COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. -- Sometimes the obvious nickname is the right one.

Jim Rice had one of those for Rickey Henderson.

"I called Rickey 'Speedy,' " Rice said of baseball's greatest leadoff man. "I mean, he can just go from first to third, steal second base, steal third, [do] a lot of things. ... I knew that if a [ball] was hit to me, I knew I had to bust my butt to get to the right place."

Rice didn't really have a great nickname of his own -- nor a truly unusual niche within baseball. He was simply one of the game's greatest run-producers in his era, an RBI machine who wanted to hit with the game on the line.

Henderson and Rice, who will be joined by the family of the late second baseman Joe Gordon at the Hall of Fame induction today, never played together. But they helped shape the landscape of the game, using their skills to help the American League overcome its inferiority complex.

When Rice arrived with the Boston Red Sox in 1974, the National League was in the midst of its amazing All-Star Game run, winning 19 of 20 times from 1963-82. Henderson came along later, beginning his big-league career with the '79 Oakland Athletics.

They would play 35 of their 41 combined seasons in the AL, going to 18 All-Star Games, including five in which they played alongside each other. They were in their primes in the mid- and late-80s, bridge years as the AL began to assert itself, building for the dominating run to come.

Rice was a rookie when Boston won a pennant in 1975, and only 25 years old when he won the AL Most Valuable Player Award in '78. But it was later, when he was a senior statesman on a team built around Wade Boggs and Roger Clemens, that the Red Sox became a power. They battled with Oakland's Bash Brothers teams, who got their energy as much from their leadoff man, Henderson, as Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco.

It was a great era for baseball, one that fit Rice much better than the current one.

"I'm glad I played in my time," said Rice, 56, only the third player ever to be elected to the Hall on the last of his 15 years on the ballot. "I think the ballclubs were stronger. I think you have a lot of ballclubs that are not as strong as the guys that I played against."

Henderson, the all-time leader with 1,406 stolen bases, was all about white shoes, snatch catches and head-first slides.

Henderson had power. He hit 297 career home runs. But he never lost sight of the understanding that his job was to get on base and create havoc.

He stole a record 130 bases in 1982; no one has stolen more than 78 in a season since 1988.

He sounds surprised by his own total.

"At the time, I probably didn't recognize how many bases it was, what it stands for over a long period of time," Henderson said. "I think I was having fun just stealing bases."