After an extended hiatus, Jockish is happy to return to a semi-regular posting schedule, and who better to jump start this jalopy than our old friend and first-ballot Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson?

Yes it most definitely is a new morning for Rickey!  The sun’s a little brighter when it peeks through Rickey’s curtains and dances across Rickey’s 300-thread-count sheets, the pup tent that Little Rickey pitches is a little bigger and wider (that’s right, ladies), and the daily regiment of push-ups and sit-ups that made Rickey great are making Rickey a little greater.  Today is a day that Rickey is proud to be an American in the United States of America, the Rickey of countries!  And it’s not just because today is the day that we honor the life and service of a great man like Martin Luther King, Jr., and it’s not just because Rickey has only one more day of putting up with that banana-eared honky chump as President of Rickey’s United States.  (Speaking of the President, Rickey has to get on the phone and arrange some one-on-one with our new President of the United States.  Obama might be able to stop the Iraq War and the mortgage recession, but he can’t stop Rickey when he goes baseline.  And Rickey is ambidextrous with both hands, so watch out Mr. President!)  No, it’s a new morning because today is a day that Rickey doesn’t have to hear that grumpy ass buckethead Jim Rice moan about why he’s not in the Hall of Fame.  Not that it’ll keep Jim Rice from moaning about something, but Rickey is learning to appreciate the little things in life.

Now Rickey’s not going to start in about how or what the Hall of Fame does with their business, even if their business is stupid if they don’t all vote for Rickey.  Even aside from that miscarried travesty of justice (which Rickey will let slide off that other cheek like Jesus would want), Rickey is completely OK with any institution that treats Rickey with the respect that someone of Rickey’s lofty heights deserves.  Doesn’t matter if it’s some dusty old museum in the middle of Nowhere USA or Diner’s Club upgrading his Platinum VIP membership status to Premium Platinum VIP Plus.  (Rickey’s going to The Melting Pot tonight!)  And Rickey is happy that the Hall of Fame wanted Rickey as a member, even if they also want some lip-flapping mess like Jim Rice stinking up the joint with his broke-down slow ass.  I mean, not everyone can be as fast as Rickey, but DAMN Jim.  Folks in Boston spent more time watching you ground into 6-4-3s than they did watching your chump ass lose every year to the Yankees who just so happened to feature for a very short time a fantastic Hall of Fame superstar by the name of Rickey!  The internets (which Rickey likes a whole lot, for totally wholesome Rickey-like reasons) say that Jim Rice grounded into over 300 double plays!  Rickey grounded into only 172!  And Rickey played twenty-five seasons!  Rickey’s major league career was old enough to rent a car, Jim Rice!  And he still didn’t get doubled up as much as you!  That means you were SLOW, Jim Rice.  And if you are SLOW like Jim Rice, that means you sure better be good at the other non-SLOW parts of baseball in order to be Hall of Fame good, let alone Rickey good.  And Rickey can tell you, Jim Rice, that it’d take a lot more homers and RBIs and all that “slugger” stuff before you can even come close to getting within 10 miles of someone that knows someone that’s Rickey good.

But Rickey’s problem with Jim Rice isn’t about Jim Rice the ballplayer that couldn’t run a hot bath,  nevermind run in the field.  It’s about Jim Rice the Soul-Glo couch-staining self-promoter that spent the last 15 or so years whining like a spoiled little baby about how Jim Rice won’t get into the Hall of Fame, and about not winning a World Series because of the Yankees.  Now Rickey knows it’s pretty rich for Rickey to complain about Jim Rice talking about himself.  Rickey wasn’t born yesterday.  In fact, come June Rickey will be 50 years old, and he’ll still go 4-for-4 with 3 SBs against your CC Sabathias and your AJ Burnetts and all your other letters of the alphabet.  But there is a difference.  Rickey talks about Rickey always in the positive.  Jim Rice talks about Jim Rice always in the negative.  Whenever that Richard Roundtree knockoff starts making spit all over everything, it’s all about Jim Rice boo-hoo this and Jim Rice boo-hoo that.  No one like Jim Rice, no one respects Jim Rice, the press had it out for Jim Rice, no one understands how hard Jim Rice had it playing with better players than Jim Rice.  And that’s why no one liked Jim Rice.  In Jim Rice’s world, the glass is always half-empty.  In Rickey’s world, there is no glass, because Rickey drinks straight from the tap, and never has to worry about doing the dishes.  And that’s why you always see Rickey smiling, because doing dishes is chump work.

In conlclusion, Rickey would just like to say one thing to Jim Rice, and that is this: Jim Rice, shut your yap and be happy you tricked a bunch of chumps into voting you into the Hall of Fame.  And be happy you get to share the stage with a consummate professional like the greatest basestealer and run scorer that ever played across the field from a one-trick pop-fly slugger with bum wheels and a bum mouth that got into the Hall of Fame only because the voters wanted you to shut  your yap, Jim Rice.  You don’t hear Rickey talk about those know-nothing knuckleheads that don’t think about not voting for the greatest basestealer and run scorer ever.  So take a page out of Rickey’s book, Jim Rice, and then buy Rickey a new book for ripping out that page like the slow-footed rally-killing Hall of Fame chump you are.