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Guinn watched Henderson for 20 games, 140 innings in all, yet still didn’t write up all that impressive scouting report. “ ‘If he’d have stayed,’ Jim Guinn recalled (referring to Brenzel), ‘Rickey would have been a Dodger.’” Henderson homersin his next two at-bats, the second one longer than the first. Guinn and the Oakland A’s got the inside track on signing Rickey Henderson.” Guinn would remember that, as Brenzel stood up, he heard the scout mutter something to the effect of ‘I’ve seen enough’ and ‘got a plane to catch.’ Then he left. He was a performance scout, and Rickey hadn’t performed. “As Rickey walked back to the dugout, Brenzel was done. Henderson strikes out his first two times up. Guinn would recall that Brenzel’s countenance said it all: Important guy.

“He showed up, sat right down and waited for Rickey to show him what he had,” Bryant writes. This time, the franchise’s scouting director, Bill Brenzel, had come to watch Oakland Tech against Skyland (a high school game, not an American Legion contest?)īrenzel was an Oakland guy, himself a player who grew up in the area 50 years earlier. The Dodgers had two full-time scouts in the area – Dick Hager and Dick Hanlan - who had been watching Stewart, an up-and-coming catcher (before he would be drafted by them and converted into a pitcher). I just love posing this question to Oakland Technical High School, where the Pointer Sisters and Rickey would lose out to Clint Eastwood… - Full Dissident June 1, 2022 Now it was Henderson, Gary Pettis, Claudell Washington, Dave Stewart, Von Joshua, Bip Roberts, Ruppert Jones, Glenn Burke … all-around athletes who might be lured to baseball for the right price and nurturing. Rickey’s generation was young, and they were imbued with the spirit of Oakland.”

As Bryant adds, “Oakland kids were defiant, wholly independent, creative outsiders with an irreverent style. Yet this was an area that had not-too-far-back produced players like Curt Flood, Joe Morgan, Frank Robinson and Vada Pinson. … So they were doubtful that 17-year-old Rickey would ever make it to the big leagues. Rarely did they see what a player was or what he could be. Doubt was baked into their DNA – scouts never missed a chance to emphasize what a player couldn’t do. “The scouts who watched Rickey had no doubt they were watching a gifted athlete, but they were unconvinced about him as a baseball player. On page 34 of Howard Bryant’s book, now it can be retold with a few more pieces of info: