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An Arm for the Ages: Roberto Hernandez '84
Roberto Hernandez ’84 is one of the greatest athletes in New Hampton history, but there is more to the man than a fastball.
Roberto Hernandez ’84 is one of the greatest athletes in New Hampton history, but there is more to the man than a fastball.
By Will McCulloch
The batter had never experienced anything like it before. A pre-med student and a member of the Harvard University junior varsity baseball team, he was trying to fathom on a spring afternoon in 1984 how New Hampton School pitcher Roberto Hernandez ’84 was throwing a curveball that started out at his ear and dipped across the plate and out of the strike zone.
He had expected a leisurely game with a prep school squad from the sticks, and ended up in a meeting with baseball’s answer to a brain surgeon. The batter called time, and in a move so foreign to the rhythms of the game, he addressed the man on the mound.
“Listen,” he said, pleading with Hernandez to stop throwing his deuce. “I’m pre-med and I don’t need this. I can’t hit the fastball, so just throw me the heat.”
Perhaps a few years later, watching baseball on television in between residency shifts, the pre-med student would be able to identify to friends the big league player who had injected so much fear into his afternoon years before.
Little did he know that Hernandez, the 6-foot-4 specimen with the golden arm who wore the Husky green, cradled so much more than a killer hook and a fastball that would fuel a 17-year playing career in the big leagues. Hernandez was equally adept at overcoming challenges and living his life in a way that resulted in few bases on balls.
Roberto Hernandez’s impressive odyssey as a pro pitcher is not a spectacular feat when one merely considers the right arm with which he was blessed. Still, the career statistics tell the story of an athlete who left his mark on the game and frustrated hitters from coast to coast with an overpowering selection of pitches masked by an effortless delivery.
Though he never won a World Series ring, he enjoyed tremendous success. A first-round draft pick of the Angels in 1986, Hernandez had a career that few relievers not in the Baseball Hall of Fame can boast. He appeared in 1,010 games—one of only 11 pitchers to have appeared in more than 1,000—and finished with 326 career saves, which is good enough for twelfth all time.
He had a career-high 43 saves in 1999 with the Devil Rays, a squad that had only 69 victories that season. He was twice an All-Star in 1996 and 1999, made millions of dollars—including a big contract late in his career—led the league in games finished for three straight seasons, developed a cringeworthy split-fingered fastball, and routinely tipped 100 miles-per-hour on stadium radar guns. Hall of Famer Joe Morgan eyed Hernandez in one of the right-hander’s first television appearances and declared, “I have never seen someone throw low gas like that since Bob Gibson.”
For 17 years, the gas was in the tank. And now, nearly four years removed from his last appearance on the mound, it’s not uncommon to find Hernandez crouched behind home plate on warm evenings in St. Petersburg, Florida, catching pitches from 11-year-old ballplayers on his son’s baseball team. He has returned to the position that almost kept him off the mound. For all his success, there were detours in the journey that could have led him far from a Major League bullpen, far from the enigmatic lifestyle of a professional baseball player.
You can be sure, though, Hernandez would have found happiness and peace; they seem embedded in his personality, as natural as his arm strength.
Though a blood clot in his throwing arm nearly stole his dream of playing in the big leagues and his uncanny ability to handle pitchers as a college catcher almost kept him from finding his perch on the mound, Hernandez’s two years at New Hampton School were defining. They also helped ground him in the beginnings of an ascent to something special. Surely, some Major League Baseball scout would have discovered him and his right arm, hurling in a summer league, but two years in Central New Hampshire was a salve of a different sort for a youngster from a good family that lived on 87th and Columbus in New York City.
The year before Hernandez made his way from Manhattan to New Hampton, he was peering down the aisle of a different future. His mother stopped working because she was sick and the family needed more income to complement his Dad’s tailoring business (Hernandez’s first suit in the Big Leagues came from his Dad). Instead of hitting home runs and firing out runners from his catcher’s position for his high school team, Hernandez dropped out of school and bagged groceries for an entire year.
A summer job with the City, though, offered a unique chance to become part of Dome, a program that placed inner-city kids who showed promise at boarding schools. Roberto Hernandez found himself at Exit 23 in the fall of 1982.
“I took a gamble,” Hernandez says. “But I knew what it was like to work 9 to 5 and not have a high school education and work at a supermarket.”
And he never looked back. Hernandez never struggled with being out of his comfort zone. Unlike many inner-city minority students who find themselves in a bucolic, prep school setting packed with white students, he did not have one foot still in New York as he adjusted to his prep school opportunity.
“I think being away matured me to what I am today. Believe me, the first month I was shell-shocked,” he recalls. “I was from New York and here I was with mountains, green grass all around me, and I wake up and there’s six feet of snow and I have to go to class. I had to grow up and be accountable for my actions. I needed to be an adult. God had put me there for a reason.”
Hernandez embraced the experience, flipped burgers at the Student Union, and was a friend to many.
“I made such good friends there: Whit Lesure, Ms. (Judy) Harvey, Lou (Gnerre), Steve Eichenbaum ’83, Jen Shackett (Berry) ’83, Huff (William) Canon ’86 and so many other students that were there,” recalls Hernandez.
Back
By Will McCulloch
The batter had never experienced anything like it before. A pre-med student and a member of the Harvard University junior varsity baseball team, he was trying to fathom on a spring afternoon in 1984 how New Hampton School pitcher Roberto Hernandez ’84 was throwing a curveball that started out at his ear and dipped across the plate and out of the strike zone.
He had expected a leisurely game with a prep school squad from the sticks, and ended up in a meeting with baseball’s answer to a brain surgeon. The batter called time, and in a move so foreign to the rhythms of the game, he addressed the man on the mound.
“Listen,” he said, pleading with Hernandez to stop throwing his deuce. “I’m pre-med and I don’t need this. I can’t hit the fastball, so just throw me the heat.”
Perhaps a few years later, watching baseball on television in between residency shifts, the pre-med student would be able to identify to friends the big league player who had injected so much fear into his afternoon years before.
Little did he know that Hernandez, the 6-foot-4 specimen with the golden arm who wore the Husky green, cradled so much more than a killer hook and a fastball that would fuel a 17-year playing career in the big leagues. Hernandez was equally adept at overcoming challenges and living his life in a way that resulted in few bases on balls.
Roberto Hernandez’s impressive odyssey as a pro pitcher is not a spectacular feat when one merely considers the right arm with which he was blessed. Still, the career statistics tell the story of an athlete who left his mark on the game and frustrated hitters from coast to coast with an overpowering selection of pitches masked by an effortless delivery.
Though he never won a World Series ring, he enjoyed tremendous success. A first-round draft pick of the Angels in 1986, Hernandez had a career that few relievers not in the Baseball Hall of Fame can boast. He appeared in 1,010 games—one of only 11 pitchers to have appeared in more than 1,000—and finished with 326 career saves, which is good enough for twelfth all time.
He had a career-high 43 saves in 1999 with the Devil Rays, a squad that had only 69 victories that season. He was twice an All-Star in 1996 and 1999, made millions of dollars—including a big contract late in his career—led the league in games finished for three straight seasons, developed a cringeworthy split-fingered fastball, and routinely tipped 100 miles-per-hour on stadium radar guns. Hall of Famer Joe Morgan eyed Hernandez in one of the right-hander’s first television appearances and declared, “I have never seen someone throw low gas like that since Bob Gibson.”
For 17 years, the gas was in the tank. And now, nearly four years removed from his last appearance on the mound, it’s not uncommon to find Hernandez crouched behind home plate on warm evenings in St. Petersburg, Florida, catching pitches from 11-year-old ballplayers on his son’s baseball team. He has returned to the position that almost kept him off the mound. For all his success, there were detours in the journey that could have led him far from a Major League bullpen, far from the enigmatic lifestyle of a professional baseball player.
You can be sure, though, Hernandez would have found happiness and peace; they seem embedded in his personality, as natural as his arm strength.
Though a blood clot in his throwing arm nearly stole his dream of playing in the big leagues and his uncanny ability to handle pitchers as a college catcher almost kept him from finding his perch on the mound, Hernandez’s two years at New Hampton School were defining. They also helped ground him in the beginnings of an ascent to something special. Surely, some Major League Baseball scout would have discovered him and his right arm, hurling in a summer league, but two years in Central New Hampshire was a salve of a different sort for a youngster from a good family that lived on 87th and Columbus in New York City.
The year before Hernandez made his way from Manhattan to New Hampton, he was peering down the aisle of a different future. His mother stopped working because she was sick and the family needed more income to complement his Dad’s tailoring business (Hernandez’s first suit in the Big Leagues came from his Dad). Instead of hitting home runs and firing out runners from his catcher’s position for his high school team, Hernandez dropped out of school and bagged groceries for an entire year.
A summer job with the City, though, offered a unique chance to become part of Dome, a program that placed inner-city kids who showed promise at boarding schools. Roberto Hernandez found himself at Exit 23 in the fall of 1982.
“I took a gamble,” Hernandez says. “But I knew what it was like to work 9 to 5 and not have a high school education and work at a supermarket.”
And he never looked back. Hernandez never struggled with being out of his comfort zone. Unlike many inner-city minority students who find themselves in a bucolic, prep school setting packed with white students, he did not have one foot still in New York as he adjusted to his prep school opportunity.
“I think being away matured me to what I am today. Believe me, the first month I was shell-shocked,” he recalls. “I was from New York and here I was with mountains, green grass all around me, and I wake up and there’s six feet of snow and I have to go to class. I had to grow up and be accountable for my actions. I needed to be an adult. God had put me there for a reason.”
Hernandez embraced the experience, flipped burgers at the Student Union, and was a friend to many.
“I made such good friends there: Whit Lesure, Ms. (Judy) Harvey, Lou (Gnerre), Steve Eichenbaum ’83, Jen Shackett (Berry) ’83, Huff (William) Canon ’86 and so many other students that were there,” recalls Hernandez.
William Canon was Hernandez’s best friend. He remembers the day he first saw Hernandez in the summer of 1982. Canon was playing some sport under the shade of the hockey rink and Hernandez walked in as part of his tour of the school. Canon had his baseball glove with him and the two played catch for the first time. It was the beginning of an enduring friendship that brought a New York City kid originally from Puerto Rico together with a faculty kid from New Hampshire.
They played football, basketball, and baseball together, but were always linked by baseball during Hernandez’s two years at New Hampton. Canon, who lives in New Jersey and works in finance, lived in Caswell House where his mother Judy Harvey was the faculty in residence. Roberto was a fixture at their house, even on breaks from school when he couldn’t get back to New York. Canon, who went on to hold home run and RBI records at Tufts University, has the tangible proof of Hernandez’s affinity for airing out his arm on a regular basis.
“My left hand is a little bigger than my right,” Canon muses. “He flattened my hand out. ”Canon knew from the beginning that he was in the presence of someone uniquely talented, a person who was not only built to play baseball but also had the mental capacity and maturity to know what it would take to succeed. Though the duo played other sports, Canon and Hernandez were constantly hitting and throwing in the offseason. Hernandez always considered his arm, treating it like a respected family heirloom.
“He’d sit at his desk in his dorm room and he always had a wiffle ball filled with change, wrapped in hockey tape,” Canon says. “He would roll it around and keep his wrist strong and loose. “I remember talking to Coach Gnerre and saying ‘if this guy doesn’t make it to the big leagues, I don’t know who is,’” Canon says.
Hernandez made it to the big leagues, but it wasn’t necessarily the position Canon would have predicted. Yes, the very capable catcher could hit, too. He had long arms that seemed to stretch to his ankles, and tucked away behind his pitching career is the fact that Hernandez had serious power with a bat. Legend suggests that he hit a ball from home plate that landed on Russell House—easily a 500-foot shot.
“If he lived in an era when he could do both,” Canon explains, “he would have been Babe Ruth.”
When Hernandez swung a bat or threw a ball, it was athleticism and physics melding into power. He had strong hips that created incredible force. But while some hitters lack discipline and many pitchers have an arm but no accuracy, Hernandez had both. The only thing he lacked was decent speed.
“He was slow as molasses and he had bad knees,” Canon says.
Canon could talk for days about his old friend, but it never resembles worship of a professional athlete. Even after Hernandez pitched in the major leagues and enjoyed success, Hernandez was “the same old Roberto."
"He was so upbeat. A nicer man you could not meet,” Canon says. “No matter what he did he would have succeeded because everyone wanted him to succeed.
“You can’t imagine a better influence. He lived his life the right way. He was respectful and you never saw him in a foul mood.”
Lou gnerre, the head baseball coach at the time, will never take credit for Hernandez becoming a Major League pitcher, but he might have had a little something to do with Hernandez becoming one of the most respected gentlemen in baseball.
“He taught us to respect the game,” Hernandez says of Gnerre. “It’s okay to be a superstar, but don’t flaunt it, treat opponents with respect, and play with passion. Whatever you do, do it with passion.
“He showed us all how to treat people. He treated people the way he would want to be treated. He demanded respect. When he talked, we listened; but it wasn’t out of fear. He loved his kids. He loved us all equally and gave us the same treatment. If you got out of line, you got the wrath of Lou.”
A three-sport athlete, Hernandez excelled as a quarterback in football with an arm that could toss a ball 80 yards (a number of schools including Brown recruited him), as a contributor on Whit Lesure’s burgeoning basketball teams of that era, and of course on the baseball diamond.
“The first season rolled around and he came out as a catcher. He was a great all-around player,” explains Gnerre. “He had an arm like a rocket and he could throw a baseball through a brick wall.”
The struggle was finding someone to catch him when the Huskies needed a reliever and he took off the catching gear. Chris Day ’84 was Hernandez’s teammate for one year at New Hampton. When he returns to the Gnerre Diamond each spring as a coach of the nearby Holderness School’s team, the memories of playing with Hernandez come flooding back.
“He pitched very rarely,” Day says. “I remember catching him and he threw so hard. He had a really heavy ball, and it hurt my hand. Opposing players were terrified of him.”
That spring remains embedded in Day’s memory. He recalls a squad packed with hockey players, Hernandez’s enduring, simple pitching mechanics, and the day the future big leaguer went 4-for-4 against a team and even got a hit when they tried to walk him intentionally.
“He was the antithesis of the cocky athlete,” Day says.
Gnerre brought Hernandez on some college visits during his senior year, but nothing seemed to be resulting in a confirmed destination.
“We were thrashing about for a place for him to go,” Gnerre recalls.
In the modern age, Hernandez would have been on somebody’s draft board by the time he graduated from New Hampton, but he ended up landing a spot at the University of Connecticut after Head Coach Andy Baylock watched him catch, throw, and handle a bat in a late-spring workout. Baylock gave him a scholarship, and Hernandez found himself in Storrs in the fall of 1984.
It was at that time when the pitching mound began to become more and more attractive.
“Something happened,” Hernandez recalls. “I talked to Coach Baylock and it seemed like it went in one ear and out another.”
By the time the fall season had wrapped up, Hernandez had beaten out two upperclassmen for the starting catcher’s job. He spent the spring mowing down runners who tried to steal second with darts from his knees. The UConn pitchers were comfortable. They had found a charismatic receiver, a catcher who really thought the game and understood their tendencies.
Meantime, Hernandez tossed only a few innings that year, and headed to Summer League in Virginia with a lingering question in his mind. How can I get more innings on the mound? He thought Summer League might be the opportunity, but his catching ability once again kept him in a crouch.
“I was the only catcher on the team,” he says. “I caught every game, but pleaded with the coach to get another catcher.”
Finally another backstop arrived, and Hernandez got his shot. It wasn’t his usual middle-of-the-game chance in which he had to take off the gear and warm up quickly. He started a game, pitched seven innings, struck out nine, and allowed only three hits. A college coach told him what was already brewing in his mind: “You can be a great catcher, but you can be a better pitcher.”
With his UConn coach barnstorming North America with the U.S. National Team, Hernandez could not get in contact with Baylock. He decided to transfer to the University of South Carolina-Aiken, an NAIA program where he could play immediately without sitting out. The school later named the field after Hernandez.
“For years I thought Lou was disappointed at me because I left UConn,” Hernandez says. “I hated leaving UConn. I loved it. But I wanted to pitch.”
Gnerre and Hernandez lost track of each other, until Gnerre spotted his old player on the television.
“I turned on the TV and I said, ‘I know that guy,’” Gnerre says.
Hernandez began sending tickets to Lou and the old coach would bring a caravan of fans from New Hampton down to Fenway when he was in town.
“It was a blast,” Hernandez recalls.
Hernandez never forgets, and his years in the spotlight do not cloud his perspective on what was important. In nearly two decades in baseball, his crowning achievement in his own eyes is his debut, the night his dream was fulfilled, the night he hijacked Bo Jackson’s return to baseball from a hip injury with a no hitter through six innings. What most of the media did not know was that only a few months earlier, Hernandez was in a hospital listening to a doctor talk about a 50/50 chance that a blood clot in his right arm was going to end his career. The news was more than catching gear blocking his big league dream.
“The doctor gave me a glimmer of hope from June 4, until August 30, 1991,” says Hernandez, who recovered beautifully.
What unraveled was a terrific career and unprecedented health. Hernandez used his knowledge from being a catcher to become a better pitcher, and discovered that he had the necessary mentality to succeed on the mound. “It took me years of believing in myself. I didn’t want to be the center of attention, but the game doesn’t start until the pitcher throws the ball.”
The even-keeled Hernandez appropriately ended up in the bullpen, and it was there that he learned as much about people as he did about finishing a game under the tutelage of Bobby Thigpen.
“Thigpen set the record for most saves in a season in 1993 and he was tutoring me on what to do and what not to do,” recalls Hernandez, who became a mentor to many young pitchers. “He helped me to take his job.”
Hernandez already was the generous type, but as he developed into a dominating closer, baseball folks became increasingly aware of the type of guy with whom they were dealing. He was voted a “Good Guy in Sports” on a number of occasions and donated a chunk of salary to charities in Puerto Rico, where he was born before migrating to New York. “I grew up with nothing and I know what it’s like to want things and not be able to get them,” he says.
Hernandez retired in 2007 and has a made an easy transition to life outside of pro ball. He doesn’t miss the long plane rides or nights in hotels, but it’s hard to replace the adrenaline injection you get when you jog on to the field from the bullpen and the clubhouse camaraderie. Hernandez is not the nostalgic type, though. He feels blessed to have played for no-baloney managers like Dusty Baker and Bobby Cox and develop a lifelong friendship with Ozzie Guillen, “who taught me to be a professional on and off the field” and is the godfather to his son.
Hernandez and his wife Ivonne have a daughter Kairy, who is a student at Louisiana State, and two sons, Roberto Jr. (16) and Jose (11). Hernandez spends a lot of time with his new baby grandson Emanuel, supports efforts in his local community, and coaches his sons’ teams where he grapples with the challenge to teach kids of the video-game generation what it takes to be a successful athlete.
“I get more nervous coaching 11-year-olds because I have no control of it,” Hernandez says.
Control and consistency are qualities Hernandez has always carried with or without the ball in his hands. Whether it was Central Park, New Hampton’s playing fields, Big League Parks, or for teammates, friends, or family, there was certainty that Roberto Hernandez would deliver. And that has never changed.
They played football, basketball, and baseball together, but were always linked by baseball during Hernandez’s two years at New Hampton. Canon, who lives in New Jersey and works in finance, lived in Caswell House where his mother Judy Harvey was the faculty in residence. Roberto was a fixture at their house, even on breaks from school when he couldn’t get back to New York. Canon, who went on to hold home run and RBI records at Tufts University, has the tangible proof of Hernandez’s affinity for airing out his arm on a regular basis.
“My left hand is a little bigger than my right,” Canon muses. “He flattened my hand out. ”Canon knew from the beginning that he was in the presence of someone uniquely talented, a person who was not only built to play baseball but also had the mental capacity and maturity to know what it would take to succeed. Though the duo played other sports, Canon and Hernandez were constantly hitting and throwing in the offseason. Hernandez always considered his arm, treating it like a respected family heirloom.
“He’d sit at his desk in his dorm room and he always had a wiffle ball filled with change, wrapped in hockey tape,” Canon says. “He would roll it around and keep his wrist strong and loose. “I remember talking to Coach Gnerre and saying ‘if this guy doesn’t make it to the big leagues, I don’t know who is,’” Canon says.
Hernandez made it to the big leagues, but it wasn’t necessarily the position Canon would have predicted. Yes, the very capable catcher could hit, too. He had long arms that seemed to stretch to his ankles, and tucked away behind his pitching career is the fact that Hernandez had serious power with a bat. Legend suggests that he hit a ball from home plate that landed on Russell House—easily a 500-foot shot.
“If he lived in an era when he could do both,” Canon explains, “he would have been Babe Ruth.”
When Hernandez swung a bat or threw a ball, it was athleticism and physics melding into power. He had strong hips that created incredible force. But while some hitters lack discipline and many pitchers have an arm but no accuracy, Hernandez had both. The only thing he lacked was decent speed.
“He was slow as molasses and he had bad knees,” Canon says.
Canon could talk for days about his old friend, but it never resembles worship of a professional athlete. Even after Hernandez pitched in the major leagues and enjoyed success, Hernandez was “the same old Roberto."
"He was so upbeat. A nicer man you could not meet,” Canon says. “No matter what he did he would have succeeded because everyone wanted him to succeed.
“You can’t imagine a better influence. He lived his life the right way. He was respectful and you never saw him in a foul mood.”
Lou gnerre, the head baseball coach at the time, will never take credit for Hernandez becoming a Major League pitcher, but he might have had a little something to do with Hernandez becoming one of the most respected gentlemen in baseball.
“He taught us to respect the game,” Hernandez says of Gnerre. “It’s okay to be a superstar, but don’t flaunt it, treat opponents with respect, and play with passion. Whatever you do, do it with passion.
“He showed us all how to treat people. He treated people the way he would want to be treated. He demanded respect. When he talked, we listened; but it wasn’t out of fear. He loved his kids. He loved us all equally and gave us the same treatment. If you got out of line, you got the wrath of Lou.”
A three-sport athlete, Hernandez excelled as a quarterback in football with an arm that could toss a ball 80 yards (a number of schools including Brown recruited him), as a contributor on Whit Lesure’s burgeoning basketball teams of that era, and of course on the baseball diamond.
“The first season rolled around and he came out as a catcher. He was a great all-around player,” explains Gnerre. “He had an arm like a rocket and he could throw a baseball through a brick wall.”
The struggle was finding someone to catch him when the Huskies needed a reliever and he took off the catching gear. Chris Day ’84 was Hernandez’s teammate for one year at New Hampton. When he returns to the Gnerre Diamond each spring as a coach of the nearby Holderness School’s team, the memories of playing with Hernandez come flooding back.
“He pitched very rarely,” Day says. “I remember catching him and he threw so hard. He had a really heavy ball, and it hurt my hand. Opposing players were terrified of him.”
That spring remains embedded in Day’s memory. He recalls a squad packed with hockey players, Hernandez’s enduring, simple pitching mechanics, and the day the future big leaguer went 4-for-4 against a team and even got a hit when they tried to walk him intentionally.
“He was the antithesis of the cocky athlete,” Day says.
Gnerre brought Hernandez on some college visits during his senior year, but nothing seemed to be resulting in a confirmed destination.
“We were thrashing about for a place for him to go,” Gnerre recalls.
In the modern age, Hernandez would have been on somebody’s draft board by the time he graduated from New Hampton, but he ended up landing a spot at the University of Connecticut after Head Coach Andy Baylock watched him catch, throw, and handle a bat in a late-spring workout. Baylock gave him a scholarship, and Hernandez found himself in Storrs in the fall of 1984.
It was at that time when the pitching mound began to become more and more attractive.
“Something happened,” Hernandez recalls. “I talked to Coach Baylock and it seemed like it went in one ear and out another.”
By the time the fall season had wrapped up, Hernandez had beaten out two upperclassmen for the starting catcher’s job. He spent the spring mowing down runners who tried to steal second with darts from his knees. The UConn pitchers were comfortable. They had found a charismatic receiver, a catcher who really thought the game and understood their tendencies.
Meantime, Hernandez tossed only a few innings that year, and headed to Summer League in Virginia with a lingering question in his mind. How can I get more innings on the mound? He thought Summer League might be the opportunity, but his catching ability once again kept him in a crouch.
“I was the only catcher on the team,” he says. “I caught every game, but pleaded with the coach to get another catcher.”
Finally another backstop arrived, and Hernandez got his shot. It wasn’t his usual middle-of-the-game chance in which he had to take off the gear and warm up quickly. He started a game, pitched seven innings, struck out nine, and allowed only three hits. A college coach told him what was already brewing in his mind: “You can be a great catcher, but you can be a better pitcher.”
With his UConn coach barnstorming North America with the U.S. National Team, Hernandez could not get in contact with Baylock. He decided to transfer to the University of South Carolina-Aiken, an NAIA program where he could play immediately without sitting out. The school later named the field after Hernandez.
“For years I thought Lou was disappointed at me because I left UConn,” Hernandez says. “I hated leaving UConn. I loved it. But I wanted to pitch.”
Gnerre and Hernandez lost track of each other, until Gnerre spotted his old player on the television.
“I turned on the TV and I said, ‘I know that guy,’” Gnerre says.
Hernandez began sending tickets to Lou and the old coach would bring a caravan of fans from New Hampton down to Fenway when he was in town.
“It was a blast,” Hernandez recalls.
Hernandez never forgets, and his years in the spotlight do not cloud his perspective on what was important. In nearly two decades in baseball, his crowning achievement in his own eyes is his debut, the night his dream was fulfilled, the night he hijacked Bo Jackson’s return to baseball from a hip injury with a no hitter through six innings. What most of the media did not know was that only a few months earlier, Hernandez was in a hospital listening to a doctor talk about a 50/50 chance that a blood clot in his right arm was going to end his career. The news was more than catching gear blocking his big league dream.
“The doctor gave me a glimmer of hope from June 4, until August 30, 1991,” says Hernandez, who recovered beautifully.
What unraveled was a terrific career and unprecedented health. Hernandez used his knowledge from being a catcher to become a better pitcher, and discovered that he had the necessary mentality to succeed on the mound. “It took me years of believing in myself. I didn’t want to be the center of attention, but the game doesn’t start until the pitcher throws the ball.”
The even-keeled Hernandez appropriately ended up in the bullpen, and it was there that he learned as much about people as he did about finishing a game under the tutelage of Bobby Thigpen.
“Thigpen set the record for most saves in a season in 1993 and he was tutoring me on what to do and what not to do,” recalls Hernandez, who became a mentor to many young pitchers. “He helped me to take his job.”
Hernandez already was the generous type, but as he developed into a dominating closer, baseball folks became increasingly aware of the type of guy with whom they were dealing. He was voted a “Good Guy in Sports” on a number of occasions and donated a chunk of salary to charities in Puerto Rico, where he was born before migrating to New York. “I grew up with nothing and I know what it’s like to want things and not be able to get them,” he says.
Hernandez retired in 2007 and has a made an easy transition to life outside of pro ball. He doesn’t miss the long plane rides or nights in hotels, but it’s hard to replace the adrenaline injection you get when you jog on to the field from the bullpen and the clubhouse camaraderie. Hernandez is not the nostalgic type, though. He feels blessed to have played for no-baloney managers like Dusty Baker and Bobby Cox and develop a lifelong friendship with Ozzie Guillen, “who taught me to be a professional on and off the field” and is the godfather to his son.
Hernandez and his wife Ivonne have a daughter Kairy, who is a student at Louisiana State, and two sons, Roberto Jr. (16) and Jose (11). Hernandez spends a lot of time with his new baby grandson Emanuel, supports efforts in his local community, and coaches his sons’ teams where he grapples with the challenge to teach kids of the video-game generation what it takes to be a successful athlete.
“I get more nervous coaching 11-year-olds because I have no control of it,” Hernandez says.
Control and consistency are qualities Hernandez has always carried with or without the ball in his hands. Whether it was Central Park, New Hampton’s playing fields, Big League Parks, or for teammates, friends, or family, there was certainty that Roberto Hernandez would deliver. And that has never changed.
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