I am not old enough to have seen Joe Morgan play the game of baseball in person. As a child of the 80s, I had barely checked-in to my time on this planet when Joe was wrapping his career back in the Bay, sharing lineups with a young Rickey Henderson to end his career in Oakland.
The Cincinnati Reds of my youth featured Barry Larkin’s emergence into a star, Eric Davis creating magic with every step he took. The four-game sweep of Rickey’s 1990 Oakland club was the clincher, the first chance I had to lay my own eyes on the success of the team I’d pinned to my young heart, one that featured ace Jose Rijo - who debuted in the big leagues at age 20 with Oakland the year after Joe retired - firing lasers past every A’s batter he could.