PHOENIX — Former Oakland Athletics great Dave Stewart was exhausted, his voice raspy and eyes watery, as his mind drifted over all of the memories.
This didn’t seem real.
Sure, Rickey Henderson, one of his best friends in life – not just baseball – wasn’t feeling the best. Henderson was asthmatic, endured ongoing sinus problems that required surgery last year, and often was fatigued.
Still, that was Rickey, always on the go, refusing to let his body slow him down.
“When I heard he was sick,” Stewart told USA TODAY Sports Saturday, “I wasn’t surprised. He doesn’t know how to slow it down. He doesn’t give himself a chance not to be 100%.
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“Him having asthma, him being sick, it never stopped him. He was always on the go. He had these rental properties in Oakland, and I’d get these calls saying they saw Rickey out cutting the grass. I’d say, ‘What do you mean?’ They told me he actually out there with a lawn mower doing work on his property.
“He was always go-go-go. He loves to fish. He just took up hunting. On his first hunt, he’s out there hunting wild boar. That’s not the animal you hunt on your first hunt.”
Stewart called Henderson on Friday afternoon to remind him they had a business call scheduled for Saturday. Henderson’s daughter, Alexis, answered the phone. They were in an Oakland hospital where Henderson was scheduled to undergo surgery.
Later, Stewart got a call from Alexis telling him that her father didn’t make it.
He was gone, at the age of 65, five days before his 66th birthday on Christmas Day.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Stewart said, “I still can’t. I can’t wrap my heard around it. We’ve known each other practically our entire lives.
“That was my dude.”
They first met as teenagers in Oakland, playing against one another in the Babe Ruth League. The circuit was full of future major league and minor league players. There was Rupert Jones. Glenn Burke. Gary Pettis. Lloyd Moseby. Tack Wilson. Cleo Smith. Stewart.
And of course, the greatest of them all: Rickey Nelson Henley Henderson, who would become baseball’s all-time stolen base leader and runs leader.
“Growing up, he wasn’t that good of a baseball player,” Stewart said. “He had great ability. He could run and do things. But he would probably admit that of three major sports, he was best at football, then baseball, then basketball. He had a lot to learn because his first choice was to be a great running back.”
Henderson used to say that he could have been Bo Jackson before Bo, a two-sport All-Star and All-Pro, but the Athletics weren’t about to let him play in the NFL.
The two best friends, with Stewart drafted in 1975 by the Los Angeles Dodgers and Henderson drafted a year later by the Athletics, played against one another in the Mexican winter leagues. They faced each other in the minors with Stewart pitching for Albuquerque, N.M. and Henderson for Ogden, Utah.
“So, the night before I faced him, he tells the story that I had a lot of friends who took him out to the wee hours of the morning,” Stewart said. “So I strike him out the first two times up. He comes to bat the third time with a lighter bat.
“And he takes me deep.”
Henderson still laughed four decades later telling the story.
