By Max Felsenstein
Fielding questions as adeptly as he once fielded ground balls, former Mets star Keith Hernandez talked steroids, stats and Seinfeld at Drew University in Madison on Tuesday.
“I think anyone that was caught, doesn’t go to the Hall of Fame. I can tell you that there are guys in the Hall of Fame that did” steroids, said the broadcaster.
Hernandez was interviewed by former New York Times sports columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner Ira Berkow before a full house at the Dorothy Young Center for the Arts, as a guest of the Drew Forum’s In the Game speaker series.
“I came up at 189 pounds. If I had done steroids, I would have been 210-215. Are you telling me, I wouldn’t have hit the ball further?” said Hernandez, 64.
Players should not profit from cheating, he said.
“From a financial point of view, you know what that means for your signature that you’re in the Hall of Fame?”
He rated his own Cooperstown credentials as ” borderline.”
“My dad always said he wished I was right-handed, that way he would’ve made me a shortstop. I would’ve played a hell of a shortstop,” Hernandez said.
“First base is a power position and home runs are more important. If I didn’t blow out my back, I would’ve had two more years and had 2,500 hits and 200 home runs. Until the injury, I played every day for 13 years. I’m very proud of that.”
His career was not without its own controversy. In 1985 he acknowledged that he had used cocaine for three years as a member of the St. Louis Cardinals. He testified against a drug dealer, in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
Despite grappling with ”the devil on this earth,” as he described cocaine in his testimony, Hernandez compiled an impressive baseball résumé:
Five all-star appearances for the Mets and Cardinals, two World Series championships, two Silver Slugger awards, a Most Valuable Player award in 1979, and a record 11 consecutive Gold Glove Awards at first base. His retired from the Cleveland Indians in 1990.
According to Baseball Reference, Hernandez finished his career with a slash line of .296/.384/.436, including 162 home runs, 1071 runs batted in, and 2182 hits.
Although he was considered for induction numerous times, his name was dropped from the Hall of Fame voting in 2004 after failing to reach the 5 percent vote needed to stay on the ballot. Now his only chance for enshrinement is through a vote of the veteran’s committee.
Statistics don’t tell the whole story, Hernandez insisted.
“Baseball is a game based on statistics, it thrives on statistics. Every front office has an analytics department of number-crunchers,” he said. “I think they’re a terrific aid to make a judgment, but you cannot make a 100 percent evaluation on analytics. Analytics can’t measure pressure when it got tough.”
Hernandez is an analyst for Mets television broadcasts on SNY and WPIX. This fall, he joined Fox Sports for its coverage of the playoffs and World Series, alongside Alex Rodriguez, David Ortiz, Frank Thomas, and host Kevin Burkhardt.
“The biggest transition is realizing you’re not a player anymore, you’re a member of the media. It’s a different perspective,” Hernandez said. “They want an honest broadcaster and as long as people are hustling and doing the best they can do, you have to back off.”
Sometimes, from his perch in the booth, he wonders if baseball has become an anachronism in a world that has sped up.
“It’s a methodical game, it evolves in front of you. It’s a baseball game, you sit there and watch, and there’s a lot going on in it, which I never realized until I was a broadcaster,” he said. “That’s when I realized there’s more intricacy to the game. The world is so fast now, baseball’s too slow for it.”
His autobiography, I’m Keith Hernandez, is scheduled for publication by Little Brown in March 2018.
“It was my idea for the book because since 1986, there have been several generations out there that have never seen me play. It gave me legs to a new generation,” he said.
The title was inspired by a line in Hernandez’ guest appearance on a Seinfeld episode, The Boyfriend. A kissing scene concludes with the ballplayer thinking to himself, “I’m Keith Hernandez.”
While accustomed to World Series pressure (he won in 1982 and 1986), Hernandez found comedy to be nerve-racking.
“It was the first time I’d ever acted. I was petrified, I had all these lines,” Hernandez recounted. “Jerry said, ‘What are you nervous about, you play in front of 50,000 people every day.’ I said yeah, but I don’t have to memorize lines.”
The kissing part was fun, though.
“We had to shoot four different scenes, which was four kisses. I would say, ‘I didn’t get that one right,’ so we’d have to shoot it again,” Hernandez said.
He started preparing for baseball pressures at a much earlier age.
When playing baseball in his backyard with his father, he’d pretend to be Mickey Mantle and his father was Whitey Ford. They would act as though the last 10 pitches always were with two outs in the 9th inning of Game 7 in the World Series.
“You have to want to be in a pressure situation. Pressure to me is a challenge and you rise to the challenge individually,” Hernandez said. “The World Series on the line, I’d take a deep breath, count to 10, take another deep breath, step in the box and go to work.”
The high-flying Cardinals traded him to a struggling Mets franchise halfway through the 1983 season.
“It’s never easy getting traded in the middle of a season. My family was in St. Louis. I was traded to a perennial last place team from first place, so I did not enjoy myself the second half of the season in 1983,” Hernandez said.
Three years later, the Mets won 108 games and became world champions.
“Staying in New York turned out to be one of the greatest decisions of my life,” Hernandez said.
Max Felsenstein is a writing and communications major at Drew University, Class of 2020.
