning, major machine learning is slop.

Speaker 2 (47:54):
And let's face it, we're seeing more of that.

Speaker 3 (47:56):
It's only going to get quote unquote better and better,
where maybe you're not as easily able to identify it
as slop. But again it's it's turning off brains or
this case, not using a brain to produce material.

Speaker 4 (48:09):
Why are we accepting this though? Why do we accept this?
Why do we accept this? I don't I don't understand
why that. Listen, when it comes to AI and things
of that nature. Yeah, I love the idea that it's
going to help medicine. I love the idea that it's
probably going to be helpful regarding me. Let's just say,
as an example, military defense for our country and other
countries whatever. There there's there's a certain component of this

(48:30):
that's going to be very helpful. It's going to help
you critically think in a way that you're going to
cull things down, see your mistakes more clearly, more quickly,
move on, et cetera. But too to replace the human
mind or in regards to having to write a term
paper or having a conversation like you're talking about postgame
writing a story that's just so generic in general, and

(48:53):
and and there's no there's no real there's not a
human being applying himself for herself to this, to this
storyline and the nuance of what he or she saw
and bringing it to the attention of those that were
the participants. I would be really offended if I knew
that my postgame performance was being analyzed and then distributed

(49:16):
publicly via a machine. Only wow that that there's there's
a certain level of like slop like you're saying about that,
I don't want to be Why would you want that?
Why would you want it? As a performer to be
analyzed by a machine. Where is the joy in that?
Where's the feeling of success or joy of a mission accomplished?

(49:39):
Where is it? I don't get that. I don't understand that.

Speaker 3 (49:42):
Yeah, so that's our word of the year is brain
rot and the runner.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
Up is slopped. I think there's a lot of where
we are, but to be honest and to be more
a little more hopeful.

Speaker 3 (49:52):
The word brain rot actually was first used in eighteen
fifty four by throw Okay. We noticed that people were
like they were. They didn't want to deal with complex issues.
They wanted to boil everything down to everything it's the
most simplistic thing. So there wasn't a lot This is
eighteen fifty four in his words, there wasn't a lot

(50:12):
of that.

Speaker 2 (50:14):
People wanted to dive into complex issues. So it's been.

Speaker 3 (50:17):
Around a while, the need, if you will, or the
desire to boil things down and take things apart and
deal with them on a smaller micro basis in terms
of complex issues. Yeah, I mean that's been going on
for a long time. But I do agree Joe that
something we can't just accept progress for progress's sake alone.

(50:39):
We at least sometimes have to stop and say, wait
a second, what is the cost of progress? What are
we missing? In this case, we're missing novels, nonfiction books,
and now Ricky Henderson and the personalities that populated this
game of baseball.

Speaker 4 (50:56):
Yeah, we've talked about that also. I mean the word progress,
it's just thrown around. So was just thrown around like
it's always good. It's not always good. It's a misnomer.
Use a different word, whether it's like attempted progress. It's
not just progress. It's it's somebody's version of progress. It's
not everybody's version of being better. I really have a

(51:19):
hard time when I hear that word. I kind of
cringe all the time, progress or progressive I get. I
cringe as to why that is always considered necessarily a
better way of doing things. It's just somebody's opinion. And
and sometimes absolutely it's it's it is. It is going
to put us in the right direction. It's going to
make things better, no doubt. But other times it's just
somebody trying to sell sell an idea, sell a thought,

(51:41):
or gain more power. And I so, I I really
whenever I hear that word or those words progress are progressive,
I just always step back, consider the source, try to
understand what I'm hearing or reading right here, and then
make up my own mind. Is this progress or is
this not progress? Is this? Is this going to be
beneficial now and down the road, or is it just
is this like a flash in the pan? Is it

(52:02):
a shooting star as opposed to rising star? And then
I have to make these determinations for myself. That's the
problem we do today too. Oftentimes people do not You've
already referenced it, think for themselves, and we're always relying
on others to think for us. And that's always been
my one of my biggest issues regarding even the game
of baseball in net where everybody so few want to

(52:23):
think for themselves anymore. It's group think. I don't like groupthink.
I do like consensus. I like when a group gets
together and they talk about it, discuss it, opposing points
of viewing perspectives. We arrive at a conclusion and we
go out and we do this. This is who we are.
But just to have it rammed down my throat, I'm
not into it.

Speaker 3 (52:40):
Well, Oxford Press, give us the word of the year,
which is brain, and Joe.

Speaker 2 (52:44):
Madden, you will always give us a saying.

Speaker 3 (52:47):
If you will to take us out each edition of
the Book of Joe podcasts, and what do you got
for us today as we head into Christmas season this week?

Speaker 4 (52:57):
Well, you know, I kind of went into that last sight,
you know, I went Ricky Henderson on us. You know,
I just I had to, you know, was like I said,
I was impacted by this. He's sixty five years of age,
you know. Of course I'm five years older than that.
I'll give you six years older than that in a
couple of weeks in February. So it's it's one of
those things that hits home. And the fact that I

(53:17):
knew him, the fact that I played against him and
he was larger than life, kind of a dude and
and loved by so many so I had to go there.
And anyhow, just a couple one that was funny, I thought,
because there was part of Ricky is Ricky don't like
it when Ricky can't find Ricky's limo. See that made
like exactly, I thought, God, that is so good. But

(53:39):
then the other one is like something that you had
spoken of. But there's another side of Ricky that we
never knew about, or you didn't really kind of give
him credit for thinking a little bit, But I like this,
Once you can accept failure, you can have fun and success.
Once you accept failure, you can have fun and success.
And who had more fun and success than he did

(54:00):
being able to, you know, get beat, lick your ounds,
like like, hey, who was who had a dirty or
uniform than he did every time he played the game.
But he'd get up and he get does dust off.
He'd dust himself off, chest, down his legs from that
head first slide you described earlier, and he'd get on
and he'd move on to the next moment. So you
could accept your failures much you can, you can have

(54:22):
fun and success. And then growing up like he did,
the really difficult moments he had as a youth and
eventually becoming what he did and then going back to
playing in independent ball. That's that's incredible. But I think
that's I've always believed that what he said there, you
have to be able to lose in order to understand

(54:44):
how to win. And I would tell my players that
losing is pretty could be a it's probably the greatest teacher.
And if you if you figure that out, then you
could really be successful. And have some fun at it.
So I love that what I read about that. He
had said that, I know it's pretty simplistic, but I
kind of like do simple better. So it's pretty cool.

Speaker 3 (55:04):
Yeah, especially as you know, Joe, when you're a base
stealer like that, you not just accept the fact that
you know you might fail. Yeah, you don't fear it
at all. He was fearless and that's what you have
to be as a base stealer. Remember Willie Wilson, the
great bastealer and talking about the way Willy, the way
that Ricky would slide and do it so many times

(55:25):
head first with that body of his. He said, it's
like jumping out of a car going twenty miles an
hour and doing that night after night.

Speaker 2 (55:35):
Year after year.

Speaker 3 (55:36):
I mean, the pounding that that guy's body took was
just amazing.

Speaker 2 (55:41):
So a one of a kind guy. Ricky Henderson we more.

Speaker 3 (55:45):
In his passing, Willy Wilson said that Willie Wilson great
base stealer himself, New Jersey's own Willie Wilson.

Speaker 4 (55:50):
That's outstanding. Also, Yeah, thank you, Tommy, that was great
talking about Ricky. I knew you'd be focused on that today.
So I wanted to go there, and yeah he was.
He was a wonderful, wonderful man in baseball player.

Speaker 2 (56:04):
Merry Christmas, Joe, We'll see you next time on the
Book of Joe.

Speaker 4 (56:07):
You also Tommy, Take care Buddy.

Speaker 1 (56:16):
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