Dave Henderson, RIP
The M’s had been a big-league team for a few months when it came time to make their initial pick in the amateur draft. Picking near the end of the first round, the new club selected a CF out of a California HS. There was no history to look at – the M’s front office didn’t have a “type,” and no one knew anything about the player development group. Seattle fans would learn to be skeptical in future years – years of Tito Nannies and Al Chambers and Terry Bells – but in that year of firsts, the M’s wished upon a power/speed combo at an up-the-middle position. They would be rewarded for it.
Henderson made his debut in 1981, looking overmatched in a few dozen PAs. But in 1982, he settled down and showed real promise. Flanked by an aging Al Cowens and All-Star Bruce Bochte, Henderson was part of a legitimate big-league OF. No one on the IF could hit – the highest OPS+ on the IF was Julio Cruz’s 80 (an 81 wRC+), while the *worst* OPS+ in the OF was Hendu’s 107. It was something to build on, anyway – Hendu was 22, after all.
In short order, Bochte left in free agency and the M’s began churning through LFs like Spinal Tap drummers. Henderson’s development seemed to stall, as his production dipped a bit in 1983 and then more severely in 1985. He was still a fine player, a gap-hitting CF with a perpetual smile, he seemed to thrive with other competent hitters (as in 1984, Alvin Davis’ big rookie year), but as these were the M’s of the 1980s, lineup protection was not something to count on.
As a kid, I don’t remember the ups and down of Hendu’s production as much as I remember the losing. I was a baseball optimist then (this may be hard to believe to some readers), and this was troubling. To the hardened realists of the time, though, Henderson’s volatility was an issue. The M’s would get Hendu and Davis playing well, but then Barry Bonnell got Valley Fever and that was that. Or, they had Ken Phelps, Phil Bradley and a solid year from AD and Hendu’s numbers crashed. It was maddening, but to me it was seemed like the growing pains of a future dynasty. In 1986, Henderson was having his best year. Rookie Danny Tartabull proved to be an instant success, and, with Bradley, the M’s had their OF set. Hendu/Bradley were 27, while Tartabull was 23. The M’s were hopeless, of course, finishing further back than they had in 1985, but they had one question answered. And then, in a fit of pique, they blew it all up.
The first to go was promising RF prospect Ivan Calderon, a favorite of mine not so much for his long HRs but for a charmingly stilted interview he gave with Dave Niehaus after a game winning hit or something (at that time, Calderon spoke approximately no English, and Niehaus no Spanish). A month or so later, Hendu and SS Spike Owen headed to Boston in exchange for SS Rey Quinones and pitchers Mike Trujillo and Mike Brown. Brown’s career was over 16 innings later, while Trujillo spent another 100IP or so as a swing man. Quinones seemed like an ironic divine punishment – the team that believed Henderson was wasting his talent would be shown what *true* waste looks like. In a few months, once the 95-loss campaign wound down, the M’s dealt Tartabull to Kansas City for Scott Bankhead.
As a fan in 1986, the playoffs and the World Series were incredibly exciting but abstract. I loved them, but they seemed like a different game – the M’s hadn’t come close to making them, and now seemed to be rebuilding. They’d played 10 seasons and seemed to be treading water six feet below the surface. I thought the M’s were talented, but even the players they cast off seemed to wither and die. Julio Cruz got to play in the post season for the White Sox, but he had an awful year and the Sox lost the ALCS. Henderson and Owen were at least thrust into a real playoff race, and that would have to do. I’d hoped the M’s would build a winner out of my favorite players, but if they couldn’t, I wanted them to go off and do well – to show others that yes, Mariners players weren’t historically bad, they were just star-crossed and mismatched.
Soon, he’d develop a reputation for coolness in pressure situations, but the initial returns on the big trade with Boston weren’t great. Henderson’s K rate spiked and he put up a Zunino-esque line of .197/.226/.314 in a handful of PAs. Thrust into what looked like a deciding game 3 of the ALCS thanks to an injury, Henderson’s initial contribution was to have a long fly ball pop out of his glove and go over the fence for a bizarre two-run HR. Then, and only then, would Hendu redeem himself. Down to their final strike against a tough closer, down 5-4, Henderson hit a 2R-HR that gave Boston life. After California tied the game in the bottom of the inning, Henderson ended up winning it with a sac fly in the 11th. I was dumbstruck, and I was happy. Dave Henderson was free, and now he had even more of a reason to never stop smiling for the rest of his life.
This is actually not about Hendu’s career, though. I know, I know: that was a hell of a lot of prologue for a post about something else. What I think is so interesting, and in the week or so since his passing, so sad, is that I/we never really knew Henderson while he played for Seattle. Here’s a typically great post by Ken Arneson about Hendu. Go read it – I’ll wait. Henderson arrived in Oakland in 1988, the peak of Bash Brothers mania. The A’s had assembled a terrifying offense, with game-transcending superstar Jose Canseco in RF and new star 1B Mark McGwire. They still had Carney Lansford at 3B, and they had a rotation anchored by Dave Stewart. They added to it in 1989, bringing Rickey Henderson back (far better than the Steve Henderson the M’s flanked Hendu with) and getting a career year from Bob Welch. The point is: Hendu flourished in this environment, and his constant grin won the fans over. As Arneson points out, he had TWO fan groups dedicated to him, and he’d interact with him before each game. This wasn’t Henderson growing into himself, or gaining confidence after his ’86 heroics. *Nothing about Henderson had changed*. He smiled all the time in Seattle too, and he kept doing it as a TV color analyst after retirement. All that changed was the context.
Beatwriters knew and loved Hendu. Read John McGrath’s heartfelt tribute in the News Tribune as an example. But the fans didn’t. The team seemed to be conflicted about Henderson’s constant grinning (“you can’t smile when you’re losing every day!”), and it was hard to muster much enthusiasm for any of the M’s given that they were out of the race by May-June *every year* and drew 1 million fans in a good year (the M’s were under 900,000 in total attendance for two of Hendu’s four full seasons in Seattle). No one knew what Henderson would do in a pressure situation, as the M’s hadn’t had one in their first decade of existence. But in Oakland, Henderson was beloved for being himself.
This isn’t to say Oakland’s fans were better, whatever that means, or that Seattle misunderstood Henderson (that came later). It’s just another way that losing affects us as fans. We look at players differently – we interrogate them. I can’t really blame us for doing it, either. Baseball is beautiful even when your team’s out of it. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t be writing this, and I would’ve stopped following the M’s in 1986. But for whatever reason, Henderson’s death and the reactions to it have reminded me that persistent losing distorts our vision a bit.
Unfortunately for Henderson, his turn as a broadcaster did the same. Analytical blogs like this one, and analytical fans like this one, often saw ourselves as pitted in a duel with the dread forces of received baseball wisdom and mainstream media. Every cliche, every rote denunciation about a rookie having to prove something, or vague phrases like “playing the game the right way” seemed like relics of the 19th century – they were the linguistic equivalents of high collared uniforms and segregated baseball. At a distance now, this is all quite hyperbolic, but hey, ours was an insurrection, and equanimity doesn’t rally the troops like righteous indignation. Dave Henderson was the color man tasked with/selected for his ability to dispense these baseball nostrums about, I don’t know, Jeremy Reed or whoever. He started on broadcasts when the team was an offensive juggernaut, and only a few die-hard Bill James acolytes would’ve objected. By 2003, this blog was around, and the M’s were about to fall off a cliff. BY 2006, Henderson became an odd kind of focal point for the traditional versus analytical debate, and a constant irritant for readers here and elsewhere. He came back in 2011 in the wake of Niehaus’ passing and was treated to another 95-loss, go-nowhere club. Losing had, again, obscured our view of the guy.
Not to say he was Vin Scully – I don’t want to scold all of us for not appreciating his broadcasting. Rather, the broadcasting became just another annoyance in years that offered a steady stream of them. We were angry, and the team was awful, and why is he *grinning* so much? Dave was an amazing father and a very good ballplayer. He leaves a family hurting -that’s the sad part. But as two fanbases offer warm remembrances, many M’s fans remember him either as a broadcaster or a once-promising guy who found stardom later (“why do they always get better when they leave?”). Neither do the man justice.
I mentioned this in another thread, but I was an A’s fan when he came to the A’s, and yeah, we loved him. In those pre-Internet days, I did not know much about him before he came to Oakland, but he showed up and he was great. In those pre-sabrmetric days, I don’t think we realized just how good he was — for four years he put up 5 WAR per year, more than Mark McGwire — but we saw him as a good player on a great team.
When I came here, I was happy to hear him on broadcasts. I knew that what he was saying wasn’t always really insightful, but I liked the guy.
I guess that A’s fans don’t recognize the conflict you refer to above. He was just a good guy and a good player in one of the golden ages of A’s baseball.
And you didn’t even mention Dennis Eckersley. Those A’s teams were really loaded.
Nice column and thanks for linking to Arneson’s and McGrath’s articles, which were fantastic.
Thanks, MKT – yeah, at one point this whole post was going to be a link to both of those articles and nothing else.
Although I have been an entrenched baseball fan for close to 60 years, I have always resented the unwritten traditional rules that stymied a player’s behavior to show emotion when hitting a homerun or striking out a batter. If a player shows any degree of joy or satisfaction it is labeled as showing up the other team or not being serious about the game. Unlike spiking the ball after a touchdown in football or doing a little dance after nailing a 3 pointer in basketball, baseball players round the bases in stoic display of indifference.
Dave Henderson changed all that for me. He couldn’t help smiling. Even when he ran out to take his position in the outfield he was smiling. When he was standing on first base he was smiling and many times had the first baseman smiling too.
It is too bad we don’t realize baseball is just a game, and games are to be enjoyed. Having a smile on your face doesn’t diminish the effort a player puts forth to become successful. Dave Henderson knew that but few players today do.
Years ago I was walking past a rib joint on my way to a Mariners game. A celebratory reveling was coming up the stairs from the restaurant and who comes tap dancing out on to the street with a couple happy friends in tow….yep, Hendu.
I guess ’cause I was a kid when he played, Hendu’s smile never bothered me. He’s always been a favorite of mine, from my teen years until now. He was just a genuine guy, and I was certainly never conflicted to see him look happy about playing a game for a living.
In the past few seasons, it was fun to see him still around the stadium. I don’t go to many games per year anymore, but I ran into him more than a couple times just wandering the 2nd level food venues, just being an “ambassador” for the team and all around good guy, talking to complete strangers like they were old friends.
Call me old-fashioned but I have a hard time being critical of guys like Hendu, Jay Buhner, Junior (his last year) and Dan Wilson… Guys who have contributed so much time to my love of baseball from the other side of the radio/tv signal.
Kind of how I feel about grandparents when they start to get to that “nursing home” stage… Sure they say crazy stuff, and they probably shouldn’t be driving anymore, and you have to listen to the SAME stories over and over again, but they’ve earned it. And they were so good to me when I was younger, and THEY were younger. Who am I to say differently?
Hendu was ALWAYS one of my favorites. And always will be.
Three of my favorite Mariners ever were Hendu, Cammie and Guti, all centerfielders with good strike zone judgment, surprising power and the ability to be overshadowed by their teammates when they were contributing easily as much as the better-known players were.
With respect to Hendu as an announcer, I’m reminded of what someone (possibly Michael Schur or Bill James) said of Joe Morgan, that he didn’t announce the way he played. Hendu was the same, but he brought the same joy and enthusiasm. Unlike Ron Fairly, who announced the same way as Hendu, I gave him a lot of slack for who he was and how he reacted with the fans.
Dave Henderson was the best dressed Seattle Mariner and hopefully Kevin Martinez and co. will bring back the trident for a game or for forever. I had read when Dave Stewart took over as D-Backs GM, Hendu took over his agency business. I know he seemed to not be a fan of analytics and bashed UZR among other things while on the air. Jack Perconte wrote a nice piece about Hendu on his site. He will be missed. Another piece of Mariners history gone.
I don’t watch hardly any NASCAR. I did hear of a story about Richard Petty. Basically as he started his career his father told him that it never hurts to be nice to people.
And in the end, the love you take
Is equal to the love you make.
John Lennon/Paul McCartney (The End)