World Collection champion and beloved SNY analyst Keith Hernandez can have his No. 17 retired by the Mets on July 9, changing into simply the fourth participant, plus managers Casey Stengel and Gil Hodges, within the historical past of the franchise to be bestowed that honor. That is the primary in a 10-part each day countdown of Hernandez’s best moments and accomplishments following his 1983 arrival in Flushing.
No. 10. From St. Louis to Siberia to Satisfaction
Keith Hernandez, the batting champion and co-MVP of the Nationwide League in 1979, has mentioned usually that he believed he was being shipped to “baseball Siberia” when the Cardinals — the reigning World Collection champions — dealt him to the lowly Mets for pitchers Neil Allen and Rick Ownbey on June 15, 1983.
The Mets had been in the course of their seventh consecutive shedding season starting with 1977, the 12 months they traded away franchise cornerstone Tom Seaver.
“Why was it Siberia? The Mets had been a last-place staff and the one different worse place to play at the moment was Candlestick as a result of the Giants additionally had been horrible,” the northern California native informed The Put up earlier this week. “New York additionally within the ’70s and the early ’80s was going bankrupt. The town was a large number and never secure, so simply to see the turnaround we had with the followers, once we began filling up Shea [Stadium] nearly each night time, in each facet it was a present from the gods for me.
“And it actually turned out to be life-changing.”
The 11-time Gold Glove winner warmed to the concept of staying by the top of that first season in Flushing, signing a five-year contract value $8.4 million on his solution to changing into one of many centerpieces of a championship turnaround by 1986.
Common supervisor Frank Cashen and Hernandez’s father, John (a minor league first baseman within the Nineteen Forties), satisfied him that the Mets’ future was vivid. The 1983 NL Rookie of the Yr, Darryl Strawberry, already was available and prized children Dwight Gooden, Ron Darling, Lenny Dykstra and others had been on the way in which within the farm system.
Hernandez usually has cited former Cardinals supervisor Whitey Herzog wanting him out of St. Louis. Herzog, nonetheless, mentioned in SNY’s “He’s Keith Hernandez” documentary that Cardinals possession was behind the deal that Mets teammate Mookie Wilson referred to as “a very powerful commerce” in franchise historical past.
“He discovered later in regards to the expertise they'd coming, however the reality of the matter is that this franchise was within the darkness when Keith arrived,” Hernandez’s SNY associate, Gary Cohen, informed The Put up. “I equate his arrival with Seaver’s arrival in 1967. The franchise knew nothing however shedding, and by the identical token, this franchise earlier than Keith acquired right here for a half-decade knew nothing however shedding.
“His presence and his pedigree and his ring and his management and his glove and his clutch hitting modified all of that nearly instantly. Would there have been a championship with out Keith? I don’t suppose that’s a certainty in any respect. Having Keith right here modified the whole narrative about this franchise.”
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