In honor of Rickey, here’s a list of the 25 best Rickey Henderson quotes and stories. We found it at NYSportSpace

1) Rickey… on referring to himself in the third person: “Listen, people are always saying, ‘Rickey says Rickey.’ But it’s been blown way out of proportion. People might catch me, when they know I’m ticked off, saying, ‘Rickey, what the heck are you doing, Rickey?’ They say, ‘Darn, Rickey, what are you saying Rickey for? Why don’t you just say, ‘I?’ But I never did. I always said, ‘Rickey,’ and it became something for people to joke about.”

2) In the early 1980s, the Oakland A’s accounting department was
freaking out. The books were off $1 million. After an investigation, it was determined Rickey was the reason why. The GM asked him about a $1 million bonus he had received and Rickey said instead of cashing it, he framed it and hung it on a wall at his house.

3) In 1996, Henderson’s first season with San Diego, he boarded the team bus and was looking for a seat. Steve Finley said, “You have tenure, sit wherever you want.” Henderson looked at Finley and said, “Ten years? Ricky’s been playing at least 16, 17 years.”

4) This one might be my second favorite. This wasn’t too long ago, I think it was the year he ended up playing with the Red Sox. Anyway, he called San Diego GM Kevin Towers and left the following message: “This is Rickey calling on behalf of Rickey. Rickey wants to play baseball.”

5) This one happened in Seattle. Rickey struck out and as the next
batter was walking past him, he heard Henderson say, “Don’t worry,
Rickey, you’re still the best.”

6) Rickey once asked a teammate how long it would take him to drive to the Dominican Republic.

7) Moments after breaking Lou Brock’s stolen base record, Henderson told the crowd – with Brock mere feet next to him – “Lou Brock was a great base stealer, but today, I am the greatest of all-time.”

8 ) Henderson once fell asleep on an ice pack and got frostbite – which forced him to miss three games – in mid-August.

9) A reporter asked Henderson if Ken Caminiti’s estimate that 50 percent of Major League players were taking steroids was accurate. His response was, “Well, Rickey’s not one of them, so that’s 49 percent right there.”

10) Henderson broke Ty Cobb’s career record for runs scored with a home run. After taking his usual 45 seconds or so around the bases, Rickey slid into home plate.

11) On being Nolan Ryan’s 5,000th career strikeout: “It gave me no
chance. He (Ryan) just blew it by me. But it’s an honor. I’ll have
another paragraph in all the baseball books. I’m already in the books three or four times.”

12) San Diego GM Kevin Towers was trying to contact Rickey at a nearby hotel. He knew Henderson always used fake names to avoid the press, fans, etc. He was trying to think like Rickey and after several attempts; he was able to get Henderson on the phone.
Rickey had checked in under Richard Pryor.

13) I didn’t believe this one at first. However, I emailed a few
contacts within the Sox organization and they claim it actually
happened. This is priceless, it really is.

The morning after the Sox finished off the sweep against St. Louis last October, Henderson called someone in the organization looking for tickets to Game 6 at Fenway Park.

14) The Mets were staying in a hotel less than a mile from Cinergy Field in Cincinnati. While some players walked, most took the team bus. A few minutes after they arrived – again it was less than a mile – the last players off the bus noticed a stretched limo that had just pulled up.

Of course, Rickey emerged from the back seat.

15) A reporter once asked Rickey if he talked to himself, “Do I talk to myself? No, I just remind myself of what I’m trying to do. You know, I never answer myself so how can I be talking to myself?”

16) a few weeks into Henderson’s stint with the
Mariners, he walked up to Olerud at the batting cage and asked him why he wore a batting helmet in the field. Olerud explained that he had an aneurysm at nine years old and he wore the helmet for protection. Legend goes that Henderson said, “Yeah, I used to play with a guy that had thesame thing.”

Legend also goes that Olerud said, “That was me, Rickey.”

Henderson played with Olerud on the Blue Jays and the Mets.  [Note from Johnny California:  This quote is disputed]

17) Rickey was asked if he had the Garth Brooks album with Friends in Low Places and Henderson said, “Rickey doesn’t have albums. Rickey has CDs.”

18) During a contract holdout with Oakland in the early 1990s, Henderson said, “If they want to pay me like Mike Gallego, I’ll play like Gallego.”

19) In the late 1980s, the Yankees sent Henderson a six-figure bonus check. After a few months passed, an internal audit revealed the check had not been cashed. Current Yankees GM Brian Cashman – then a low-level nobody with the organization – called Rickey and asked if there was a problem with the check. Henderson said, “I’m just waiting for the money market rates to go up.”

20) In June 1999, when Henderson was playing with the Mets, he saw
reporters running around the clubhouse before a game. He asked a
teammate what was going on and he was told that Tom Robson, the team’s hitting coach, had just been fired. Henderson said, “Who’s he?”

21) This is my all-time favorite. Rickey was pulled over by a San Diego police officer for speeding. As the officer was approaching Rickey’s car, the window went down a few inches and a folded $100 bill emerged. The officer let Rickey and his money head home without a ticket.

22) When he was on the Yankees in the mid-1980s, Henderson told
teammates that his condo had such a great view that he could see, “The Entire State Building.”

23) During one of his stays with Oakland, Henderson’s locker was next to Billy Beane’s. After making the team out of spring training, Beane was sent to the minors after a few months. Upon his return, about six weeks later, Henderson looked at Beane and said, “Hey, man, where have you been? Haven’t seen you in awhile.”

24) To this day and dating back 25 years, before every game he plays, Henderson stands completely naked in front of a full length locker room mirror and says, “Ricky’s the best,” for several minutes.

25) In the last week of his lone season with the Red Sox, Chairman Tom Werner asked Henderson what he would like for his ‘going-away’ gift. Henderson said he wasn’t going anywhere, but he would like owner John Henry’s Mercedes. Werner said it would be tough to get the same make and model in less than a week and Henderson said, “No, I want his car.”
Turns out the Sox got Henderson a Red Thunderbird and when he saw it on the field before the last game of the season, Rickey said, “Whose ugly car is on the field?”

Congrats Mr. Henderson.

But more importantly, we were among California Ballot Proposition superstars. Sitting right in front of us was none other than T. Boone Pickens, the bazillionaire-natural-gas-snake-oil salesman behind Prop. 10.

Gov. Schwarzenegger was there too, who even after being (unfairly) booed by everyone in the entire arena, still had that Yes-On-11 gleam in his eye.

Our seats were in the third of three rows of floor seats.   From those seats, the whole experience of watching the game was a bit overwhelming, because from those seats, we were forced to watch two different games, in two different sports, at that same time

The first game was the NBA basketball game, which is a game that moves very very fast.  There were moments when Kobe Bryant was moving so quickly that he was literally a blur.  Sitting that close, It was tough to see plays develop, the game became a series of explosive moments rather than a “whole” experience with an over-arching story.

Part of the problem was that we were distracted by the other sporting event orbiting around the basketball game.  We’re not really sure what this other game is called but it involved very famous, very wealthy people doing laps around basketball court while the basketball game went on.   Every now and again a famous someone would stop at another famous someone’ seat and whisper something into their ear, or they would point at each other and laugh, or give the occasional pat on the shoulder as they walked by.  There are definitely rules to this game, but we could not figure them out, which actually made it a lot like watching Rollerderby.

This whole two-games-at-once thing resulted in sensory overload.  As ridiculous as this sounds, it was hard for us to process a Kobe Bryant lightning-strike dunk while David Beckham was also in our field of vision, wearing some sort of designer 1991-rave-hat-urban-turban and trying to squeeze by Jeffrey Katzenberg who was whispering something into Leonardo DiCaprio’s ear.  It was difficult to absorb Andrew Bynum throw down a ferocious block with Gov. Schwarzenegger chatting up Mr. and Mrs. Denzel Washington in the background.  There was simply too much to take in at once.

The most surprising aspect of the night was the food and drink situation.  The people in the front row of the floor never need to leave their seats for refreshments.  Servers bring them menus, take their orders, return with food and drinks and cash out their tab. Those sitting behind us, off the floor in the “regular” seats never need to leave their seats either, they have the usual roving stadium/arena food vendors with the trays of beer, coolers of ice cream, etc.  But if you’re in the second or third row on the floor, you neither get front-row service nor do you get the wandering refreshment hawker.  2nd and 3rd rowers, need to get up out of their seats, which cost $5.10 per minute of game time per seat, and walk up to the main concourse, stand in line, wait for the stoned college freshman in front of them to find his credit card, and retrieve their $18 hot dog and beer themselves.

Don’t get us wrong, we’re not complaining,  we had a blast, and we’re grateful to our host.  Also, having the opportunity to witness Kobe Bryant’s superpowers up close is not something we will soon forget.

But at the end of the day, the Lakers’ game is just not our scene. We know, we sound like spoiled brats, but we’re not, we’re really just everyday, no-nonsense Johnny-The-Californias.  It seemed like everyone on the floor was having fun, but it was business-fun, not actual-fun.  When we go see sports we like to have actual-fun.  We’re sure  things are different “off the floor” but either way we look forward to April 13…Dodgers opening day!

The Johnny California Editorial Board presents our official 2008 Ballot Proposition Explanations and Recommendations.  This year there are 12 ballot propositions. We look forward to a year where there is a ballot proposition which outlaws all future ballot propositions and forces the state legislature to the job we elected them to do. Until then, we’re here to help you navigate California’s bizarre parody of direct democracy.

At some point before November 4, we will attempt to explain how and why our state’s once simple ballot proposition system grew into the electoral Rubik’s Cube we are forced to collectively solve.

And now on to the props:

1A Bonds for High Speed Train: YES Explained
2 Standards for Confining For Animals: NO Explained
3 Bonds for Maintaining Children’s Hospitals: YES Explained
4 Parental Notice Before Terminating Minor’s Pregnancy: NO Explained
5 Non-Violent Drug Offender Rehabilitation Act: YES Explained
6 Local Law Enforcement Funding and New Crime Laws: NO Explained
7 Renewable Energy Act: NO Explained
8 Constitutional Ban on Same Sex Marriage: NO Explained
9 Crime Victim’s Rights Act: NO Explained
10 Alternative Fuel Vehicles Act:NO Explained
11 State Assembly and State Senate Redistricting: YES Explained
12 California Veteran’s Home Loan Fund: YES Explained

Farmers have until 2015 to change their operations.  All objective analysis shows that the retail price of California-produced eggs won’t go up all that much, maybe a couple of cents. For us consumers it’s not a big deal, but in the food business world of razor-thin margins, those couple of cents is bad news for egg-producers.

But screw those cruel factory farming egg-producers, right? Well…sorta kinda not really. First off, there is no real pork or veal industry in California. Those Yes-On-2 commercials with the cute little piggies are a fiction. Prop. 2 isn’t saving pigs and calves because there really aren’t any to save. What California does have is a $400 million/year egg business, which is why Prop. 2 made it to the ballot. Prop. 2 is pretty much identical to laws passed in a few other states (which is why the pork and veal stuff is in there), the difference is the chicken cage requirements.

If Prop. 2 passes, California would be the first state in the country to have chicken-cage requirements. This requirement is only for eggs produced in California, eggs shipped from other states and sold in California are not subject to the Prop. 2 requirements. Opponents of Prop. 2 are concerned that cheaper out-of-state eggs, with lower production costs, will flood the California market leaving our own egg producers at a competitive disadvantage and may not do much to help improve the treatment of chickens.  As the Los Angeles Times eloquently put it, “we fear the result of Proposition 2’s passage would not be better treatment of hens but merely the export of their mistreatment.” If you’re interested in more details, you can read all about it in this report from UC-Davis.

Prop. 2 means well, but at the end of the day this is not a state issue, this is a federal issue. The USDA or Congress need to create a uniform chicken cage regulation that applies to all states, that way states aren’t punished by the market for treating their animals properly.

However, some people don’t agree with my reasoning. They think that Prop. 2 laws are going to eventually be passed in every state. Says the California Majority Report:

Why would 13 Iowa egg producers dump a quarter million dollars into an opposition campaign to a California proposition that would increase Iowa egg producers’ market share?…If anything [they] would be giving money to the Yes side. That’s business, right? Make your profits where you can by digging into the markets of your competitors.

Something doesn’t fit here. Maybe, just maybe, the outside egg producers that have dominated the finances of the No campaign are afraid that the old adage, ‘as California goes, so goes the nation,’ applies in this situation.

It’s a good point but it fails the reality-check. The Iowa agribusiness giants are making a simple business decision — spend a little bit of money fighting the law in one state or risk spending gazillions fighting the law in multiple states. Either way, they’ll eventually win since there’s no way this law is going to pass in mega-farm states. If Prop. 2 fails, the out-of-state egg-producers will gladly exploit California’s competitive disadvantage.

And here’s some more realpolitik for ya . if Prop. 2 does pass, California egg-producers will challenge this law all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Our chicken farmers will argue that the state’s cage-law places them at such a competitive disadvantage that it amounts to an unconstitutional undue burden on interstate commerce, they’ll likely win and Prop. 2 will be overturned. Of course, if all states were required to follow cage requirements, there would be a level playing field and no commerce clause challenge.

A USDA regulation or an act of Congress is the real solution to the chicken cage problem, this is not something that Californians can resolve at the ballot box.

The Johnny California Editorial Board reluctantly recommends a NO vote on Proposition 2 and encourages people to write their Congressperson or Senator to get a federal law passed (yeah I know, that doesn’t really work unless like a zillion people do it..but you get the idea).

if you really want to gross yourself out and learn more about the issue, check out Michael Pollan’s excellent book The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

Obama’s reality show delays the first pitch by half an hour.  “Who else but a terrorist would do such a thing?” asks the Republican National Committee.

And not for nothing, but if the RNC is baseball-crazy, why have I seen a bazillion Obama ads during these games but nary a McCain ad in sight?  And no, these aren’t local ad-buys, these are national ads — Presedential campaigns don’t bother running local ads in California.

Torre didn’t make a mistake by pulling Derek Lowe too early.  Torre pulled Lowe because of Lowe’s impending nervous breakdown on the pitchers mound.  Or as Torre diplomatically said, Lowe was “battling his emotions” the entire game.    It wasn’t much of a battle, after the first inning, when Lowe stormed off the field and ripped his jersey off his body, it was clear that his emotions had won. Lowe then spent the rest of the game huffing and puffing as he tried to get his sinker down.  Torre knew that aside from the usual big-game post-season pressure there was the added pressure of Lowe’s impending free agency.  Not only was Lowe struggling , but Lowe was struggling on national television in front of in front of every GM in baseball.  Every bad pitch was costing Lowe money, which only seemed to frustrate him more.  A mid-game implosion was brewing and Torre knew it.

Torre also made the right move by giving the ball to Kershaw. Yes, it was a calculated risk, but Kershaw has the most raw talent of any young pitcher in the game.   Torre had to balance that against the fact that the guy is only 20 years old, has not spent a full season in the majors, and was going up against Ryan Howard and Pat Burrell.

Wade and Broxton should not be faulted either.   Remember that Wade was a call-up from AA, he’s pitched great for us all year. He finished the season with a .93 WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched), as the Philadelphia Daily News points out, that’s lower than un-hittable robo-closer Brad Lidge, who finished the year with a 1.23 WHIP.

Broxton stepped into the closer role brilliantly during the regular season when Saito went on the  DL. When Saito looked shaky against the Cubs and Torre declared that he “lost his command”, everybody agreed that Broxton was looking unbeatable and needed to be the NLCS closer.   Sure giving up a home run to nine- hundred-year-old Matt Stairs is embarrassing, but statistically, it’s going to happen. It was just bad timing.

Overall the Dodgers have played well throughout the NLCS. We lost last night’s game by two bad pitches, we lost game 2 because Blake’s drive to center wasn’t an inch higher, and we lost game 1 because of Furcal’s one bad throw to first.  Oh and let’s not forget Chase Utley’s what-the-hell-was-that unassisted double play last night.

All season long, Torre held the Dodgers together with toothpicks and hot glue. Torre got the team this far despite the Andruw Jones disaster and a DL that read like an all-star team roster. Remember when we were so short on decent players that Russell Martin had to play 3rd base?

The Dodgers are loaded with talent and exciting to watch, but they’re a young team.   They were unlikely to get this far and we all know that Torre (and of course Manny…and yes, even Casey Blake) got them there.  And ask yourself this, even with Manny, do you think we’d be watching the Dodgers in October if Grady Little was still calling the shots?

Whether we win or not, it should be clear to everyone that the Dodgers are one starting pitcher short of greatness, which is why I’m against re-signing Manny for anything longer than a 2 year deal (which he won’t take…so I guess I’m against re-signing Manny). I know the Billy Beane gospel says “never spend money on a starting pitcher”, but we’re seeing what happens when we don’t have a true #1 starter. More on that later. Right now, the only thing that matters is Wednesday.