Ricky Henderson Working with Former 'Cane Jemile Weeks
Nov. 2, 2009
by Mychael Urban / MLB.com
OAKLAND — Rickey Henderson, who was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame this summer but never officially retired, is finally getting to do something for which he’s publicly lobbied since his playing days in the big leagues came to an end.
He’s back on the field with the Oakland A’s.
Yet instead of tormenting pitchers and wreaking havoc on the bases — two hallmarks of a career that led Henderson to Cooperstown — he’s teaching Jemile Weeks to do the same type of things.
Henderson, who will turn 51 on Christmas Day, recently spent three days at Oakland’s Minor League complex at Papago Park in Phoenix working with Weeks, whom the A’s selected in the first round (12th overall) in the 2008 First-Year Player Draft.
“Rickey came down for our instructional league in early October to work with Jemile, and it was an outstanding event,” A’s director of player development Keith Lieppman told MLB.com this week.
Henderson, who is depicted on his Hall of Fame plaque wearing an A’s cap, is under contract with Oakland as an ambassador of sorts, but he made it clear on the day before joining baseball’s immortals that he planned to work with the club’s young players.
“Any way I can get back out there and share some of the things I can do, I’d like to do that as much as they want me to do,” Henderson told MLB.com. “I think I can be a good teacher of the game.”
Weeks, a switch-hitting second baseman out of University of Miami and the younger brother of Brewers second baseman Rickie Weeks, got a late start in 2009 after recovering from hip surgery, but batted .299 with a .386 on-base percentage over 50 games at Class A Stockton before moving up to Double-A Midland, where he hit .238 with a .303 OBP.
One of the faster players in the organization before the injury, Weeks stole nine bases in 10 attempts overall this season and has made 14 errors in 92 career games at second base for a .968 fielding percentage.
Oakland’s No. 1 goal for Weeks this offseason is for him to improve defensively. To that end, Minor League roving infielder instructor Juan Navarrete has been working with Weeks, who is playing for the Phoenix Desert Dogs in the prestigious Arizona Fall League.
“He’s played really good defense there,” said Lieppman, who is based in the Phoenix area. “Everything Juan has been doing with Jemile has been going really well.”
Also high on the organization’s list of priorities for Weeks, 22, is to become more of a prototypical leadoff man, and Henderson, considered the best leadoff man of all-time, is his new mentor in that regard.
“We don’t expect Jemile to be another Rickey; Jemile has some pop to him, but there’s only one Rickey in terms of the power he brought to the leadoff spot,” Lieppman said. “But we want Jemile to be the kind of baserunner that Rickey was — stealing bases, bunting more to take advantage of his speed, being aggressive, being disruptive [on the base paths]. That’s why we hooked them up.”
Weeks was 2-for-2 in stolen base attempts in the AFL through Thursday.
“It’s not something that’s going to happen overnight, but Jemile has the skill set to be an excellent leadoff man,” Lieppman said. “Rickey took him through a lot of different things, from how to read pitchers and time jumps to stealing third base, and even though Rickey didn’t do a lot of bunting, that was probably because he didn’t need to and wasn’t asked to; he did know how to do it well.
“It was just a great experience, and Jemile kind of ran with that.”
Mychael Urban is a national writer for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
