The legend of Henderson is real, all right, as real as the check-cashing service with the metal security gates on Broad Street in downtown Newark, which is about all the local color there is in the neighborhood of the mostly empty Bears & Eagles Riverfront Stadium, home to the Newark Bears of the independent Atlantic League—and, at the moment, to Henderson.

“We need to shift the ballpark to another location or something,” he says.

At age 44 the future first-ballot Hall of Famer is here on the wrong side of baseball’s tracks, not to mention those of New Jersey Transit, whose cars clackity-clack a pop fly away from his leftfield post. He signed with the Bears on April 24 and has come to downtown Newark for one last shot at the major leagues, which makes him, in every sense, an urban legend.