Red Sox all-time washed up player All-Star team (part two)
By Drew Athans
Rickey Henderson
Rickey Henderson was the one player who I really should have included in the first part of this article. I had randomly thought about his one season with the Red Sox a couple of weeks ago and he was on my mental list of players who inspired my original idea for the article. However, it was getting kind of long and I inexplicably left him off the list.
In any event, he’s included here because he’s the poster boy for what these articles are all about. We all know about his Hall of Fame career, spent mostly with the Oakland Athletics, and his place as the greatest base stealer in baseball history.
Rickey spent twenty-five seasons in the majors, fourteen of them with Oakland over four separate stints. He also player for the Yankees, Blue Jays, Padres, Angels, Mets, and Mariners before he made his way to Boston in 2002.
Henderson was forty-three in 2002 and was well past his sell-by date, serving mainly as the team’s back-up center fielder. He only played in 72 games and hit .223 with 5 home runs, 16 RBI, and 8 stolen bases. He was the oldest player in the American League during his season in Boston and also had the distinction of having stolen more bases in his career (which began in 1979) than the Sox had in their entire history (which began in 1901).
The Red Sox finally passed Rickey a month into his lone season with the team, on April 30, 2002