Keith Hernandez showed both sides of himself during his Fox gig.

Photo from Andrew D. Bernstein and Getty Images. Screen: Fox/MLB. Illustration: AMC/Lionsgate. Photoshop: Good Fundies

“Keith is going to be Keith. It will be cool for the rest of the country to see it, I am really looking forward to that.” — Kevin Burkhardt, October 2017

“Everybody thinks, because you make a lot of money, that you have a lock on happiness. It’s not true…. I most fear boredom and loneliness, life after baseball. Life after baseball equals boredom and loneliness. I don’t want to be a 50-year-old guy sitting and drinking beer in some pickup bar with younger people. I’ve seen it. I don’t want to be that.” — Keith Hernandez, October 1986

It was a little surprising to find Keith Hernandez working deeper into the 2017 calendar than the New York Mets. This is the same guy who complained just this past August, on the air, that he had worked one extra game he was “not supposed to”. Then again Keith seemed downright overjoyed for Mets fans when he worked behind the SNY studio desk during the 2015 playoff run, has a book coming out next year he probably would like people to purchase, and might have figured appearing on national television for a month couldn’t hurt his chances at the Veterans Committee nominating him for the Baseball Hall of Fame (didn’t work, for now).

But it was a calculated risk to bring him on. Burkhardt’s vision of Hernandez is of the beloved cool uncle who says everything on his mind and tends to know more than anybody else about what is going on down on the field. You never want to ask him about anything related to the real world because you don’t want the friendship to end. The future version of himself, the one Hernandez shuddered at the thought of way back when, is that guy at the bar who says “everything” on his mind, who might know more about what is going on on the field than anybody else but lost the right to be taken seriously awhile ago. That guy talks about politics without provocation, and always with punctuation. He makes the grave mistake of trying to fit in with a younger generation by actively trying. That guy tends to suck.

That Keith is always lurking. The “Keith” Kevin Burkhardt wanted the world to see, and the “Keith” Keith Hernandez never wanted to become, are similar. And we saw glimpses of both in his one month working the postseason pregame and postgame shows for Fox and Fox Sports 1.

The lovable Keith is the one who is as human as us unwashed, never played baseball folk. On his first day, Hernandez was notably on the far left, closest to Burkhardt, the guy who was by far he was most accustomed to working with. Burkhardt essentially was a physical shield from Alex Rodriguez, David Ortiz, and Frank Thomas, making sure “Keithy” would not get bullied on day one. Every day after, ARod sat next to Burkhardt, with Ortiz, Hernandez, and Thomas a considerably distance away.

Fox/MLB

Lovable Keith also acknowledges his age and his status as “The Old Guy” on the crew. Ortiz figured Hernandez was 100 years old multiple times, both before and after they celebrated his 64th birthday. Keith laughed it off, as well as this, from his first night.

Fox/MLB

Yet Lovable Keith is not immune to vanity. During one of the World Series postgame shows, Fox ran Keith’s Just For Men commercial with Walt “Clyde” Frazier where Keith, to his admission, played a great voyeur. Thomas noted that Keith wasn’t using the product he has endorsed for many years that much. So on the next broadcast…

Fox/MLB

Lovable Keith also defends being a “Cat Man”. David Ortiz said, with what I found to be general earnestness, that he loved him. Frank Thomas was so taken with Keith’s “Who is going to blink first?” line he used it at least five times, always crediting Keith. ARod had said Keith was his favorite baseball player growing up, and said on numerous occasions that his idol had made a “good” or “great point”. Lovable Keith even improved ARod as an analyst: Three weeks after Keith obscured his good analysis of pitchers sometimes being too stubborn for their own good by saying “pitchers are the dumbest players on the planet”, ARod correctly predicted Clayton Kershaw would get shelled in Game 5 of the World Series for the exact same reason, without the juicy soundbite.

Bad Keith appeared about 30 minutes before none other than the seventh game of the World Series. He said something which sounded, particularly if you heard a nonexistent “no” in the sentence, to be homophobic after Ortiz attempted to lick him, mimicking Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig.

Hernandez knew he screwed up and released an official statement, during the game when nobody was paying attention:

I made a poor attempt at humor and never intended for it to be taken the wrong way. I am from San Francisco and as baseball fans know, the Dodgers/Giants rivalry runs deep. I did not grow up a Dodger fan and when it came down to Giants vs. Dodgers, I rooted for the Giants. I apologize if any offense was taken.

I believe Keith’s explanation. He is in fact from San Francisco, and out of all of the eyebrow raising statements he has made on the air and when he thought he was off the air over the years, he’s never said anything which has led me to think he has hatred in his heart for homosexuals. I really do think he did not know how to react to a grown man asking him how he would feel if a man licked him, and he blurted out the first remotely witty sounding thing that popped up in his brain. This is even considering it was not the first time Big Papi pretended to lick him. Then, Keith was so nonplussed he didn’t say anything at all.

But wow, Keith should have not said that. Since he is from San Francisco and is a well-read individual, it would be impossible for him not to know the city has a large LGBT community. He has also been a broadcaster for a long time now — he should have had something prepared if Ortiz did it again (Ortiz repeated a lot of phrases in October), or just went back to saying nothing. It put me, the co-founder of a podcast and website named after a saying of his, in a crappy spot. While I know I do not worship the man so much as am oddly fascinated with the duality I alluded to earlier, some people don’t. When one person on Twitter half-jokingly told me after the incident to never worship your idols, I came off defensive.

Keith’s Fox gig, at least for 2017, concluded with a champagne shower. It seemed like he did not enjoy it at all.

Fox/MLB

Watching it for the fifth time, I noticed the all too convenient camera work, namely th close up on Keith when he screams “What is wrong with you?!” Keith has been caught faking bits before, and it always rankles me a little bit. Is Keith Hernandez unaware that his humanity and honesty is what makes him beloved by Mets fans in his post-retirement days? Or does he know, but hide behind a caricature of himself because he believes his true honest self would lead him to a bar stool, bored and lonely, spouting his thoughts on the designated hitter and God knows what else to those who have learned not to listen?

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