An Oakland legend, baseball’s greatest leadoff hitter and base thief, laced his cleats in the West Sacramento coaches’ locker room. At 51, Rickey Henderson probably could steal his age in bags.
In 2010, the A’s hired the first-ballot Baseball Hall of Famer as a “roving instructor.” Three decades after Henderson shot up the A’s farm system and raced into baseball immortality, he would now instruct prospects on the base paths in Class A Stockton, Double A Midland and Triple A Sacramento.
As Henderson pulled up his socks before the press junket at the Triple A park, I couldn’t help but to briefly skirt my responsibilities as a media coordinator to fanboy over a local icon. “My senior year at Tech,” I told Henderson, a fellow Oakland Technical High School alum whose football feats on the Broadway campus might be even more legendary than his MLB records, ”Aeron Early broke your rushing record.”
He barely looked up.
“They play more games now,” Henderson replied, refusing to relinquish an early athletic achievement (Marshawn Lynch now owns the rushing record).
Henderson was Oakland greatness personified.
A product of the post-World War II migration of Black Americans to the East Bay Area, forged earlier by Oakland sports icons such as Bill Russell and Frank Robinson, Henderson’s defiance of the status quo was often emulated. “Doin’ a Rickey!” kids shouted before attempting Henderson’s head-first slide.
Pitcher Lenny DiNardo joined the Triple A Sacramento River Cats in 2010 after a down year with the Kansas City Royals. At age 30, the lefthander wanted another crack at the majors.
“I thought my pick-off move was pretty good,” DiNardo recalls of a day Henderson was coaching baserunning and noticed DiNardo tipping his move. “He would know when I was going to first or going home. He said my elbow was moving at a different level. It points to how smart he was and how good of a base runner he was. He took it to a different level.”
Johnny Doskow, who announced River Cats games for 22 seasons before joining the A’s booth in 2023, recalls Henderson spending hours with River Cats season ticket holders during a trip to Fresno. Henderson took photos with fans, cracked wise in the dugout.
Countless others from Oakland and beyond were affected by Henderson’s talent and kindness.
Henderson died of pneumonia Dec. 20 at 65, less than three months after the A’s final game at the Coliseum. A city that lost Russell, Robinson and three championship-winning franchises over the course of a decade had suddenly and mercilessly lost its sporting soul.
The Athletics’ 57 seasons in Oakland were defined by brazen and brash superstars—first outspoken slugger Reggie Jackson, followed by the blazing Henderson and the monstrous Bash Brothers. A more unassuming figure will now lead the team’s sojourn to West Sacramento, 100 miles east of Oakland, where the A’s will play three seasons as owner John Fisher looks to finance and build a $1.75 billion ballpark on the Las Vegas Strip.
After being claimed off waivers by the team in November 2022, Brent Rooker couldn't have foreseen himself addressing the Sacramento media in a swanky downtown hotel, sitting between his agent, Dustin Bledsoe, and A’s general manager David Forst to discuss a new five-year, $60 million extension with a notoriously frugal franchise.
“About two years ago,” Rooker, a 2023 All-Star and '24 Silver Slugger winner, explained his journey from the baseball doldrums, “the conversations I was having with Dustin were, ‘Hey, do we want to call David and ask for our release so we can try and go to Japan?’ And now the conversations are, ‘Hey, David wants to give you $60 million.’”
Forst, who first helped his predecessor Billy Beane construct the “Moneyball”-era rosters as a scout in the early 2000s, reminded the press of owner John Fisher’s preferred destination.
“This is our first contract extending into Las Vegas,” Forst said of Rooker’s deal, which spans past the franchise’s three planned seasons in West Sacramento. “As long as I’ve been here, we’ve built the roster year-to-year. It’s finally time for us to look ahead, put a team together, compete year in and year out and gear everything toward opening in Vegas in a few years.”
Days before the press conference, across K Street plaza at Golden 1 Center, Rooker finalized his A’s extension during a Sacramento Kings game. “That was a pretty cool setting for that to happen,” said the 30-year-old designated hitter, who joined promising right fielder Lawrence Butler, center fielder JJ Bleday, starting pitcher JP Sears and manager Mark Kotsay on the NBA court. The A’s contingent waved to their new hometown fans as Kings owner Vivek Ranadive, just feet away, basked in the adulation.
It was Ranadive who, as Major League Baseball neared its 2025 schedule release, gave Fisher, his billionaire pal, an alternative to playing in Oakland. Since scrapping plans for a waterfront stadium in Oakland, Fisher has been bashed, boycotted, and even reverse boycotted—an attempt by A’s fans to show MLB they would show up for a loyal owner.
Sheng Thao was months into her first term as Oakland mayor when the A’s announced a land deal in Las Vegas, ending “parallel” negotiations with both cities for ballparks. The next morning at City Hall, Thao blasted the A’s for what she called “disingenuous” efforts to stay in Oakland.
When the A’s and Oakland were unable to reach a Coliseum lease extension, needed for the team to bridge the estimated three-year gap to Las Vegas, Ranadive bailed out Fisher. Now, after 57 seasons and four World Series titles in Oakland, the A’s will share a 14,000-capacity Triple-A stadium for three seasons with the Ranadive-owned River Cats.
In August, Oakland sold its share of the Coliseum to mitigate a budget disaster. Thao, who presided over the last of three storied teams leaving the city, was recalled in a November vote.
The A’s will wear two jersey patches in 2025. One to honor Henderson, the Oakland legend. The other commemorates the first season in the capital region with an outline of Tower Bridge, the golden edifice spanning the Sacramento River and rising above the right-field horizon at Sutter Health Park.
A two-story clubhouse has been built beyond the left-field fence. A team spokesperson said players were impressed with the facility during their January visit. Rooker, who had a career-high 39 homers and 112 RBIs last season, expects the new ballpark to favor offense, “but the idea that it’s going to be a launching pad or play tiny is not quite right,” he added. Bathrooms have been added to bullpens, quite the relief for relievers and their managers.
“I think the A’s have been in a ballpark, the Coliseum, that most visiting teams came into and didn’t enjoy being in that space.” Kotsay told the Sacramento media in January. “We’re going to enjoy this clubhouse. This clubhouse is new. Even though we have to walk down the left-field line to get to the dugout, it’s nothing new for us because our bullpen didn’t have a bathroom last year.”
The Athletics won’t use a city affiliation while playing in West Sacramento. They will use “ATH” as an abbreviation. After the A’s posted a 39–36 record to end last season and acquired pitchers Luis Severino, Jeffery Springs and José Leclerc over the offseason—under the potential threat of an MLBPA grievance over a lack of spending on player salaries—Rooker and his teammates are optimistic about the future. If the A’s were to make the playoffs, the team hasn’t committed to playing those games in West Sacramento.
“Yes, the next three years, even more than that, look a little uncertain and atypical and not quite what we’re used to,” Rooker said. “But the group that we have in our clubhouse and surrounding us is as good as a group you can have to handle those things and make it an advantage for us.”
The professed friendship between Ranadive, who made his fortune as a technology executive, and Fisher, an heir to the Gap apparel throne, defies their public personas.
Fisher is rarely seen at A’s games—and that dates to before the team’s now laughable “Rooted in Oakland” marketing campaign, which culminated with fans slinging tomatoes at his effigy in the Coliseum parking lot. During a news conference announcing the agreement to play in West Sacramento, Fisher didn’t even mention an A’s player by name—he did explain how New York Yankees star Aaron Judge would attract crowds to the “intimate” ballpark, though.
Ranadive takes after Joe Lacob, his former Warriors ownership partner whose boastfulness upon buying the doormat NBA franchise in 2010 turned off many fans. After the Warriors traded Monta Ellis in 2012, Oakland fans booed and jeered Lacob during an on-court ceremony to honor franchise greats. Basketball Hall of Famer Chris Mullin put his arm around the owner, took the microphone, and told the crowd ”change is inevitable. It is going to work out just fine.” Soon, Stephen Curry became the face of the team and the Warriors won four NBA titles over the next decade.
At Golden 1 Center in downtown Sacramento, Ranadive is just as bold and brash, often sitting at center court with celebrities such as 50 Cent. In an infamous video from 2014, the owner is shown lobbying to select Nik Stauskas with the Kings’ No. 8 draft pick. Stauskas started one game and averaged 4.4 points during his rookie season, after which he was traded. He never posted a double-digit scoring average in the NBA and was playing in Spain by '19.
In December, Sacramento media blasted Ranadive after he fired Mike Brown, two years after the coach led the Kings to their first postseason since 2006 and three months after Ranadive gave him a three-year, $30 million extension. When Rooker and the A’s watched the Kings in Sacramento a few weeks later, however, they erased a 17-point deficit in the fourth quarter to beat the Miami Heat, part of a seven-game winning streak under new coach Doug Christie, who still has the Kings in the thick of the playoff race.
Ranadive referred to the A’s playing in his ballpark, across Tower Bridge from his downtown arena, as “a great showcase.” He mentioned his talks with MLB commissioner Rob Manfred about expansion.
“They want [a team] on the West Coast,” Ranadive said in April. “They would love it to be in California. We can prove there is a market here, and if we can make the team successful, I think we are in pole position to get the new franchise. … Our hope is that this leads to a permanent MLB team.”
Ranadive wasn’t guaranteed a team, he said.
“We have to show what we can do,” Ranadive told reporters. “I have complete confidence that if we set our mind to something—this is an incredible city, we have the best fans in the world, and at the end of the day the best fans will make it happen.”
And so, the A's will carry on in a makeshift home, making their debut at Sutter Health Park on March 31, before picking up and leaving again in a few years. And Oakland, the city they left behind, will carry on without them and without Rickey, in need of a rally.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Athletics Entering Uncertain Era After Unceremonious Exit From Oakland.
