Hall of a guy

Keith Hernandez is the victim of a numbers game

The results are in and for the seventh consecutive year Keith (Sweet 'Stache) Hernandez narrowly missed induction into the Hall of Fame. I mean narrowly the way Bob Uecker means it (you know, "Juuust a bit outside."). Ol' Keith (he turns 50 next year) checked in with 29 votes, finishing behind 17 other players and placing on about six percent of the ballots, which proves that many voters must be doing way too much of what Hernandez once went to Pittsburgh to testify about: drugs.

Hernandez is a Hall of Famer.

If Carlton Fisk and Luis Aparacio and Bill Mazeroski are in the Hall of Fame (OK, Maz got in by way of the Veterans Committee, which is like sneaking through the bathroom window), where in the name of soft leather, clutch hits and baseball brains is Keith Hernandez?

The problem with baseball writers is that they spend so much time crunching numbers they forget to consider how a player actually impacted a game. In reviewing Hernandez's career, they complain about his unspectacular RBI production as a first baseman (one season with better than 100 ribbies and six with more than 90 is strong but not Hall material) and forget things like this: "He was the best player I ever played with," former Mets reliever Roger McDowell once said. "A lot of us feel that way. The way he played, the intensity he had, made us all better."

After leaving the Mets, four players -- McDowell, David Cone, Ron Darling and Bob Ojeda -- all wore Hernandez's number 17 as a tribute to him. Diamondbacks first baseman Mark Grace also wears 17 because he admired Hernandez's game. Darling has said Hernandez was the best player he ever played with, too. That's something, given that both he and McDowell also played with catcher Gary Carter, who for reasons that only a numbers runner might respect, received 314 more votes than Hernandez did this year.

If players did the voting for the Hall of Fame, they'd have put Hernandez in long ago. Baseball teams don't label captains, but if they did, Hernandez would have worn the C in 1982 for the World Series champion Cardinals and in 1986 for the title-winning Mets. He was the soul of those teams. Here's a player with very good statistics who was made great by all the other things he did.

First off, Hernandez was brilliant. You could see it in his patient at-bats and in the way he played first base for the Cardinals (1974 to '83) and Mets ('83-'89). In 1979 he shared the MVP award with Pittsburgh's Willie Stargell, after which Sports Illustrated put him on the cover with the headline "Who is Keith Hernandez and what's he doing batting .344?" The answer: He was the savviest ballplayer alive. His batting average was so high, pitchers had to rise at 12:01 a.m. and start scheming if they wanted to sneak anything by him.

He took games apart, thought innings ahead and passed his analyses on to everyone around him. He'd do things like study an opposing player's swing, then stroll over to the pitcher's mound and tell a reliever: "If you throw a fastball to this guy, you're dead."

First base is the most underrated defensive position in baseball because it's easy to play it adequately. It's not easy to play there flawlessly and dynamically, but if you do, you'll win more games for your team than any slick shortstop will. Hernandez won 11 Gold Gloves and controlled games like no other first baseman before or since. He'd bear down so close on a bunter you'd be terrified the batter would swing away and tear Keith's head off with the bat. Instead, the hitter flinched and the bunt failed.

OK, in case some of you didn't see him play, I'll call on a few stats myself. Here's why Hernandez was the most impactful first baseman ever. His 1,682 assists are the most in National League history. Six times he led NL first baseman in double plays. First base assists, double plays -- those are defensive plays that can swing a game, and from 1983 to '87 Hernandez had 726 assists in 757 games at first base. That means he HAD AN ASSIST IN 96% OF THOSE GAMES. Think about how often you see a first baseman throw a guy out today. You can watch a team for a week and not see it once.

This cat could hit, too. Hernandez, a lefty, batted a career .296 and rapped more than 30 doubles in a season eight times. He walked a lot and he got far too many clutch hits to recount. I'll name two from the same year. 1) Ninth inning, Game 6, 1986 NL Championship Series against Houston: Hernandez lashes a double off crafty left-hander Bob Knepper to help the Mets rally from a 3-0 deficit and go on to win the game. 2) Sixth inning, Game 7, 1986 World Series against Boston: The Mets trail 3-0 with the bases loaded when Hernandez kisses a two-run single off an even nastier southpaw, Bruce Hurst. Without those hits, a Mets championship never happens.

Detractors scrutinize Hernandez's stats and find them a bit too slight. ("Only 162 home runs" they whine.) Or they joke about how smarmy he was as guest star on Seinfeld. What I remember are moments like this: Hernandez in the mid 1980s leading off second base after a double. Darryl Strawberry steps up. Young Strawberry's struggling because he's been pulling his front shoulder off the pitch. Hernandez looks toward home and does what he so often did for Straw. As he leads, he turns his shoulder inward repeatedly, punching it dramatically to get Strawberry's attention to remind him to stay in there. Straw hangs in, knocks an RBI single the other way and once again Keith Hernandez helped his team in a way no box score could ever show.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Kostya Kennedy is a lifelong Mets fan and a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.

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