{"id":2086,"date":"2015-12-29T23:02:07","date_gmt":"2015-12-29T23:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=2086"},"modified":"2015-12-29T23:06:27","modified_gmt":"2015-12-29T23:06:27","slug":"everyman-dave-henderson-leaves-us-way-too-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=2086","title":{"rendered":"“Everyman” Dave Henderson leaves us way too soon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Terry<\/a><\/p>\n

TERRY MOSHER<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Dave<\/a><\/p>\n

DAVE HENDERSON<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When you are around professional athletes as I was for 30 years, you get the same cross section of personalities as you would anywhere. There are the good, the bad and all those in between.<\/p>\n

Dave \u201cHendu\u201d Henderson fits in the good category. To me, he was the \u201ceveryman\u201d There wasn\u2019t a situation Hendu felt uncomfortable in, there wasn\u2019t a person who he couldn\u2019t reach out to. It could be a beggar on the streets or a top CEO of a huge corporation, Hendu could touch them all with humility and with a big smile.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t true \u2013 it only seems true \u2013 but the good people always seem to die young. The Kennedy brothers \u2013 JFK and Robert \u00a0\u2011 Martin Luther King, James Dean, Jean Harlow, Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Holly, Billie Holiday, Jim Morrison, Otis Redding, Pat Tillman, Hank Williams, Amy Winehouse, and many, many others.<\/p>\n

Now, all those people I have mentioned may have had things that may not have made them perfect \u2013 drugs, for example \u2013 but they were exceptional people in their professions that flamed out, for whatever reason, way before most of us \u2013 certainly me \u2013 wanted them to.<\/p>\n

I, and many others, didn\u2019t want Hendu to leave us so soon. Hendu was 57 when he died of a massive heart attack Sunday (Dec. 27). Tributes to him have poured in since his death just two months after having a kidney transplant.<\/p>\n

You know his baseball career, so I won\u2019t go into much detail here about it. He was the Seattle Mariners\u2019 first-ever draft pick (26th<\/sup> overall in the draft) in 1977 and reached the Major Leagues four years later with the club. He played for 14 seasons in the big leagues with four teams besides the Mariners \u2013 Boston, Oakland, San Francisco and Kansas City \u2013 and played in the 1991 All-Star Game.<\/p>\n

His later life included being a baseball analyst for the Mariners, sitting alongside the late Dave Niehaus in the broadcast booth. But he also was involved in charity events, one of which was personal to him. His son Chase was born with Angelman Syndrome, a genetic disorder, and Hendu helped raise a tremendous amount of money for research into the disorder. He also helped Mariner broadcaster Rick Rizzs, a close friend, with \u201cRick\u2019s Toys For Kids.\u201d That charity gives away Christmas gifts for kids each holiday season.<\/p>\n

Once in a while, Henderson would sit with me in the media lunch room at Safeco field. This was the period in which I was Major League\u2019s official scorer for Mariner games.<\/p>\n

In one such session, Hendu got to talking about his neighbors, most of who had hit it rich with the Dot.Com explosion in the late 1980s, but had been financially crushed by the following Dot.Com implosion that occurred in the early 1990s.<\/p>\n

Henderson said most of those affected were too embarrassed to publically acknowledge their financial disasters, but he knew they had their homes up for sale. One of them had to sell his Porsche and Henderson arranged to buy it. Then he followed up that by buying the unfortunate guy\u2019s house, which Henderson told me included an elevator.<\/p>\n

Henderson had a deep understanding of finances and his purchase was done because he was buying at a low price and was going to eventually sell it at a much higher price. One man\u2019s unfortunate situation became Henderson\u2019s fortunate situation.<\/p>\n

I asked Hendu how he managed to buy such expensive property and he told me he did it with cash. He said he did not invest his money. He put it all in the bank. How much did he have in the bank, I asked. Seven million came the reply.<\/p>\n

Then there was the time that Henderson was scheduled to appear at a Bremerton Athletic Roundtable meeting. He was a bit late because he made some stops, one of them I believe was at Detlef Schrempf Golf Tournament at McCormick Woods.<\/p>\n

Hendu liked to have a drink here and there, and after the meeting he and few others left to go to Chips Casino, which was then still operating in east Bremerton.<\/p>\n

Henderson arrived at the meeting with a smile and left it with a smile. His ability to greet and meet anybody of any class of people was the best I have seen from any famous personality \u2011 hands down.<\/p>\n

So goes another person too soon. He will be missed on many levels, most of all by his family (wife and two sons), but also by those who have been touched by his humility and by his ability to make anyone feel comfortable around him.<\/p>\n

Good job Hendu. Hopefully, we will meet again, somewhere, sometime.<\/p>\n

Be well pal.<\/p>\n

Be careful out there.<\/p>\n

Have a great day.<\/p>\n

You are loved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TERRY MOSHER   DAVE HENDERSON   When you are around professional athletes as I was for 30 years, you get…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2089,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,3,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-column","category-mosher","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2086"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2090,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2086\/revisions\/2090"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}