For players like Rickey Henderson, the numbers don’t do justice to the man

I decided if I wrote about Rickey Henderson I would not use a statistic. We are assaulted with stats and metrics now, and while baseball is our most numbers-oriented sport, I do sense the analytics revolution has chilled too many fans and reporters from just talking about how certain players made you feel while watching them.

It is as if you have to apologize for what is perceived as the illogic of emotion. But when I heard Henderson had died, I did not think about a single number. I thought about how he made me feel when I was in the ballpark.

Please forgive a slight detour down memory lane that I hope illuminates this issue, at least somewhat:

In my early professional career, while working at United Press International, the sports department began doing a daily Baseball Almanac that included items such as game of the day, stat of the day, etc. It also noted which players were born or died on that day. Often it would read along the lines of: John Doe, who led the National League in hits in 1913, died today in 1961.