J.J. Guinn was a police officer and a part-time scout when he signed Rickey Henderson. Their bond, and Guinn’s connection with many other players, goes far beyond baseball.
At about 5:30 p.m. on the last day of June, two old friends met in front of the media gate on the west side of the Oakland Coliseum. It was the first time they’d seen each other in over a year, but they had endured longer stretches.
Their lives were never on parallel tracks. One was a generational ballplayer. The other a part-time baseball scout who spent his days patrolling the streets of Berkeley, Calif., as a police officer.
Rickey Henderson, the Hall of Famer widely regarded as the greatest leadoff hitter and base stealer in baseball history, wrapped his arms around J.J. Guinn in a sturdy hug. The two walked slowly up to Henderson’s suite on the second level of the ballpark. It had been 45 years since, at Guinn’s urging, the Oakland Athletics drafted Henderson in the fourth round of Major League Baseball’s draft.
The draft, an annual June event that was moved to July this year to coincide with the All-Star Game, begins on Sunday in Colorado. High school and college players, many of whom are familiar only to the scouts who scour the country for talent, will be selected by baseball’s 30 teams in the first step of a long and difficult journey to the majors.
On his draft day back in 1976, Henderson, who was just 17 at the time, sensed he would stay connected to Guinn.
“That moment wasn’t about the game,” Henderson said. “I was a single-parent kid. I didn’t have that father figure. J.J. was interested in you, in what you were doing, in teaching you. He looked after us.”
A Push in the Right Direction
At their latest reunion, Henderson noticed a faded piece of paper in the old scout’s hand. Guinn, 83, raised a report that dates to 1976, and began to read:
“Player: Henderson, Rickey Henly,” he said. “Outstanding athlete in three sports.”
Henderson sat back and listened, smiling as Guinn recited his strengths, and cackling as he recited his weaknesses. The words transported both men back to Bushrod Park in North Oakland, on a warm April afternoon, two months before that year’s draft.
Henderson was a stocky teenager with little interest in baseball. At the time, he had his sights set on playing football and becoming the next O.J. Simpson. Concerned about injury, Guinn and Henderson’s mother, Bobbie, had other plans.
When the decision was made for Henderson to pursue a career in baseball, the man who would one day hold major league records with 2,295 runs, and 1,406 stolen bases, went to his room and cried.
The decision went against the views of many of the people who had watched Henderson. Football coaches praised Henderson’s physique and lauded his speed. But in baseball, he found less reassurance. Some scouts were concerned with his arm, his crouched batting stance, and the fact that he batted right-handed but threw left-handed.
Those scouts focused on Henderson’s flaws. Guinn focused on his strengths: Henderson’s speed, athleticism and lateral range. Where others saw impediments, Guinn saw possibility.
Only two M.L.B. teams were present for an American Legion game at Bushrod Park on that day in 1976: the Athletics and the Los Angeles Dodgers. After Henderson struck out in his first two at-bats, the Dodgers scout stood up. “I’ve seen enough,” Guinn recalled him saying. “I have a plane to catch.”
Henderson homered in his next two at-bats and Guinn feverishly typed out a report to his scouting director. His advice: Sign Rickey Henderson “right away.”
Mr. Guinn
J.J. Guinn was born in 1937 in Jefferson, Texas, but spent his childhood in South Berkeley. He had positive interactions with the local police growing up, and after studying criminology at Santa Rosa Junior College, he was hired by the Berkeley Police Department in 1969 as a foot patrol officer in south and west Berkeley. The department had a program that was meant to strengthen the relationship between the community and the Police Department. As a Berkeley local, Guinn seemed like a perfect fit.
From Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., Guinn would walk some of Berkeley’s most crime-ridden streets looking to connect with the residents he was charged with protecting. Few of them had seen a Black police officer.
“Most people think these kids on the street are dumb, but they’re not,” Guinn said. “They know if they can trust you. I had to instill that trust. But because I was raised in Berkeley, if I didn’t know them, they knew my children, or I knew their parents. They knew I was for real.”
Moonlighting as a scout further elevated his standing in the community. He joined the A’s as a part-timer after a friend introduced him to John Claiborne, the team’s farm director in 1972. Owner Charlie Finley offered Guinn a salary of $500 a year, which he eventually raised to $1,000, after some haggling.
Guinn was with the organization from 1972 to 1991, and the most he ever made, annually, was $3,500. Of the 10 players he’d signed for Oakland, four made it to the big leagues. His approach to his full-time job and his part-time job were the same: look for the best in people, and don’t be afraid to give anyone a chance.
Known to most as Mr. Guinn, J.J. had been a player himself, reaching as high as Class AAA. The lessons he learned were passed on to his son, Brian, who played 10 seasons of minor league ball and held free clinics for aspiring ballplayers in San Pablo Park.
One of the ballplayers who attended those clinics was Marcus Semien, who would eventually play alongside J.J.’s grandson, B.J., at the University of California, Berkeley.
“We called him ‘Papa Guinn,’” Semien, who is an All-Star second baseman for the Toronto Blue Jays this season after several productive years for the Athletics, said of J.J. Guinn. “They helped kids get into baseball that maybe never would have. A lot of youth baseball is paying for this, paying for that. As a kid, we couldn’t afford it. Their support was huge for me.”
Guinn became renowned for finding players through unusual circumstances.
Shooty Babitt was taken by the A’s in the 25th round of the 1977 draft, at Guinn’s suggestion, and eventually made the majors. He said Guinn told him he’d been signed because of the way he took off after a fly ball on a windy day.
“He said it spoke to my character: I caught a ball a lot of guys would’ve quit on,” Babitt said.
Outfielder Claudell Washington wasn’t even playing high school baseball when Guinn found him, yet he was eventually named to two All-Star teams.
After retiring from the police department in 1991, Guinn spent time scouting with Atlanta before finally becoming a full-time special assistant scout with the Pittsburgh Pirates. He retired in 2002.
When he talks about his time as a scout, Guinn conveys a man fulfilled by his quiet impact.
In 1991, after Henderson broke Lou Brock’s career stolen base record, Guinn said he got a call from Sports Illustrated about a potential feature, titled “Cop Catches a Thief.” Guinn turned them down.
“They only wanted to mention Claudell and Rickey in the article,” Guinn said. “I told them they needed to name all the other players I had signed, because I live in a community where these kids know who you are. And if you leave them out, they think you’re a front-runner.”
The Job Is Never Done
Guinn said he never tells people he signed Henderson, because “the only one who needs to know that is Rickey.” Throughout their relationship, the scout made a conscious effort not to come across as a sycophant. Henderson might have been a star, but deep down, he was a kid from North Oakland. A kid who could tell if Guinn was for real or not.
So Guinn stayed loosely in touch. He would go to A’s games to see his prized signee, and sometimes Henderson wouldn’t even know he was there. But in times of need, Guinn made his presence known.
In 1976, Henderson found himself in Boise, Idaho, for his first minor league season, which was his first extended time away from home. He missed his mother and still felt football was his best sport. He fell into a defensive rut, committing 12 errors in 46 games. He wanted to quit.
Guinn gave him a call.
“I think sometimes we believe we don’t have a chance,” Henderson said. “But it just takes one person that really is backing you. I decided, I’m gonna do it, not only for me, but I’m gonna do it for him. Because he believed in me. I’m gonna play harder.”
Henderson kept his promise, all the way to a career where he compiled 3,055 hits, 2,190 walks, 297 home runs and 1,115 R.B.I.
Guinn never stopped watching.
In the weeks leading up to Henderson’s Hall of Fame induction in 2009, Guinn heard media personalities on television joking that they were excited to hear Henderson’s speech, because they expected him to speak in the third person, as Henderson had done on occasion during his playing days. Guinn wasn’t about to let them ridicule his pupil, so he called up a longtime friend at Laney College who taught speech classes, and suggested that Henderson enroll.
It was a learning process, but Henderson emerged more confident as a public speaker, and felt the work paid off on induction day. After thanking his immediate family and friends, halfway through his speech, Henderson thanked Guinn.
At their reunion last month, the two men stayed in Henderson’s suite for about five innings, but didn’t pay much attention to the game. They had other things to catch up on: life, family, the past, the future. They vowed not to wait another year before reuniting.
As they were walking out, Guinn turned to Henderson.
“You made me feel higher than God,” he said of the night that had just ended. “I guess I didn’t know you cared that much about me.”
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