TERRY MOSHER
DAVE HENDERSON
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.
Dave “Hendu” Henderson fits in the good category. To me, he was the “everyman” There wasn’t a situation Hendu felt uncomfortable in, there wasn’t a person who he couldn’t 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.
This isn’t true – it only seems true – but the good people always seem to die young. The Kennedy brothers – JFK and Robert ‑ 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.
Now, all those people I have mentioned may have had things that may not have made them perfect – drugs, for example – but they were exceptional people in their professions that flamed out, for whatever reason, way before most of us – certainly me – wanted them to.
I, and many others, didn’t 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.
You know his baseball career, so I won’t go into much detail here about it. He was the Seattle Mariners’ first-ever draft pick (26th 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 – Boston, Oakland, San Francisco and Kansas City – and played in the 1991 All-Star Game.
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 “Rick’s Toys For Kids.” That charity gives away Christmas gifts for kids each holiday season.
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’s official scorer for Mariner games.
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.
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’s house, which Henderson told me included an elevator.
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’s unfortunate situation became Henderson’s fortunate situation.
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.
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.
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.
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 ‑ hands down.
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.
Good job Hendu. Hopefully, we will meet again, somewhere, sometime.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.
