When people in Oakland asked who their favorite guy was to watch as a kid, many of a certain age always said Rickey Henderson. It was almost more helpful to ask who her favorite player was after Rickey.

With Christmas just around the corner (of course), let’s take a look at some of the incredible stats put up by one of the greatest of all time.

Rickey was born in Chicago in 1958 and attended Oakland Tech High School, where he was selected by the A’s in the fourth round of the 1976 MLB Draft. Not only was he selected in the fourth round, but he was also the last pick of that round. Only six of the 24 (matching) players ranked ahead of him in that round even made it to the major leagues. He was also the first of this year’s A-picks to make it onto the show.

If you follow baseball at all, you probably know that Henderson is a Hall of Famer and that he holds the all-time steals record with 1,406 career total bases. He led the league in steals in 12 different seasons, including three 100+ years, and his age-39 season when he stole 66 bases with the A’s in 1998.

He also holds the record for most runs caught stealing with 335 and most runs scored in the history of the game with 2,295. After his only World Series title with the A’s in 1989, he won the MVP award only once, in 1990. He also won a trophy with the Toronto Blue Jays in 1993.

Over his career, he amassed an astounding 106.3 fWAR (111.1 bWAR), ranking him 17th all-time, just behind Mike Schmidt and just ahead of Frank Robinson. Of the players from the last three decades, only two are higher than Rickey, namely Barry Bonds (164.4) and Alex Rodríguez (113.6).

Over his 25-year career, Henderson has only had one negative fWAR season, and that wasn’t at age 44, just before he retired. As a 20-year-old, it was his first season in the major leagues. He only played below league average for three seasons. One of those was in the first year, 1979, and the other two came two decades later, in 2000 and 2003, when he was 41 and 44 years old.

Rickey was simply remarkable.

There are so many fun facts about his career, but one of the funniest revolves around his trade to and from the A’s. In 1984, Oakland decided to trade Henderson to the New York Yankees in exchange for a package that included Jay Howell, Stan Javier and Eric Plunk.

Plunk was also part of the package that brought Rickey back to Oakland in 1989.

Another amazing performance that I was actually present for occurred in 1993 when Rickey, widely considered the greatest leadoff man of all time, hit a home run in the bottom of the first inning in both games of a doubleheader against Cleveland. At the time, he was only the second player in history to ever achieve this.

Rickey is one of the greatest baseball players to ever wear the uniform, and he grew up and played where so many fans in Oakland fell in love with the game.