KEITH GAME TO TELL TALE
Ex-Met Hernandez on his good ol’ days Raunchy time before #MeToo, AIDS, 24-hr. media
“I’M KEITH Hernandez” is a love letter to old times.
To the days when all you needed to play ball was a bunch of kids and an empty lot. Back when farm teams meant dusty towns and crazy fans, and big league games weren’t all instant replay and endless commercials.
It’s also the slick-fielding, sweet-swinging ex-Mets star’s love letter to himself — along with a few extra innings for some of his grudges.
Almost 40 years later, he’s still annoyed about sharing his MVP award with African-American legend Willie Stargell.
He wonders if it had something to do with his Latino last name and Stargell’s role as front man for “all that ‘We Are Family’ stuff” with the Pittsburgh Pirates. And Hernandez still thinks people overreacted to his criticisms of women in the locker room and the dugout.
The gripes, while a little childish, are not surprising.
After all, as his book warns you, “I’m Keith Hernandez.”
It’s not his first book, so its focus is narrow. This isn’t about his years playing for the Mets. And while he writes about his stint with the Cardinals, Hernandez doesn’t get into the facts of his feud with manager Whitey Herzog.
Or the details of his cocaine use then, which led to a major MLB investigation.
That doesn’t mean the book isn’t full of recollections or revelations.
Hernandez offers fond memories of growing up in Northern California, the youngest son of a Spanish-American firefighter and a homemaker.
His hot-tempered father was an ex-minor leaguer player who pushed his two boys hard. He wanted them to love the game as much as he did, and was certain Keith would follow in his footsteps.
Maybe he followed a little too closely.
A high school baseball star, Hernandez was benched for his senior year. “My high school coach was a bit of a jerk,” he offers in explanation.
He was nonetheless selected in 1971 as the Cardinals’ 42ndround draft pick. At age 18, he shipped off to the Florida State League for seasoning.
It was another world. Players trained hard, then took the bus downtown to fill up on cheap cafeteria food. They had to pay for their own dinners and laundry, and received just $75 a week for expenses.
Then it was back to the motel, for beer and cards and pranks.
One ballplayer managed to persuade a young woman to come back to his room. His teammates sneaked outside to peep through the windows and hoot and holler.
“Such juvenile behavior may seem off-putting,” Hernandez writes, “but I recommend these sort of antics for any minor league ballplayers taking themselves too seriously — something magical happens in such silly moments.
“I know it made me feel like less of an intruder and more a part of a team.”
Magical? Part of a team? No word on how the woman felt.
But “I’m Keith Hernandez” isn't about her. It’s about a time before #MeToo. Also a time before AIDS, the internet and 24-hourmedia.
And, for a few chapters, it’s about the scrappy pleasures of minor league ball, a mix of “Bull Durham” and “Animal House” where older women with names like “Big Beulah” and “Dirty Judy” cruised the home games, and two prostitutes teamed up to take on the team for $10 a player.
“Not our finest hour,” Hernandez admits.
There were classier times ahead, after Hernandez was called up to the majors. The Cardinals had always been his dream team. After all, he says, they were the closest thing to a West Coast team when he was born in 1953. Not everybody agreed. The Cards already had a first baseman in Joe Torre. Luckily for Hernandez, Torre had just sprained his thumb, the reason Hernandez was summoned. Off the field, his teammates weren’t impressed. He made the mistake of bringing rock albums to a party at Bob Gibson’s, where the playlist was strictly old-school soul.
But Hernandez dominated defensively at first base. Seeing him there, batters gave up any idea of bunting. He became a more consistent hitter.
None of this was easy. Besides his coaches, teammates and the fans, Hernandez had someone who watched every single move: his dad. His father would call him after games to pick apart his performance.
If Dad was at the park, he offered advice from the stands. The player kept his cool, and steadily improved his skills.
If he played hard, though, he partied harder.
There were amphetamines: “We’d take them two hours before a game and they’d be kicked by the time we had showered up, so we could get a good night’s sleep.”
There was booze. On the road, one fellow kept a fridge in his room just for White Russians. There was marijuana and hash and even opium.
And, eventually, there was coke.
Hernandez admittedly had a good time with it all, although a joint and a spin of Pink Floyd's “Dark Side of the Moon” remained his favorite ways to relax. The sight of a woman shooting up at a party scared him off needles forever.
But hey, it was the ’70s, and Hernandez isn’t embarrassed by any of it — not even the occasional sexually transmitted disease.
What he does regret — and he knows it makes him sound like an old man — is the way baseball is played now, as opposed to back in the day, or really, back in his day.
For one thing, today’s games are about half an hour longer.
“Three hours for an average game is not good for baseball,” Hernandez writes.
“While baseball was never meant to be played at a frenetic pace there is, again, a rhythm to it, and with all the stopping and starting — from the batters stepping out of the box for days on end, to pitchers, particularly relievers, who take an eternity between pitches, to 3-2 counts ad nauseam, to an abundance of base on balls, to instant replay every five seconds — that rhythm is under siege.”
So why the marathons? Greed, basically.
“The only thing it serves is more concession sales and television advertising,” he says.
He’s not too thrilled with his fellow broadcasters, either. Hernandez can talk stats like the pro he is. And he still mourns the loss of his childhood fantasy baseball game, the magnificent Strat-O-Matic.
But he hates people who feel the need to chatter away, filling every nanosecond with factoids.
“Who cares how many miles per hour the ball traveled once it left the bat, or how high the ball traveled in degrees, or how many seconds it took to leave the ballpark?” he muses. “When did baseball become NASCAR?”
But even if none of it is the way it was, Hernandez still loves it. And his book still has a real fan’s strong memories.
Of meeting the amazing Ted Williams, even if the Splendid Splinter turned out to be kind of insulting. Or seeing an old man at the game in a rocker, and realizing it was Satchel Paige.
Or getting up to bat — and facing Tom Seaver. Or finally becoming enough of a celebrity that he got invited to meet Mr. Dark Side of the Moon himself, Roger Waters.
Actually, that was a disappointment. Waters could be kind of a jerk, Hernandez admits.
Celebrities can be, sometimes.