Hernandez Can’t Be Found Now That He’s Needed

You don’t miss the leadership until the clubhouse runs dry. Albert Goodwill Spalding, as I recall, expressed that thought at his second spring training.

So now the well has run dry in the New York Mets’ dugout, and now that they need him, Keith Hernandez is nowhere to be found. Not really Hernandez the Mex, himself, because the ability to cause others to play better is made of such gossamer stuff that it wears out, but now there is no one with the stuff to play the role Hernandez did.

It was two weeks into the 1984 season, before the Mets had won a thing, when Ron Darling noted to Tim Leary -- both of them baseball babes -- “We’re probably playing with the best player we’re ever going to play with.”

Hernandez’s statistics don’t suggest that, but his performance on the field, in the dugout, in the clubhouse and on the bus did. Remember the scene of Jesse Orosco struggling in the 16th inning of the legendary playoff with Houston and Hernandez snarling to Gary Carter: “If you call another fastball, I’ll kill you. I’ll fight you right here.”

Do you think there’s any person on this team today who could do such a thing? “Nobody here,” Dwight Gooden said the other night.

Managers are fond of saying, “Every team that wins has to have somebody like that,” as Bud Harrelson said. Mostly those are managers who don’t have that quality on their team.

Leadership has to come from somebody who can take the heat and stay in the kitchen. Note that most of this team that has melted in the heat was assembled by Joe McIlvaine, a keen eye for playing talent who split for pacific San Diego when some of his trades were questioned in New York.

He left the drought, which is never so apparent as it is now with the bland leading the blind. “If we had a tough loss, Keith was the first in the clubhouse to say, ‘We’ll get ‘em tomorrow,’ ” David Cone said. That was a meaningless cliche, but in the context of the team, it wasn’t meaningless at all.

“In the heat of battle, he was the first to come to the mound and say the right thing,” Cone said. “He was fearless.”

That means unafraid to take a stand in front of teammates. “It takes guts to say, ‘Here we go; follow me,’ ” said coach Doc Edwards, who has managed. “Somebody who will put himself up in front of people and tell people what to do and not be afraid that if it doesn’t go right he’ll be ridiculed.”

Cone and Gooden recalled that there used to be several guys like that on their team. Most good teams have more than one guy unafraid to lead. Most often that comes about after one personality shows the way. Ray Knight was also an enforcer on those Mets, and the real Yankees had Keller and Bauer and more.

It wasn’t coincidence that Don Baylor moved to three successive World Series-bound teams. He would get in Jim Rice’s face if he had to. “If Keith had to get in your face, he’d get in your face,” Gooden said.

It’s not a flaw in Howard Johnson that he can lead only by example. He plays hard but he works out of his own locker. Essentially, Don Mattingly does the same. Dave Winfield is a subcontractor who delivers his contract and leaves it at that. Patrick Ewing is the same. They are not people to cause others around them to play better.

Hernandez would go to the mound and demand that Orosco show he had the right glands for the job. Or to Bob Ojeda: Show you have the manhood for the National League. This team has nobody who could tell Mark Carreon that the next time he tried to leave early he’d have to fight his way to the door, nobody to demand that Vince Coleman get his head out of his shorts. “When I had my problems,” Gooden said, “Keith was there. I could talk to him about anything.”

At the same time Hernandez was doing things like that in the clubhouse, he was directing the attention of players on the field. He was into every pitch and why shouldn’t they be?

“He always saw things to help you,” Gooden said. Hernandez would go to Gooden and point out that the hitter on deck couldn’t handle Gooden’s stuff and “if I threw the man at the plate a pitch to hit, he’d meet me after the game.”

He’d move infielders or outfielders and remind all of them what might happen. Some players need help in anticipating. “He looked at everybody,” Gooden said. “In a situation, like with a pinch hitter or a possible bunt, he’d come to me and say, ‘Give me two throws to first base so we see what’s going on.’ ”

These Mets are caught in their own whirlpool, “all concerned with our individual problems,” Cone said. “I’m trying to figure myself out, to have it all come to this.

“There’s something missing here. Maybe it’s a leader who wouldn’t have allowed it to happen.”

Self-pity becomes self-fulfilling prophecy. They are fatal illnesses.

Somebody was needed to treat the condition. Perhaps a manager could have. Tough Ralph Houk might have, but his best Yankees policed themselves. Davey Johnson got in the face of Kevin McReynolds and Darryl Strawberry when they left early. Johnson had his Hernandez, too.

That is, until Hernandez lost his grip on that team. It’s another rule of the game that when Hernandez was able to play every day, when he was able to hit a ball through the gap when the shortstop covered second base, when Hernandez was certain to get a run home from third base, his wisdom was more acceptable. When he wasn’t, Darling wasn’t so impressed any longer. With his own skills diminished, some of what Hernandez said appeared self-serving.

What Hernandez gave is rare stuff. Of all those Tim McCarver played with and against or described over the air, he maintains, “No one ever did more to help his team win.”

Cone asks, “How do you find or trade for guys like that?” Even Frank Cashen conceded he traded in anticipation of Hernandez’ playing talent but was blown away by what came with it.

This is not intended as a paean to the past but as an appeal to the future. When Hernandez arrived at that rudderless team, Davey Johnson and Cashen told him they expected him to insert himself into the mix. They are rudderless again.

“There is,” Cone said, “sort of an identity crisis on this team.”

Cashen is running this team for one more season. He saw what developed on the Orioles when Lee MacPhail brought Frank Robinson to the team. Cashen has to be receptive to bringing someone like that into the blend of ice milk -- vanilla, at that.

Before he can solve the problem, he first has to acknowledge it.