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               KEITH HERNANDEZ

       Keith Hernandez played a slow and awkward man’s position with a quick
and steady grace.  He took mental control of the ball as soon as it left the
hitter’s bat.  If the ball was hit to the right side of the infield, it wouldn’t
pass.   Keith’s shoulders told you that he had it covered.  And if anything was
complicated, if it was ever unclear who should take a pop up or who should
field a grounder and who should cover a base, Keith would know exactly
what to do.  He’d know immediately.  There was none of the lumbering
indecision you often saw at first base.  Keith seemed to be too smart to make
a bad or an awkward play.  

      Watching Keith Hernandez play first base is one of the all-time great
pleasures of being a Mets fan.  It was particularly fun because it was
something unique.  You knew what it was like to watch a great shortstop or
centerfielder.  You had seen enough of them and you could compare them.  
Watching a great defensive first baseman was a genuine novelty.  You’d
never seen it done before.  So that’s how that position can be played!  You
can move like that?  You have enough time to do that?  Who would have
thought it?

     Keith played first base because he had the instincts and reflexes of a
great defensive shortstop, but he didn’t have the speed or flexibility.  He was
as good as he was because he knew how to use his talents and adjust to his
limitations.  You saw the same thing in the way that Keith hit.  He was a
great hitter, but he wasn’t a slugger, like the slow, powerful giants they
normally stick at first base.  He couldn’t try for the big arch.  So he found a
way of hitting that made the outfield seem enormous.  His swing was as
straight and as smooth as an arrow’s flight.  His line drives were taut and
focused.  They were impatient and they would find the ground, or a corridor
to the wall, before anybody could get near them.   And so a man who never
hit 20 home runs would always have about 100 RBIs.  He’d hit his .310, and
his 35 doubles.  He was terrific.

      As you watched Keith play, you couldn’t read him.  You couldn’t read
Strawberry either, but that was because Darryl was a mystery to everyone,
including himself.  Keith was different.  You couldn’t read him because he
had a zone of privacy.  He was a smart man who understood that he had to
work very hard, at a troubled moment in his life, to compartmentalize things
so that he could do what he had to do.  There was his divorce.  There was
having to testify about his own past drug use.  Keith’s brilliant and consistent
play throughout the 1984-6 seasons reminds you that people sometimes have
the resources they need to avoid being distracted by personal problems.  
This is what was most unique about Keith:  his magnificent talent for
concentration.  This is the sort of person who can steady himself by doing
crossword puzzles.  This is the kind of player who can give you the same
exact level of performance year after year.  This is the kind of player who
will be deadliest in the clutch.  

     But Keith’s hard-earned control never turned him into a pressure
cooker.  He knew how to let loose.  He knew when.  He knew not to pretend.  
He had the soul of a writer more than that of an ordinary baseball player.  
He knew when discipline was and wasn’t the same thing as control.  He knew
that demons had to be put in their place, but he knew that you couldn’t kill
them, because that wasn’t possible and besides, you needed them.  

     Somebody as focused, mature, talented, and real as Hernandez is
inevitably going to become a leader and a model in any group.  You saw that
the 1986 Mets were Hernandez’s team, with Davey Johnson’s wise but wary
permission.  Everyone on the team always said that Keith was the best
leader, the best team captain.  Fans could watch him do this:  barking at the
other infielders, going to the mound to get things back on track.  Sometimes
he looked like a commanding officer.  Sometimes he looked like an orchestra
conductor.   The job got done.  The team was led, by smooth, quiet Johnson
in the dugout, and by Keith, tightly-wound, in command on the field.  But if
Keith could lead beautifully on the field and in the dugout, it was a harder
thing to lead off the field and away from the dugout.  It was hard for someone
like Keith to serve as a personal model to people who didn’t have his
discipline and maturity.  Keith was fallen, but he was not falling.  And the
wisdom you have after the Fall is notoriously hard to communicate.  

      In the end, Keith was the man because Keith was so cool.  And his cool
gave the whole weird team an erotic aura.  Almost every heterosexual
female Mets fan I knew was in love with Keith.  And in 1986, I often passed
a gay bar on Christopher Street that had a great picture of Keith, from
behind, blown up in the window.   You didn’t have to find men sexy to see that
Keith was sexy.   He was very handsome according to the hairy mustached
standards of the ‘80s.  But the main thing that made him so appealing was
the fact that he was a grown-up, and not an inflated little boy as so many
talented ballplayers are.  Keith had edges and irony.  He had a lot going on
but he was finding his way.  He came across as a genuinely interesting
human being who wanted to give us the full benefit of his unique talent.  You
saw that for Keith playing baseball was a lot of work.  But you also saw that
it was keeping him sane.



©Dana Brand 2006