Rickey Henderson, one of my five favorite players of all time, will be heading to Cooperstown this summer, and I am incredibly disappointed that I won't be there to see it. I've seen about four or five induction ceremonies, and I can't recommend them highly enough. Just an absolutely wonderful day for a baseball fan (and free, by the way), and other than the absolute madhouse when we went up to see Ripken and Gwynn's induction, almost never any hassle.

They're going to talk a whole lot about Rickey's flashy stolen bases, but the man holds what might be the most important record in the book: most runs scored. Heck, what else is baseball about? Scoring runs. He has held baseball's all-time records for walks (since passed by Barry Bonds), stolen bases and runs scored, and that was Rickey's game for 25 major league seasons and a handful of minor league ones after that. I'm especially happy to have seen him play with the Newark Bears a few years ago, a true sign that nobody was going to tell him that he couldn't play any more.

From back in 2005, The New Yorker's profile of Rickey, from the week in 2001 Rickey broke the runs scored record, Allen St. John of Salon's appreciation, his debut box score, including his first stolen base, and The Onion.