Rickey Henderson, Major League Baseball’s all-time stolen base king, will join the New York Mets as a Special Instructor for 10 days this spring in Port St. Lucie, FL.
Henderson, who amassed 1,406 stolen bases during his major league career from 1979-2003, will work for the Mets after the World Baseball Classic is over. Rickey will also join the team for a week at some point during the regular season.
Please, please, please let this hiring constitute actual “how-to-draw-a-walk” lessons for one Jose Reyes and not a series of photo opportunites. But for those of us who have been screaming for such an appointment for a couple of years now, well, there’s actually nothing to complain about.
Now if they can just bring back John Franco to lecture all the younger players about the dangers of associating with bad characters, everything at Port. St. Lucie will be in order.
I guess once that brought back Juan Samuel and kept around an Alomar, anything goes now! Let’s just ignore Mets history all together!
Here’s a pretty cool interview that was just done with Daily News Mets beat writer Adam Rubin. I recommend it.
http://hosted.filefront.com/patchyfogg
I think the deal is that Rickey retires after a week, then has to go into the Hall of Fame as a Met. That, or Oscar Minaya is hiring Rickey to defuse the all-Latino hiring rep the media have given him.
Ben
Rickey is no Vince Coleman, and that is a fact. Vince Coleman is no Tim Raines either, so technically Rickey Henderson is no Tim Raines, and Tim Raines is the White Sox first base coach. White Sox come out on top, again, although they really come out on top 2x, because VC is a former White Sox player.
If Rickey’s not in camp, there’s no way Xavier Nady starts referring to himself as Xavier in press conferences — i.e. “Yeah, Xavier went 1-for-4 today, but I made some solid contact and Ponson’s a hell of a pitcher” — and that’s my bottom line. I also think it’s a great idea, though, from a teaching-Reyes-how-not-to-make-me-mad perspective.
And I’d remind Randy that, while the Mets have been perhaps a bit too welcoming to guys who are emblematic of the depressing/picaresque Mets-ness (like it says on that statue of Daryl Boston outside Shea: “bring me your jheri curled underachievers, surly malcontents and card players”) that defines this club’s failures, they’re also going to be bringing back all the 1986 players at some point during the season. Come on, man, Ed Hearn! How do you complain about that?