Last updated: 9:04 am
April 17, 2009
Posted: 2:09 am
April 17, 2009
THE days of having to wince at Keith Hernandez's indiscriminate moments should, by now, be over. While the ex-first baseman extraordinaire always will be valued for his indignant responses to bad baseball, how long can his indiscretions be excused as the words of someone new to baseball broadcasting?
MUSHNICK: NOT MAD ABOUT MADDEN
This is his ninth year in the Mets' booth.
Wednesday night on SNY Hernandez apparently mismanaged something in his scorecard when he made an unwise crack. He said he should visit a doctor because "I may have the beginning stages of Alzheimer's." Geez.
After responding with an awkward, uncomfortable and perhaps forced chuckle, Gary Cohen gently scolded him for the crack.
But how much longer before Hernandez can distinguish between light and harsh, a poke and a punch, cute and cruel, smart and stupid?
Because Hernandez often speaks baseball so well -- and because we know to expect a degree of regular-world detachment from him -- such moments can be suffered easier from him than from a career TV pro.
Yet, thus far this season Hernandez seems to be what he, of all people, can't be from a booth: He seems to be full of it.
He lately has shoveled praise on any Met who does anything as sensational as not swing at ball four. Monday he gushed that the food in Citi Field is "to die for." He provided no specifics, but come on, two years ago he complained that he couldn't get anything to eat in Cincinnati on a holiday because Morton's was closed.
And his guesswork needs work. Monday he spoke of Mark "The Bird" Fidrych's sudden death, explaining that in 1976 he was named for the TV character, Big Bird. "Sesame Street," he said, "had just come on the scene."
Fidrych was named after Big Bird because Sesame Street, which debuted in 1969, was long imbedded. Well before Fidrych, the Flyers' Don Saleski was called "Big Bird" for the same resemblance.
By now, nine years in, Hernandez, forgiven in the past, owes us all better.
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