How Rickey Henderson helped launch USA TODAY Baseball Weekly

The cover had already been designed, with Rickey Henderson striking that familiar, self-assured pose.

The problem was, the subject of the cover story didn’t realize he would be the face of the first issue of USA TODAY Baseball Weekly.

It was spring training 1991. Social media, smart phones and the internet didn’t exist.

Our writer, Tim Wendel, arrived in Arizona without realizing Henderson had blamed the media for the boos he was hearing from crowds. The reigning American League MVP wanted to renegotiate his contract.

“I’m saying, ‘Yeah, the first cover’s gonna be Rickey, so I’m gonna do Rickey,’ ” Wendel recalled telling other baseball writers he knew, “and almost to a person, everybody I ran into went, ‘Oooh, good luck with that. He’s not talking to anybody.’ And I’m going, ‘Uh oh.’ ”

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Henderson, who died Friday at age 65, was one of the faces of baseball in 1991 as he pursued Lou Brock’s career stolen base record he would eclipse that season.

Who better to be the face of USA TODAY’s baseball-only publication? Wendel had to have him.

When Henderson was pulled from a game in the middle innings, Wendel snuck away from the other writers in the press box and down to the clubhouse at Phoenix Municipal Stadium. With his notebook in his back pocket, he saw Henderson coming around a corner with a towel around his waist.

Henderson tried to walk away as Wendel shouted, “Rickey!”

“I just want to talk about you and Brock’s all-time stolen base record,” Wendel told him, using “USA TODAY” as his publication.

“Just about Rickey and Lou?” Henderson replied.

Henderson talked, and not just about Brock. He was making about $3 million a year, according to the story Wendel would write, not even in the majors’ top 25 in those days and fourth-best on the A’s.

“I ask the people who boo me,” he told Wendel, ‘ ‘What would you think if where you work they paid somebody more who was doing less than you?’ You’d be upset about it. Anybody wants to work at a place where they respect you and pay you well.”

His interview helped launch a publication that would become an institution within the sport for not only its box scores, but its statistics, fantasy baseball coverage and in-depth player profiles. The first issue debuted, with the Henderson cover, with an on-sale date of April 4-11, 1991.

Over the years, we have evolved into Sports Weekly, adding coverage (and box scores) for football, basketball and hockey. Sports Weekly is now in its 34th year of publication.

From 2021: Baseball (now Sports) Weekly still going strong after 30 years

Its origins began during an area when athletes were often keenly aware when they appeared in print.

“This should be my golden moment,” Henderson said in the story for the first issue, “but I’ve gotten so much heat about my contract, I’m not thinking about Lou Brock or his record. This is maybe the most important thing of my life. What I’ve played 13 years for. But with all this other stuff going on, breaking Brock’s record could be kind of hollow.”

According to the story, Brock saw Henderson play at Boston’s Fenway part during Henderson’s second full year in the majors and told him: “Rickey, you’re going to be the one.”

If you watched him play in those days, stealing two bases after a walk or single before you could settle into your seat, you couldn’t help but feel the same way. He seemed born to steal bases.

Wendel learned that when Henderson was growing up, he was told to come home with a dirty uniform or else his mom wouldn’t believe he had gone to a game. If he hadn’t gotten on base during the game, he would go back out to the field and slide.

“I’ve changed the game,” he told Wendel, “and guys who are in the record book are the ones who decided how the game was played.”

On the cover of the first issue of Baseball Weekly, it reads: “Henderson contract flap: Will it tarnish Man of Steal’s run at record?”

According to Baseball-Reference.com, the highest annual salary he made as a player was $4.8 million with the A’s in 1994. It’s safe to say now, especially in light of what some players make today, he was underpaid.

“He’s the greatest leadoff hitter of all time, and I’m not sure there’s a close second,” Billy Beane, the longtime A’s executive, later told Wendel.

Henderson is also a rich part of our publication’s history.

“There’s the guy who put me on the cover of Baseball Weekly,” Henderson said when he would spot Wendel after that first issue debuted.

Borelli is the editor of USA TODAY Sports Weekly. To subscribe, go to sportsweekly.usatoday.com/delivery