Ralph Kiner was the perennial league leader in home runs and dates with Hollywood starlets in the Fifties when he observed that sluggers drive Cadillacs and singles hitters travel by more pedestrian means. It is an enduring, if subsequently adjusted truth; even players with modest slugging percentages drive Caddy's these days, but they take a back seat to sluggers who drive flashier wheels.

Rickey Henderson, born in the back seat of a '57 Chevy, was the exception. The man who had the best wheels in big league history could have driven any car he chose. It mattered little that he never hit 30 home runs in a season and that his career home run total was a mere 297. He made his mark -- and his millions -- and drove a Mercedes because he was an extraordinary leadoff man, the best by any standard.

And now it is a foregone conclusion that his stature as a leadoff man will add three letters to his permanent baseball ID -- HOF.

Henderson won't be the first leadoff hitter in the Hall of Fame. Lou Brock, Richie Ashburn, Paul Molitor and Lou Aparacio, among others, have preceded him.

Now, this is where it's supposed to say, "And he won't be the last."

He might not be. But the names of the leadoff men most likely to follow Henderson into the Hall remain concealed in a desk drawer of a Cooperstown clairvoyant. No leadoff man on the immediate HOF horizon is a compelling candidate, and only Craig Biggio appears to have achieved "probable" status.

At this point, when the players who become eligible for the annual ballot are from the powerball era, there are relatively few legitimate candidates who regularly led off, none with credentials comparable to Henderson's.

He won't be a unanimous choice -- no one has been -- but he has been a Hall of Fame certainty since well before he played his final game and scored his final run Sept. 19, 2003, as a member of the Dodgers.

Tim Raines, the National League's response to Henderson, was on the ballot for the first time last year and was checked on 25.3 percent of the ballots despite a seemingly compelling resume. A percentage three times higher is necessary for election.

None of the other 22 players on the 2009 ballot was a regular leadoff man; Ron Gant is closest and he had merely 970 at bats in the first spot in the batting order. Even Biggio, who won't be eligible for the ballot for four years, accumulated 43 percent of his big league at-bats in batting order positions other than leadoff. Among current leadoff batters, only Ichiro Suzuki, the Mariners' wunderkind, appears to be working on an HOF resumé. Indeed, his in some ways rivals the one that is certain to win Henderson election Monday when the Baseball Writers' Association of America reveals the results of balloting conducted last month.

Ichiro has been routinely brilliant and productive, and all but 68 of his 5,460 at-bats in the big leagues have come as a leadoff hitter.

Henderson, the world leader in bases on balls until Barry Bonds distorted the game, never amassed more than 179 hits in a season. Ichiro has exceeded 200 in each of his first eight seasons since moving from Japan's Pacific League to the American League West. Henderson has scored the most runs in big league history, 2,295. But not even he ever scored 100 runs in eight successive seasons as Ichiro has done.

And Henderson, even in his one Gold Glove season, never was the defensive equal of what Ichiro has been in his eight seasons, each worthy of a Gold Glove.

Of course, Ichiro falls short of Henderson in so many career numbers and in every way imaginable as a base stealer. And though he reaches base regularly, his career on-base percentage, .377, ranks 26th among active players and is 24 points lower than the percentage Henderson produced in 25 seasons. So let's not draw too many parallels between the 2001 and 1990 American League MVP's just yet.

Henderson is the quintessential Hall of Famer; Ichiro, 36 come October, must play two more big league seasons before he can qualify for consideration by the HOF screening committee. And he is markedly closer to the 10-year minimum than most of the higher-profile primary leadoff hitters playing today -- Grady Sizemore, Jose Reyes, Alfonso Soriano and Curtis Granderson.

Hanley Ramirez would be a compelling candidate, but he seems destined to bat third before much longer.

Sizemore and Soriano have demonstrated uncommon power for leadoff men, hitting 103 and 270 home runs respectively in four and eight full seasons. Sizemore has averaged 116 runs and Soriano 99 runs. But neither has developed a reputation remotely comparable to what Henderson had developed by the time he had played five seasons -- and stolen 427 bases and drawn 434 walks. The running game was at its peak when Henderson played, and he was responsible for that. That enhanced his legacy and undoubtedly improved his HOF credentials.

Reyes lost time to injury in his first two seasons, and he hasn't been as consistent a force as Sizemore or Soriano. But leading the league in stolen bases three times, in triples three times and hits once -- in 2008 -- has put some bold face numbers in his resume. Someday, they may influence a Hall of Fame voter who might not have had day-to-day exposure to Reyes.

But he still needs at least seven more above-average seasons to put himself in the outskirts of Cooperstown. Granderson is a dynamic player, too. But, at almost 28, he has produced only two noteworthy seasons thus far. And Hall of Fame consideration demands far more than a few seasons in the sun. Moreover, Henderson's election may raise the bar even higher for leadoff men. His presence certainly won't make it any easier for those who bat first to follow his path.