“If you cut Rickey Henderson in half, you’d have two Hall of Famers.” – Bill James

Where have all the characters gone?

In today’s professional sports realm, the massive amounts of money involved have led to something of a homogenization in terms of the individual. With such huge amounts of cash on the line, it behooves pro athletes to operate on a level of strategic blandness; most players land in a place of platitudes and cliches, all intended to say as little as possible about the people themselves.

But it wasn’t always that way.

There was a time when pro sports were littered with colorful characters, iconic and iconoclastic players whose compelling performances on the field were counterpointed by eccentricities off it. In sports, legends are born not just of greatness in the box score, but of the stories that surround them.

And Rickey Henderson, no matter your definition, is a legend.

“Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original” (Mariner Books, $29.99) is a new biography of the legend by sportswriter Howard Bryant. It is a deep and definitive look at one of the greatest to ever play the game of baseball. Henderson is a first-ballot Hall of Famer, the all-time leader for stolen bases both in a season (130 in 1982) and in a career (1,406), as well as for most runs scored in a career (2,295). He is the only man in MLB history with more than 3,000 hits and more than 2,000 walks. The numbers he put up over his 25 years in the big leagues are staggering.

But the craziest part of all is that those numbers only tell part of the story.

He’s the winningest Division I men’s basketball coach in NCAA history. He’s won multiple national titles and been to even more Final Fours. He’s been in charge of USA Basketball and led the national team to gold medals more than once. He is an iconic figure, one of the titans of the game’s last half-century.

You know who he is … even if you might not know how to spell his name.

Ian O’Connor’s “Coach K: The Rise and Reign of Mike Krzyzewski” (Mariner Books, $28) purports to be the definitive biography of the man who is arguably the definitive figure in college basketball in the past 50 years. From his early days growing up in Chicago to his time as West Point – first as a player, then as a coach – to his ascension to the top job at Duke, where he turned a decent ACC team into one of the greatest college basketball programs ever.

O’Connor dives deep, digging through extant sources as well as conducting his own interviews with scores upon scores of people with close connections to Coach K. The result is a fascinating portrait of sporting greatness, a long look at a man who ascended to the heights of his profession. A man who, for all his flaws, would prove to be a beloved figure in the history of his sport.