Bobby Valentine On The John Olerud-Rickey Henderson Rumor

I almost forgot about this, but at 9pm tonight the MLB Network is airing a new episode of Studio 42 with Bob Costas featuring an interview with Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine, during which Bobby V expounds on all things baseball. Of significance to Mets fans, he talks about losing Game 6 to the Braves in the 1999 NLCS as well as the oft-rumored, since-debunked, yet still utterly plausible story of erstwhile Met Rickey Henderson introducing himself to new Mariner teammate and fellow erstwhile Met John Olerud.

Henderson reportedly remarked to Olerud, who wore a batting helmet in the field as a precautionary measure after suffering a brain aneurysm in college, that he (Henderson) had a teammate in New York who also conspicuously donned a helmet on defense. We always knew that Olerud was in fact both players — Henderson's teammate in New York and now in Seattle — but we also eventually learned that Mets trainer Scott Lawrenson had invented the story out of whole cloth. Entirely believable though it may have been, the story turned out to be apocryphal.

Click past the jump for a snippet of Valentine discussing Olerud, Henderson, and Lawrenson.