Like so many stories involving the greatest player ever born on Christmas, this story might be apocryphal. But as Rickey Henderson tales go, it sounds plausible to me.

As I heard it — from my fellow Mets beat writers in 2000, the year I joined The New York Times — the Mets decided to have some fun with players’ walk-up music one day in 1999. For a few precious seconds as each hitter strode to the plate, the Shea Stadium loudspeakers would play the No. 1 song in the country the day that hitter was born.

The inimitable Henderson, then the Mets’ left fielder, was born on Dec. 25, 1958. The No. 1 song that day happened to be “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late),” a novelty tune by The Chipmunks with David Seville that won three Grammys with its distinctive falsetto sound. It’s a cute song, but decidedly not one that Henderson — or anyone, really — would choose to follow his name at a major league ballpark.

Apparently Henderson vented about this to the writers after the game, using the third person — as he loved to do — while insisting that Rickey was no Chipmunks fan and did not like cartoon rodents introducing a player of his stature. Oh, how I wish I’d been there to record that little rant for posterity.