OAKLAND -– One thing was amiss Saturday afternoon on the celebration of life ceremony for A’s legend Rickey Henderson on the Oakland Area. There was a notable absence amid the outpouring of affection, laughs and tears from Rickey’s household, associates, fellow ballplayers and followers.
Rickey’s No. 1 fan wasn’t there.
Erin States Hoy, as soon as a 5-year-old lady from Tracy who cast a touching, decades-long friendship with one among baseball’s all-time greats that drew nationwide consideration, is now a 40-year-old mother in a San Diego suburb with a husband and 4 children, ages 7 to 17, and all of the obligations that include that.
So it was with a way of vacancy that Hoy spent Saturday darting right here and there in Escondido, 500 miles from the place her coronary heart was.
“I thought a lot about it … but I couldn’t make it to Oakland,” Hoy stated whereas combating again tears throughout a telephone dialog. “My kids are really busy these days. I would have loved to come if I could, he was such an impactful person for me during my childhood … but it was almost as if I shouldn’t come.”
With that, she started crying once more earlier than composing herself sufficient for a brief snort to say, “I’ve been crying over Rickey since I was 9 years old so this isn’t anything new.”
Hoy would have felt at dwelling among the many roughly 5,000 Rickey followers, not all of whom may cover their feelings whereas saying a last goodbye to the Oakland-raised Corridor of Famer, who died on Dec. 20 of issues from pneumonia, 5 days shy of his 66th birthday.
A fan cries as she listens to tales about Rickey Henderson throughout his celebration of life on the Oakland Area in Oakland, Calif., on Saturday, Feb. 1, 2025. Henderson, the best Oakland A’s participant of all time, died at age 65. He would have been 66 on Christmas Day. (Ray Chavez/Bay Space Information Group)
Jay Frazier and his spouse Lauren have been decked out in A’s gear after battling the weather driving from Sacramento to honor the person whose demise drove them to tears.
“He was one of those super heroes,” stated Jay Frazier. “He was an icon. He made it cool to be from Oakland.”
Mike Moffitt of Fremont is like quite a lot of of us who have been on the Area — a lifelong A’s fan who adored Rickey. “I shed a lot of tears when he died,” admitted Moffitt, who introduced his household to the occasion.
Like several good A’s fan, Moffitt instilled a love of Rickey into his ballplaying sons and daughter, every of whom put on numbers 35 and 24 – the numbers Rickey wore in Oakland.
“My boys, they pop their collars like Rickey, they steal bases like he did … everything about the way my kids play is (to honor) this man,” Moffitt stated.
Henderson left this world six weeks in the past with extra runs scored (2,295), stolen bases (1,406), unintentional walks (2,129) and leadoff dwelling runs (81) than any man within the 150-year historical past of Main League Baseball.
It took Rickey 25 years within the majors to seize these data. It took Rickey about 25 minutes to seize the guts of 5-year-old Erin States on the Coliseum in 1989. She nonetheless remembers strolling right down to her household’s seats in Part 130, Row 7 for her first A’s sport that day and being immediately mesmerized by Rickey – for his hitting, operating and, largely, his playful interactions with the followers within the left-field nook.
“I was so blown away by this baseball player,” she recalled, that with the assistance of her mother she made an indication that she delivered to the following sport that learn: “Hi Rickey” with a giant pink coronary heart subsequent to it.
Erin States Hoy, previously of Tracy, Calif., holds an indication she made for Rickey Henderson when she was a toddler as she’s photographed subsequent to his plaque on the Nationwide Baseball Corridor of Fame on Monday, July 27, 2009, in Cooperstown, N.Y. Hoy is named Henderson’s primary fan. Henderson was inducted into the Nationwide Baseball Corridor of Fame on Sunday. (Jane Tyska/Workers)
“Every single inning I’d hold up my sign and he’d wave to me,” she stated. “Then in the ninth inning he came over and gave me a baseball. And I had a hero.”
She’d go on to make different indicators and maintain them up for her hero to see over the following 5 years. Rickey, who made a degree of in search of out the younger lady at most each sport for a chat or a wave, acquired one thing out of their friendship as properly. In his 1992 autobiography, “Off Base: Confessions of a Thief,” Rickey known as Erin his “No. 1 fan.”
“I know Toronto is a long way away from here and my mom and dad won’t let me move there,” she wrote. “I asked my mom to take down all my Rickey posters and pictures in my room. They make my heart hurt too much to look at. My mom said that the hurt won’t be so bad later and I’ll be able to stop crying when I hear his name. If someone out there knows Rickey would you please tell him that the girl with the signs in the left field corner of the Oakland Coliseum misses him very much and would you tell him I said goodbye? I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”
Erin’s letter was faxed to Henderson, who cried whereas studying it. He then stated, “The fans and press might be on me, but I knew I could always count on that little girl.”
When he visited the Coliseum with the Blue Jays later that season, Rickey met Erin earlier than the sport and hugged her whereas she broke down in tears. He assured Erin that she’d all the time be his No. 1 fan. Two hours later, he hit a house run down the left discipline line, not removed from the place Erin and her household have been seated.
Erin and her household moved to the San Diego space in 1999, when she was 15. However as destiny would have it, Rickey signed with the Padres two years later. When he set MLB’s all-time runs file in 2001, the Padres shocked Rickey by having Erin there to current him with a plaque honoring him.
Erin States Hoy, Rickey Henderson’s No. 1 fan, visited the Baseball Corridor of Fame together with her husband and 4 youngsters in 2018 to see the signal she made for Rickey in 1989 on show. (Courtesy of Erin States Hoy).
There can be one different significant connection between Erin and Rickey when he was inducted into Baseball’s Corridor of Fame in 2009. She and her husband Ben went to the ceremony with their oldest little one, Ryan, who was 2. Erin additionally introduced alongside the signal she made for Rickey when she was 5 – drawing a smile from the latest Corridor-of-Famer.
A Corridor of Fame government later approached Erin and requested if she would contemplate donating her signal in order that it may very well be displayed there in Cooperstown, N.Y. Erin and her household acquired to see her signal once more after they visited the Corridor and noticed it prominently displayed there in 2018.
“It was something that I look back on now, the whole story with Rickey, and wonder ‘Was that even real?’ ” she stated. “It was such an incredible story and I am so grateful that I got to be a part of it.”
Initially Revealed: February 1, 2025 at 6:00 PM PST
