ARLINGTON, Texas — Fresh off his 18th birthday, Gunnar Henderson showed up to a new place and lived with someone not of his choosing.
It wasn’t college, although that’s what it likely felt like — an experience Henderson never got as the Orioles’ 2019 second-round draft pick out of high school. He showed up to the La Quinta Inn in Sarasota, Florida — his living quarters for his first stop in professional baseball — but didn’t know who his roommate was.
“I had no prior knowledge,” he said with a laugh. “I opened the door and was like, ‘Well, what’s up?’”
The person already standing in the hotel room was Adley Rutschman, the crown jewel of the 2019 draft class, a generational catcher, the future of the rebuilding Orioles — and Henderson’s first roommate.
In five years, Rutschman and Henderson went from rookie ball roommates to All-Star starters, forming one of baseball’s best young duos for an Orioles team that has rapidly became one of the majors’ best in large part because of them. It wasn’t a natural pairing — Rutschman a 21-year-old from the Pacific Northwest, Henderson barely a legal adult from Alabama — but the two hit it off.
They only roomed together for a couple of weeks because Rutschman was quickly promoted, but that brief time laid the foundation of a friendship that led them both to Tuesday night’s All-Star Game, representing Baltimore as two of the best players in the sport.
“Now you look back on all this so fondly because it’s our first core memory in pro ball,” Rutschman said.
It might not have actually been college, but Henderson and Rutschman slept in beds that were mere feet apart as if in a dorm room. Like any new living situation, it was perhaps a little awkward at first, but Henderson said it took only a couple days for them to click.
What was the turning point? The PlayStation, of course, with “Fortnite” — a popular video game at its peak in 2019 — the most common choice.
“Once we got the PlayStation going and had some stuff in common, we hit it off from there,” Henderson said. “It was a funny vibe, but we had a good time.”
Shortstop Darell Hernaiz, now with the Oakland Athletics, and catcher Chris Burgess, now playing independent ball, would come to the Henderson-Rutschman abode to link up and play “Fortnite.”
“Back then, Fortnite was in, so we always played that,” Henderson said. “At the field and stuff, he was doing his thing and I was doing mine, but we’d always have Darell [Hernaiz] and Chris Burgess come over. We’d hang out and play some ‘Fortnite.’”
Gunnar Henderson awed fans with his Scooby-Doo bat. He made them laugh with his impersonation of the cartoon dog on ESPN. But the mystery of how many home runs he'd hit ended in uneventful fashion.
On Henderson's "unreal" HR Derby experience: https://t.co/PLdnYMG55I
— Jacob Calvin Meyer (@jcalvinmeyer) July 16, 2024
When they got sick of playing video games, they’d watch something on television, but the hotel room TV barely had any channels, Henderson said. One of them was FX, which was showing “Bohemian Rhapsody” — a 2018 film about Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of “Queen” — nearly every day. They watched the movie so much that Henderson believes if he watched it now, he’d still be able to quote a good bit of it despite not seeing it for years.
“I love listening to ‘Queen,’” the shortstop said. “We just kind of watched it almost every day it felt. It was always on, so anytime it’d be, on we’d watch it.”
“He loves that memory, he talks about it all the time,” Henderson added with a laugh.
Rutschman said they both remember those two weeks so fondly — so much so that they both brought it up unprompted after they were named All-Star starters on the same day — because they were navigating life as professional ballplayers for the first time together.
“I think, for us, it was just like one of those learning times where we were kind of figuring out how pro ball worked and figuring out that day-to-day routine,” Rutschman said. “We were both learning together, watching a lot of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ on TV and hanging out.”
When Rutschman and Henderson take the field to start the All-Star Game, it will serve as the latest reminder of how far the Orioles have come in the five years since they were drafted. Those two picks, especially of Henderson at No. 42 overall, constitute a roll of dice that would win millions in Las Vegas. The fact that they were the first two made under general manager Mike Elias just adds to the lore of that draft for Baltimore baseball.
“We needed a big draft in 2019 with where we were organizationally,” Elias said. “A lot of it’s luck with the draft, but it really kind of came through at the right time with those picks. … It’s rebranded our entire organization the way those two guys approach their craft and what they do for this team and who they are for this team. To have that all happen in the same draft with the first two picks of the same draft, it’s really cool.”
“We don’t want a do-over,” Elias added with a chuckle.
Jordan Westburg, one of the Orioles’ five All-Stars along with Anthony Santander and Corbin Burnes, said his favorite thing about the Rutschman and Henderson is that he gets to “sit back and watch it all.” But he understands the state of the organization he was drafted into in 2020 when the Orioles selected him 30th overall, and he knows that duo played a big part in turning it around.
“[The] ‘21 [season] was down, but ‘22 was the light at the end of the tunnel when Adley gets called up and things start to change,” he said. “I certainly appreciate it.”
Colton Cowser, the Orioles’ first-round pick the next year, said despite growing up in vastly different parts of the country, Henderson and Rutschman have similar personalities. But it’s their competitive nature that has allowed them to succeed together.
“They definitely push each other,” Cowser said. “That’s what makes them special. They continue to push each other and make each other better. I don’t think one would be [an All-Star] without the other.”
Manager Brandon Hyde said the duo’s makeup — an all-encompassing scouting term for a player’s intangibles — is what separates them. He said his two young superstars are the “whole package,” never needing reminders from their skipper about “effort” or “professionalism.”
“They’re so easy because they’re great people,” Hyde said.” All they want to do is play baseball, and they want to be really good at it. It’s just an absolute pleasure to coach ’em.”
Henderson realized the hype about Rutschman when the Oregon State standout homered in his first professional game.
“I was like, ‘Well, I see why now,’” Henderson said.
When Rutschman played his final rookie ball game on July 26, 2019, that was the last time he and Henderson would be teammates until the latter’s big league debut on Aug. 31, 2022. Over those three-plus years, they overlapped at instructional camp or at the alternate training site during the pandemic, checking in via text.
Rutschman was one of baseball’s best catchers from the moment he made it to the majors and is now a two-time All-Star. Henderson has grown each season, breaking out in 2023 as the American League Rookie of the Year and emerging into a legitimate MVP candidate this year.
That — watching Henderson grow from an 18-year-old playing Fortnite in a La Quinta Inn hotel to a 23-year-old smacking long balls at the Home Run Derby — is what Rutschman called the “coolest part” of their friendship..
“It’s seeing how he’s grown as a person and as a player,” Rutschman said. “It’s a lot cooler for me to see that and witness that. You have your own journey, but I think it’s always cooler watching other guys grow and develop.”