Richard Nixon and Donald Trump are no strangers to the New York Mets, especially Keith. They might even be…friends.

Screen: MLB/YouTube/Sportschannel New York. Photo: Andrew Mills/The Star-Ledger; Ron Frehm/Associated Press. Illustration: Good Fundies

Richard Nixon resigned as President of the United States on August 9, 1974. His future friend, Keith Hernandez, made his major league debut exactly three weeks later.

Friend might be too strong of a term. Richard Nixon’s grandson said Hernandez was his “friend” in 2010 while running for office somewhere (he lost), but I don’t know if Keith would agree, or if it particularly matters if he ever openly commented on it. Nixon most certainly moved to New Jersey in 1981 and gradually became a part of the Shea Stadium scene. Fran Healy interviewed Nixon after a game in 1987. (Why it wasn’t a Kiner’s Korner is a mystery. Did Kiner refuse, muttering malapropisms of ‘eskimo brother’ JFK and his ex Marilyn Monroe as he huffed to his car?) Nixon admonished the fans for booing Gary Carter before saying Hernandez is the best player on the team.

Nixon was also at Shea in ’87 to witness firsthand one of the worst losses in franchise history. Nixon and Mookie Wilson’s wife hugged after Mookie slugged a homer in the 2nd inning. They presumably did not do this when Ron Darling sustained his season-ending thumb injury, or when Cardinals third baseman Terry Pendleton smacked a game-tying 2-run homer with two outs in the top of the 9th to tie the game. St. Louis won in extras, adding to their slim division lead which they would never relinquish.

Nixon — and there’s no more fitting of a verb here — lurked in the dugout to congratulate David Cone on his 20th win of the 1988 season as soon as humanly possible.

When Darling was traded to the Montreal Expos in July 1991, a certain ex-president wrote him a letter. Gary Cohen gleefully noted that he signed it “Dick.”

Nixon’s guy was Keith. They had three lunches together in the mid-1980s, according to Hernandez in 2009 and in 2015. For the recent 50th anniversary issue of New York Magazine, Hernandez bumped the total up to “five or six.” In each version, Nixon asked questions about baseball until one fateful meal when Hernandez insisted he be allowed to ask about politics, and Nixon acquiesced. In 2015, Keith said Nixon schooled him on “Russia and China” for “45 minutes”. For New York, he doubled the length of the convo and added “the Vietnamese” and “the Germans” to the curriculum. Is Hernandez suddenly embellishing his relationship? Is he simply forgetting the actual details? Does he feel that the passage of time makes it more okay to admit he spent the equivalent of a full work week of lunches with Richard Milhous Nixon?

Former First Lady Pat Nixon passed away in 1993. Hernandez called the most famous widower he knew to pass along his condolences. Nixon wrote Keith a letter thanking him for the gesture. Hernandez went to the grand opening of the Harley Davidson Cafe in New York City a few months later.

Ivanka Trump eyeing Keith and not the alleged murderer. Good for her.

The Landmark Designation Commission did not do its job and let the Harley Davidson Cafe close, but Trump’s relationship with Hernandez and the Mets lived on. Like Nixon, Trump was present during a brutal defeat against Hernandez’s other team. Trump claimed he would buy the Mets in 2011 “if they needed help”. (“Fred [Wilpon] is a friend of mine.”) Last week, Keith Hernandez attended Trump’s New Year’s bash at Mar-a-Lago.

It was not surprising to see that photo during the final hours of 2017. In the aforementioned 2015 talk with The New York Times, Hernandez spoke highly of Republican POTUS candidate Carly Fiorina. “She is smart. I think she can play with the boys. Margaret Thatcheresque,” he said. Fiorina ended up as Ted Cruz’s VP running mate for seven days, reportedly the shortest VP candidate tenure in US history. Hernandez lives in Florida during the offseason, and Mar-a-Lago is probably near one of his homes there, and Keith made fun of Hillary Clinton at least once during a Mets game, and here we are. Donald Trump and Keith Hernandez are probably friends.

It is easy to see the potential repercussions of this. Former Met Carlos Beltran — who some will sadly never forgive for the most recent aforementioned crushing loss to the Cardinals — has done more for Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria than Trump (not that it’s hard to do more than Trump did). Current Mets with Puerto Rican heritage — Seth Lugo, T.J. Rivera, Tomas Nido, and bullpen coach Ricky Bones — can’t be too pleased with Hernandez, who was nicknamed “Mex” even though his father’s family emigrated from Spain.

It’s likely Keith will get away with it, because getting away with it is what Keith Hernandez does. It’s likely every major league baseball clubhouse has been divided between Trump supporters and those who hate his guts for over a year now, and players learned to play alongside one another despite of it. It’s a nice thought, yet there’s still someone hanging around the proverbial and literal ballpark. Someone with more power than any man should have. Lurking.

Looming.

Ready to disrupt everything we hold dear.

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