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.
PHOTO: AP
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.
In 1981, when Hernandez was 16 and the major leaguers were on strike, the Mets held a tryout at Shea Stadium. It was Hernandez's first time on a major league field, and he somehow got to use Kingman's bat. His best hit was a one-hopper off the fence in left-center.
The Mets did not call him back until last winter, when Al Goldis, a special assistant to general manager Omar Minaya, saw a fit. Hernandez's ERA had risen for five seasons, peaking at 4.76 for the Phillies last year. But he seemed strong, and Goldis had always liked his arm.
Goldis had signed Hernandez to his first professional contract, with the California Angels in 1986. Three years later, while working for the White Sox, Goldis snagged Hernandez in a minor league trade. Years later, not much had changed.
"He was getting hit last year, but it was really the same problem we saw when we got him from the Angels," Goldis said. "A lot of his pitches were up in the strike zone. The arm was healthy; it was just a matter of getting him in shape. We knew with the pitching coach we had in Rick Peterson, he would give him the ability to drive the ball down into the zone."
Peterson had an advantage, having coached Hernandez in the White Sox farm system and in Chicago. Hernandez is an unabashed Peterson disciple; his whole career, he has written "hit the glove," a Peterson maxim, underneath the brim of his cap.
"That's what we do," Hernandez said, smiling. "We're professional glove-hitters."
For years, it seemed that holding targets, not throwing to them, was all Hernandez would do. He attended Chelsea Vocational School for three years, then received a scholarship to New Hampton School in New Hampshire. He repeated his junior year, improved his grades and enrolled at Connecticut, where he was too valuable as a catcher to move to the mound.
"He would be on his knees throwing seeds at 90 miles an hour to get guys at second base," said Kiefer, an elementary school teacher in New London, Conn., who took 15 students to meet Hernandez at Shea on Wednesday, continuing an annual tradition. "We all said, `Man, if he ever got on the hill, he'd be unhittable."'
Eager to see how he would do, Hernandez pitched in a Virginia summer league and struck out 14 batters in his first start. He transferred to a small college in South Carolina, became the Angels' first-round pick and reached the majors with the White Sox in 1991. His father, Sergio, a tailor, made him the first suit he wore in the majors.
Hernandez's family would watch him when he played in New York, but as he meandered around the majors, Hernandez had no interest in playing at home. He thought there would be too many distractions.
"And there's an old saying we have," said Hernandez, who lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, in the winter. "Sometimes, you'd rather not get booed in your hometown."
He took on the challenge this year, accepting a nonroster invitation to spring training. Stubborn with previous coaches, Hernandez implicitly trusted Peterson, worked on his arm angle and the positioning of his hands, and he is enjoying his best season in years. He wants to keep pitching as long as his arm lets him. His craziest goal, he said, is to catch an inning before he retires.
As for this weekend, Hernandez called it just one series in a long season. But that was the player in him talking. His inner New Yorker knows better.
"I'm curious to see what it's like," he said. "I'm curious to see the Yankee fans and the Met fans go at it."
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