“I don’t know if you saw the paper yet,” I said, “but Franz Kline, you know? The painter? He died yesterday. And he was a fan of yours. I just wanted to tell you that.”
“No kidding?” A beat. “What was his name?”
“Kline,” I said. “Franz Kline.”
There was another pause, then: “Oh, yeah. Franz Kline. He did those big black and white things, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You know,” the cartoonist said, “I bet that guy could’ve learned how to draw.”
ART & ANTIQUES,
May 1990
KEITH
I.
It is morning in the clubhouse at Huggins-Stengel Field in St. Petersburg and Keith Hernandez is moving from locker to locker, handing out schedules. He is the player rep of the world champion New York Mets; this is one of his duties. Still dressed in street clothes and sneakers, he says little as he hands the sheets to each of the players. At 33, he is young in the world of ordinary men; in baseball, especially on this young ball club, he is middle-aged. Kids and veterans nod and study the mimeographed sheets, which tell them when the bus will leave for the afternoon game and how many tickets they can expect for wives and friends. Hernandez explains nothing; he was out late the night before with a woman down from New York. “Too much goddamned wine,” he says. And besides, he has been here before, through 13 major league seasons; this is a time for ease, the careful steady retrieval of the skills of the summer game.
“It’s all about getting back in a kind of groove,” Hernandez says. “Not about getting in shape. Most of the guys are in shape, or they get in shape before coming down. I worked out with weights all winter, the first time I ever did that, ’cause I’m getting old.” He smiles, shakes his head. “At the Vertical Club in New York. Jesus, don’t go there at five o’clock. It’s fucking insane, a social — No, this is about getting your stroke right. About getting back your concentration. I don’t worry about it much until the last 10 games before the season starts. If I’m having trouble then, then I worry.”
In the clubhouse, Hernandez wanders among those who have made it to The Show and those who desperately want to. They all move with that coiled and practiced indolence that is unique to baseball, the style of a game where the most exciting action seems to explode out of the greatest calm. A large table is spread with food; there are boxes of Dubble Bubble and sugarless gum. Some players nibble as they dress; others knead and work new gloves, bad-mouth each other, talk about women, read newspapers and sports magazines, all the while stripping off street clothes and pulling on jocks and T-shirts and uniforms.
Kevin McReynolds, new to the team after a winter trade from San Diego, stares into space. Darryl Strawberry isn’t here yet (two weeks before the great alarm clock rhubarb); neither is Dwight Gooden. Hernandez leaves the mimeographed sheets on the small benches in front of their lockers and moves on. When he’s finished, he dumps the leftovers in a trash can, sits down at his own locker, lights a Winston and reaches for the New York Times crossword puzzle.
“We’ll talk later,” he says, takes a drag, and stares at the puzzle while unbuttoning his shirt. Hernandez examines the words the way fans examine stats. His own stats are, of course, extraordinary. One of the most consistent hitters in the game, in three full seasons as a Met, he has averaged .311, .309, and .310. Against left-handed pitching last year, he hit .312; against right-handers, .309. He hit .310 at home and .311 on the road. Last year, he had 13 game-winning RBIs, and his career total of 107 is the most in National League history.
It seemed that every time you looked up last season, Hernandez was on base; this wasn’t an illusion; he tied with Tim Raines for the lead in on-base percentage (.413), with 94 walks added to 171 hits. Although he has never been much of a power hitter (his career high was 16 home runs for the Cardinals in 1980), when there are men on base there is nobody you’d rather have at bat. “I can’t stand leading off an inning,” he says. “It’s so goddamned boring.” Hernandez hit safely in 10 of the 13 postseason games. That’s what he’s paid to do.
“Keith is the kind of consistent clutch hitter who relies on ’big’ RBI production as compared with ’multi’ RBI production,” says the astute Mets announcer Tim McCarver in the new book he wrote with Ray Robinson, Oh, Baby, I Love It! “As an example, a lot of one-run games are won by key hits in the middle innings rather than by big three-run home runs late in the game. Keith is a spectacular middle-inning hitter.…You’ve heard the baseball adage, ‘Keep ’em close, I’ll think of something’? Well, the something the Mets think of is usually Keith Hernandez.”
The fielding stats are even more extraordinary. Last year, he won his ninth straight Gold Glove Award at first base — the most of any player in history — with only five errors in the season, for a .996 average. Those stats don’t even begin to tell the story of what Hernandez does on the field; like all great glove men, he makes difficult plays look easy.
But more important, Hernandez can still dazzle you with the play that follows no rule. In the 12th inning of a game with Cincinnati last July 22, the Reds had runners on first and second with none out. Carl Willis dropped a splendid bunt down the third base line, and suddenly, there was Keith, all the way over from first. He threw to Gary Carter, who was playing third, and Carter went back to first for the double play. The Mets won 6-3 in the 14th inning. McCarver, who calls Hernandez “the Baryshnikov of first basemen,” writes: “Baseball is a game where, if you do the routine things spectacularly, you win more games than doing the spectacular things routinely — because few athletes have the talent to do spectacular things routinely. Keith has that kind of talent.”
In spring training, of course, all players spend their mornings doing the routine things routinely. And on this day, after the cigarette and the crossword, Hernandez is suited up. He makes a quick visit to the John. And then he joins the other players as they move out onto the field. To a visitor who believes the phrase “spring training” is the loveliest in the American language, the view is suddenly beautiful, the bright blue and orange of the Mets’ uniforms instantly transforming the great sward of fresh green grass.
After more than 130 days without baseball, it’s beginning again. The wan sun abruptly breaks through the clouds and the young men jog out to the far reaches of the outfield and then back. They line up in rows, and then an instructor leads them through 15 minutes of stretching exercises. There is something wonderfully appealing about the clumsiness of the players during this drill; thrown out of their accustomed positions and stances, they don’t look like professional athletes at all. Instead, the field now looks like part of some peculiar kind of boot camp, stocked with raw recruits. Jesse Orosco glances at Doug Sisk to see if he’s doing the exercise correctly; Lenny Dykstra says something to Carter, who laughs; Backman does a push-up when the others are twisting through sit-ups. Hernandez leads with his left leg when everyone else is leading with the right. You can see more athletic workouts at the New York Health & C Racquet Club.
But then it’s over and they’re all up and reaching for gloves. The players pair off, playing catch, loosening up, while the sun begins to dry the wet grass. Hernandez is throwing with Roger McDowell. The ease and grace and economy of movement are obvious; it’s as if he is on a morning stroll. He chatters away with other players (as he does with opposing players who reach first base during the season, a tactical matter that is less about conviviality than it is about distracting the enemy). Dykstra slides a package of Red Man from his hip pocket and bites off a chunk and Hernandez says something we can’t hear and Dykstra tries to laugh with his mouth shut. On the sidelines, Davey Johnson has emerged to watch his charges. His coaches — Buddy Harrelson, Bill Robinson, Vern Hoscheit, Sam Perlozzo, and Mel Stottlemyre — are on the side, glancing indifferently at the players, talking about famous assholes they’ve known. The list is fairly long and each new name brings a guffaw and a story. Harrelson turns to a visitor and says, “That’s all off the record.” And laughs. On the field, Hernandez is working out of a pitcher’s windup. He throws a strike. “You think Mex can make this team?” Perlozzo says. Stottlemyre smiles. “He already did.”