Roberto Hernandez has never understood why so many Mets fans hate the Yankees and so many Yankees fans hate the Mets. It has been that way as long as Hernandez can remember, which is pretty far back. Hernandez is 40 years old, even if he is not pitching like it as the Mets' rejuvenated setup man.
"If we had 30 friends, maybe five of us were Mets fans," said Hernandez, who moved to New York from Puerto Rico when he was 2 years old. "Most of them wouldn't even turn on the Yankees games. I was like, `Shoot, if there's a game on, I'm going to watch it."'
This weekend's series with the Yankees will be the first interborough, interleague experience for Hernandez, who is finally playing in New York after six other stops in the first 14 years of his career.
Hernandez, who grew up in northern Manhattan and has an in-season home in Whitestone, Queens, still has members of his extended family around the city. On Wednesday, he said he was hoping the Mets' day game would end in time for him to see his nephew Zachary play baseball.
"He's living a dream," said Pete Kiefer, Hernandez's teammate 20 years ago at the University of Connecticut. "We'd talk about it. He'd say he missed being up north, and maybe someday he'd end his career up there. I'm sure that's what he's hoping -- to get to stay up here the last few years and really finish up strong in his backyard."
So far, it has been a happy homecoming. In 20 games, Hernandez is 2-1 with a 1.77 earned run average, and opponents are batting .174 off him. He has 321 career saves but only one this season, and he has learned to make the eighth inning his domain.
"Every day I see that eighth inning come around, if it ain't me, I'm mad," he said.
Hernandez grew up as a catcher. There were pitchers he liked on the Mets -- Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman -- but the New York player who inspired him most was the catcher in the Bronx, Thurman Munson.
Hernandez was 14 years old, sitting on the stoop in his neighborhood and listening to the radio, when he learned of Munson's death in a plane crash in 1979. He cried. He did not love the Yankees, but he had always admired Munson.
"I saw how dirty he got," Hernandez said. "And he showed that you didn't have to be a well-physiqued man to play there. He threw from all different angles to get guys out at second base. And he could hit."
Years later, when Hernandez would sit in the bullpen at Yankee Stadium as a closer for the Chicago White Sox, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and the Kansas City Royals, he would notice how far away the wall used to be in left-center and think Munson should have gotten two homers for each ball he hit out of the park there.
But as much as he liked Munson, Goose Gossage and other Yankees, the Mets were Hernandez's team, through the good times and the bumbling. "I grew up when they had like 75 different third basemen," he said.
The main reason he rooted for the Mets was their television broadcast. During rain delays, Hernandez remembers, the Mets would show footage of old games and players, and Roberto Clemente's story would often come on. Clemente, also from Puerto Rico, was a hero to Hernandez.
There were other attractions. After games, the Mets had "Kiner's Korner," the postgame interview show with Ralph Kiner. Hernandez could learn about his favorite players, like Dave Kingman, who would strike out three times and then drop a bunt, or crush a ball 450 feet.
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