Rickey Henderson, the Hall of Famer who stole more bases and touched home plate more than any other player in Major League Baseball history, has passed away days before his 66th birthday. He leaves behind his wife and high-school sweetheart, Pamela, and three daughters.

Henderson’s loss is devastating for the baseball world, but especially for A’s fans. Already this year, they were forced to say goodbye to their baseball team, as ownership uprooting the club from the Oakland Coliseum. They’ll be in Sacramento’s Triple-A ballpark while their new venue is constructed in Las Vegas. Now they’ve lost the man who was Oakland through and through, too.

“Ricky’s presence was felt everywhere in our clubhouse, and it’s hard to imagine the A’s without him around,” said A’s manager Mark Kotsay in a statement on Saturday evening.

Rickey Nelson Henley Henderson was born in Chicago on Christmas Day 1958. When he was seven, his family moved from Arkansas to Oakland. A standout three-sport athlete at Oakland Technical High School, the teenager who would become the “Man of Steal” turned down over a dozen college scholarships. He forsook his dream of playing for the Oakland Raiders because his mother, Bobbie, thought he could have a longer, healthier career playing baseball.

She was right. Henderson’s career lasted nearly a quarter of a century, and spanned four decades and two millennium, from his debut on June 24, 1979, to his 3,081st and final game on Sept. 19, 2003. He had 10 All-Star selections (all within his first 13 seasons), and won three Silver Slugger Awards, the 1981 Gold Glove for left-field, 1990 AL MVP, ALCS MVP, and World Series championships with the ’89 A’s and ’93 Blue Jays, respectively. He’s MLB’s all-time leader in stolen bases (1,406) and runs (2,295).

“Somebody asked me did I think Rickey Henderson was a Hall of Famer,” wrote baseball statistician Bill James in ‘The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract.’ “I told them, ‘If you could split him in two, you’d have two Hall of Famers.’”

The A’s drafted the 5-foot-10 Henderson in the fourth-round of the ’76 draft, and he spent his first six big-league seasons with his hometown team. He went on to play for eight other ball clubs all over the country before calling it a career, including the ’02 Red Sox, but kept coming home. He returned to Oakland three times and played a total of 14 years in green and gold. He spent no more than five seasons in any other uniform.

Widely regarded as the best leadoff hitter baseball has ever had, Henderson’s 81 runs scored via leadoff homer are yet another record. He famously batted in a crouching stance and shrunk the strike zone so significantly that Pulitzer Prize-winning sportswriter Jim Murray once described it as being “smaller than Hitler’s heart.”

Being a righty hitter who threw left-handed was one of many ways Henderson was unique. Of the 23,370 players in MLB history, Stathead lists 191 righty-hitting, lefty-throwing position players since the modern era began in 1901. Henderson was the most prolific by far; he played 3,081 games, hit 297 homers, and stole more bases than everyone. No other player on that list even reached 2,000 games, 155 home runs, or 363 steals.

On the base paths, Henderson was truly unlike anything baseball has ever seen or will ever see again. The A’s didn’t call him up until nearly halfway through the ’79 season, and he still led the roster with 33 stolen bases. As a full-timer the following season, he led the majors with 100 steals, the the beginning of a 12-year span in which he led the AL or all of MLB in steals 11 times (a hamstring injury in ’87 broke what would’ve been a perfect streak). Save for the final two years of his career, he stole a minimum of 22 bases each season, including three seasons in which he played no more than 95 games. He led the majors in steals one last time in 1998, becoming the oldest player to ever do so. When his major league days were over, Henderson kept running, stealing 53 bases in independent ball before retiring for good.

“If you walk him, it’s like giving up a triple,” Rangers pitcher Charlie Hough told Associated Press writer Steve Wilson for an Aug. 8, 1982 article titled, “Stop, Thief! Rickey Henderson Is Stealing Everything He Can Get His Hands And Feet On.”

On May 1, 1991, Henderson slid into third for the record-breaking 939th steal. As the crowd at the Oakland Coliseum roared, he pulled the base out of the ground, raised it triumphantly. He embraced his mother and the previous record-holder, Lou Brock, who’d joined him on the field.

Henderson’s 1,406 stolen bases are likely to remain the all-time record, and by a vast margin; he stole 49.8-percent more bases than Brock, and only two active players have even surpassed the 300-mark (Starling Marte and Jose Altuve). Brock also held the modern single-season record (118 steals in 1974), before the ’82 MLB season, when Henderson swiped a career-high, record-breaking 138 bags.

“I’m not afraid to get picked off,” Henderson told Wilson. “I know and (the pitcher) knows I’ll be back and I might get four or five steals in a row before they get me again.”

Henderson was eccentric and his self-confidence often veered into cocky territory, but three things are indisputable: he loved baseball, he lived to entertain, and he made teams better wherever he went. In Game 6 of the ’93 World Series, he led off the bottom of the ninth with a walk; 11 minutes later, the Blue Jays were champions. The ’96 Padres won their first division title in 12 years, and the ’99 Mets, who hadn’t been in the playoffs since ’88, went from the Wild Card all the way to Game 6 of the NLCS. The following season, he helped the Mariners reach the ALCS for the second time in franchise history.

“I’ll be able to say I played with Rickey Henderson, and I imagine it will be like saying I played with Babe Ruth,” Hall of Fame closer Trevor Hoffman told Sports Illustrated in 2003.

Henderson was baseball’s greatest showman, a charismatic thrill ride in human form. Had he played in the social media era, his quotes, often referring to himself in the third-person, would’ve gone viral on social media with the same frequency at which he stole bases.

“Nothing’s impossible for Rickey,” Henderson once said. “You don’t have enough fingers and toes to count out Rickey.”

“I’m not a baseball player; I’m a baseball weapon,” was another Henderson gem.

And last, but never least, “Don’t worry Rickey, you’re still the best.”