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Kids, doing drugs is bad...unless it might contribute to your becoming a New York Met and winning us a World Series. (Only kidding, kids -- just say no). Steve Marcus [url=http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/mets/ny-spkeith0615,0,5942127.story]traces[/url] the possibly powdery genesis of the Keith Hernandez deal, consummated 25 years ago today.
Most shocking revelation? Joe McDonald is still a scout.
]The 25th anniversary of the most significant trade in Mets history includes a historic footnote. It might never have occurred if the Mets' front office knew why the Cardinals were unloading Keith Hernandez.
Years before he became a central piece of the 1986 world champion Mets and gained iconic status in team history, Hernandez abused cocaine, an issue not publicly confirmed until Hernandez and several other players testified in the 1985 Pittsburgh drug trials.
The back story of the trade offers a look at the major-league baseball climate in the pre-steroid and largely ignored substance-abuse years of the sport.
Hernandez, now a popular analyst for Mets games on SNY, said the Cardinals undoubtedly suspected his drug use before trading him to the Mets for pitchers Neil Allen and Rick Ownbey. "They couldn't have traded me if it got out," Hernandez said recently as he reflected on the deal that brought him to the Mets on June 15, 1983.
Hernandez rarely has discussed his past addiction, which he has said lasted about three years and ended before his arrival to the Mets.
"It was a difficult time in my life. I was in and out of my first marriage," Hernandez said. "I was fooling around with drugs, the coke, we all know that. I don't want to say on a recreational basis -- I hate that word. There were some nights when I was up all night. I didn't sleep. It was very destructive. This is not a performance-enhancing drug; this is a performance-destructive drug. I just made up my mind I wanted to stop."
It wasn't easy, Hernandez said, adding, "It is that alluring."
In June '83, Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog couched the trade of Hernandez as saying the Cardinals needed more pitching. At worst, Hernandez was pictured as having an attitude problem, which Hernandez agreed was part of the issue. But it went deeper than that.
Herzog never has publicly discussed his suspicions about Hernandez. "I can't say I knew Keith had been doing drugs," Herzog said in his 1988 book "White Rat, a Life in Baseball," which was co-authored with St. Louis columnist Kevin Horrigan.
"What the hell," Herzog was quoted in the book, "unless you spot a guy snorting coke or smoking marijuana, or unless some reliable witness comes to you or it blows up in the press, you never know for sure ... There were things about him that made me suspicious, but I can live with suspicions. What I couldn't live with was his attitude."
Herzog went to Cardinals owner August Busch and, according to Herzog's book, the beer baron told him to "trade the son of a bitch." Busch died in 1989 at age 90. A spokesman for Anheuser-Busch refused to respond to what role Busch played in the Hernandez trade.
Speaking on the topic today, Herzog still avoids the drug issue. "Keith was a hell of a ballplayer," he told Newsday. "I didn't want to trade him, I was ordered to [presumably by Busch]."
Asked the reason, Herzog snapped: "I haven't talked about it in 25 years, I'm sure as hell not going to talk about it now."
Hernandez said the Cardinals never directly asked him if he had a drug problem.
Then-Mets general manager Frank Cashen said he had heard some issues about Hernandez's marital problems and "that he was not getting along with Whitey, but I had not heard that rumor [of cocaine use] at that point in time."
As the trade deadline approached, Herzog dispatched Cardinals GM Joe McDonald to offer Hernandez to Cashen. "I was sitting at my desk one day and Joe McDonald called me," Cashen, now 82, said from Port St. Lucie. "He said, 'Have you ever thought about trading Neil Allen?' I said 'Why would I want to trade him?' He said 'Well, if you talk about Neil Allen, we'll talk about Mex [Hernandez's nickname].' I was stunned. The whole thing was done in a couple of phone calls at a total time of about 10 minutes."
McDonald, 79, a Red Sox scout, refused comment.
Cashen's staff members were equally amazed that Hernandez, a former co-National League MVP and five-time Gold Glove winner, was being made available. "I was standing by Frank and he had this huge smile on his face," former vice president of administration Jim Nagourney said. "I said, 'What's up, Frank?' He told me. I said, 'For gosh sakes, take that smile off your face and make the phone call.' He was so hysterically happy that he was having a hard time .dialing to say yes."
The baseball environment was not used to dealing with drugs. Alcohol and, to a lesser extent, amphetamines -- which the players called greenies -- were the only known problems in the baseball culture. And they were given scant attention.
"In the '80s, trades were not based on that stuff ," said Joe McIlvaine, who was the Mets' director of scouting at the time. "The Players Association had such control that we absolutely had no way of testing or proving or getting information. We weren't even allowed to discuss those kind of things."
Hernandez said he did not cry uncontrollably over the trade (as was reported at the time), but he wasn't thrilled with it, either. "Maybe I needed a new challenge," he said. "It definitely rejuvenated my career."
He learned to love New York and was looked up to by the young and talented Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden.
"Looking back," Hernandez said, "I have to sometimes pinch myself" for the good fortune of the trade.
Hernandez has repaired his relationship with Herzog. When Hernandez was inducted into the Missouri Hall of Fame last winter, he gave an impassioned speech about Herzog's influence in his career, calling him the best manager he ever played for.
"Hernandez also wrote to Herzog. "I got a beautiful letter from him," Herzog said. "He is a heck of a man." |
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