Rickey Henderson Quotes

It gave me no chance. He (Nolan Ryan) just blew it (strikeout #5,000) by me. But its an honor. I'll have another paragraph in all the baseball books. I'm already in the books three or four times.

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 become something for people to joke about.

If they're going to pay me like [Mike] Gallego, I'm going to play like Gallego.

When I was growing up, my favorite player was Reggie Jackson - and I never got the opportunity to get an autograph from Reggie. I was so frustrated. I mean, he was my idol. And I couldn't get no autograph. I would go through punishment waiting on him (after games) because he was always the last guy to come out. And I would go back home with no autograph.

Well, Rickey's not one of them, so that's 49 percent right there.

When you're a kid, you want to be a millionaire.

I was stealing all the bases, and when you had to go to arbitration they said, 'You know, only the big boys make the money.' So I got to try and figure out how to hit a home run, too.

I love the game and I wanted to continue playing. It came to a time that I had to stop.

I don't think I ever got proper credit about being smart about the game.

When I was a little-leaguer, I was sort of famous for stealing bases - and it started only because my mom wanted to be sure where I was in the afternoons. Mom always used to say, "If you don't come home dirty, you didn't play a baseball game." So I always tried to get in a situation where I had to slide so that I could go home dirty.