NEW YORK — Everything coming from the Mets this offseason seems to be sending a clear message: things are going to be different now.
Whether it’s fitting the roster with a former Cy Young winner and multiple All-Stars, bringing in an establishment-type manager or adding a new general manager to work under Steve Cohen’s still fresh ownership, the club is hellbent on burying its reputation of dysfunction.
On Wednesday, in the dead of a lockout that’s ground most baseball news to a halt, the Mets made another move that fans had been waiting on for years. Keith Hernandez’s No. 17 is now officially one of the Mets’ retired numbers, something that the legendary first baseman-turned-broadcaster said he genuinely thought would never happen.
“I was caught completely off guard,” Hernandez said of his reaction to the news. “I don’t think bewilderment is the right term, but I do feel like I’m lost in space that this happened to me.”
Once he found out, Hernandez tried, and failed, to tell his family.
“I couldn’t get a hold of anybody,” he chuckled. “No one answered.”
The jersey retirement ceremony will happen on July 9 when the Mets host the Marlins at Citi Field. Hernandez, the first captain in the club’s history, becomes the fourth player to have their number retired by the Mets. His 17 will hang proudly next to Jerry Koosman’s 36, Tom Seaver’s 41 and Mike Piazza’s 31. Managers Gil Hodges (14) and Casey Stengel (37) have also received the honor.
“I never would have dreamed this in a million years,” Hernandez said, also expressing how lucky and blessed he felt to join the retired number club. “It’s the highest honor an organization can give to a player. This puts you in a different stratosphere. It’s rarified air.”
Now that he has his uniform number retired, in addition to already being a member of the team’s Hall of Fame, the next frontier for Hernandez would be the Baseball Hall of Fame. The only path for him to get in would be through the Veterans Committee. When asked about this, Hernandez spouted some optimism.
“Do I want to get into the Hall of Fame? Well shoot, yeah,” he said of the game’s “gold standard” recognition in Cooperstown. “Maybe the analytics will have some play going forward. Maybe it’ll happen before I kick the bucket.”
Hernandez is on to something with the analytics. He had a .387 on-base percentage in his seven years with the Mets and accumulated more career Wins Above Replacement than Orlando Cepeda and Tony Perez, two first basemen who were inducted years ago. Hernandez laughed about being the exact type of player that Sandy Alderson — the Mets’ president who was also present on the Zoom call — would love to have on his 2022 roster.
Always the jokester, Hernandez also needled his friend, ex-teammate and broadcast partner Ron Darling. Calling in from Connecticut, Darling fought through connectivity issues to say he couldn’t be happier for Hernandez and compared the instant credibility that he brought to the Mets to the impact Mark Messier had upon joining the Rangers.
“All those taxes and you still get bad Wi-Fi,” Hernandez spat back at Darling.
The timing of the announcement strikes many fans as peculiar, or more specifically, long overdue. Hernandez played his last game for the Mets in 1989. Already one of the most decorated players to wear the blue and orange — Hernandez won a World Series and five straight Gold Gloves, made four All-Star teams and finished in the top ten of MVP voting four times in seven years as a Met — his number remained in circulation for roughly 33 years after his departure.
While the Mets have not issued number 17 since 2010 when Fernando Tatis wore it, Tatis is one of 14 players to get a crack at it after Hernandez. This angered or confused many people, especially since more than a few of the 17′s were utterly forgettable players.
“The equipment manager then was Charlie Samuels,” Hernandez remembered of the days when the likes of Kevin Appier, Graeme Lloyd and Dae-Sung Koo were cycling through number 17. “I almost went to Charlie and said, ‘What the heck are you doing?’ It’s like a JCPenney sale here.”
Those days are over now. As for why it took so long, the man himself said he noticed a shift as recently as a few months ago and could sense some good fortune heading his way.
“I never inquired,” Hernandez said of when he might get his turn. “It wasn’t something that crossed my mind. When they retired Koosman’s number (in 2021), I thought that things were going in the right direction and maybe it could happen. But it’s not something that I thought about, and it wasn’t going to ruin my day. If it happens it happens and if it doesn’t it doesn’t.”
At long last, it’s finally happened. As the Mets celebrate their 60th anniversary during the 2022 season, they’ll have Keith Hernandez’s jersey on display next to the other pillars of the franchise, right where it should have been years ago.
