Rickey Henderson on Rickey Henderson being Rickey Henderson

Rickey's back. As reported on ESPN/ CNNSi on Sunday, 45 year old OF Rickey Henderson signed a contract with the Newark Bears of the Atlantic League, the same team that donated a roster spot last season before a mid-season call-up with the offense-starved Dodgers. This is great news for comedian David Cross, who now gets a renewed lease on one of the funnier bits from his double-CD concert album Shut Up, You Fucking Baby!, an indictment of Rickey Henderson's solipsistic need to refer to himself in the third person at all times:

"Well, you know, Rickey Henderson needs to do what’s best for Rickey Henderson. If Rickey Henderson needs to tape his bat up higher to be the best Rickey Henderson that Rickey Henderson can be, then Rickey Henderson is going to tape his bat up higher in a way that Rickey Henderson can perceive as Rickey Henderson can to be the best Rickey Henderson that Rickey Henderson can or will or wants to be..."

This is great news, as well, for the Newark Bears, an indipendent minor league team that has tendered contracts to Jose Canseco and his profoundly untalented brother Ozzie and Jose "Lima Time" Lima. Indipendent leagues with unaffiliated teams like the Atlantic and the Northern (more on this in a second) don't receive funding of any sort from MLB or its affiliated teams; these leagues have served as audition stages for the majors in the past (Kerry Lightenberg being one such example), but traditionally exist as a home for past-prime former MLBers and/or prospects in loathesome contract disputes (J.D. Drew being the best example here). Without having the cache of next-generation MLB stars drawing fans, how better to cram butts in seats than sign a first-ballot Hall of Famer like Henderson or someone with some sort of magnetizing name recognition?

This is bad news for Rickey Henderson, because Rickey Henderson clearly wants to be the best Rickey Henderson that Rickey Henderson can be on a Major League team. And going by his stats since his last productive season with the Mets in 1999 (at the ripe age of 40), the number of takers in the pool is dwindling. The Mariners, the Red Sox, the Padres and the Dodgers won't get fooled again, and Henderson would be wasting a bench spot on every other team.

Rickey's speed has dwindled and his ability to make consistent contact is down. In 1050 abs since reaching age 40, his average is barely above the Mendoza line and his OBP dipped to .321 last season. I don't doubt that Rickey Henderson would look splendid in some MLB team's uniform in 2004 and might manage some spectacular plays, and it's not like Fred McGriff, Andres Galarraga or Julio Franco are getting any younger, but those guys still have the ability to hit around .300. It doesn't even look like Rickey could do a good job coming off the bench at this point. Those certainly aren't the kind of numbers you'd want from a pinch-hit specialist, and most NL teams would rather not carry someone to act exclusively as a pinch-runner.

One interesting thing to note about Rickey Henderson that Rickey Henderson would like you to know about Rickey Henderson, is that he's the first baseball player to legitimately play in four different decades, since his career began in 1979 and has continued well into the 2000s. Minnie Minoso is the only other guy who can lay claim to such a glorious thing, as he played games in five different decades, even if his career really only spanned three and fruitcake White Sox owner Bill Veeck had to pull him out of mothballs in 1976 (at age 53!) and 1980 (at age 57!) to do so. But if someone like Mike Veeck -- who shares his daddy's talent for shameless promotion -- gets his hands on a Major League team in, say, 2010 -- Rickey might get a chance to do the same.

But it's mainly bad news for Rickey Henderson because the quest for one more summer catch is delaying his sure-fire induction into the Hall of Fame. Which is the only place we want to see him right now. Sign up for the AARP card and hang up the spikes, old man -- I know I'm bracing myself for what could be the greatest induction speech ever.