Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Near the end of this satisfying biographer, Bryant points out, “As of July 2021, 22,467 players had appeared in a Major League Baseball game, and no position player who began his career in the 20th century had played more seasons than the legendary Rickey Henderson.”Ī readable, appropriately fast-moving portrait of a baseball giant.Ī former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.ĭiscovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. Small wonder that Henderson, who shares many points in common with all-time greats such as Willie Mays, Satchel Paige, and Al Kaline, went into the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown as soon as he was eligible. One insider reckons that if Henderson were playing today, he could garner a $500 million contract, while a high school math teacher developed a formula that put Henderson ahead of Ty Cobb as a “small ball player” and just behind Cobb as an all-around player.

315 and would be named the National League Comeback Player of the Year.” Though Henderson was never the easiest player to get along with, he certainly racked up the scores, particularly as a base stealer.

Indeed, as Bryant notes, Henderson played well into his fifth decade, and “as a 40-year-old, he hit a robust. Though he received scholarship offers to play college football, Henderson chose baseball on the sensible grounds that baseball players had greater longevity. made you miss him and Rickey would never pass up a chance to flatten you.” Henderson grew up in a highly segregated Oakland, where the beneficiaries of the funneling of athletic talent were local high schools. and Rickey played the same position,” writes Bryant, “even though O.J. Born in Chicago on Christmas Day, 1958, Henderson was named after teen heartthrob Ricky Nelson, and he excelled early on in sports, particularly football, worshipping O.J. Sprawling biography of baseball great Rickey Henderson, whose accomplishments certainly merit a tome.ĮSPN senior writer Bryant, who cut his teeth covering the Oakland Athletics, is wholly at home with A’s legend Henderson-though, of course, Henderson played for many teams as well as Oakland.

Rickey by Howard Bryant