Keith Hernandez played first base better than anyone of the late 1970s and ’80s. He was an acrobat in the field—snaring line drives, tumbling and throwing out runners, charging bunts to within 15 feet of the batter, when few other first basemen would charge within 45 feet ... For the chatty, informative, witty I’m Keith Hernandez, it’s as if Mr. Hernandez has met us—his reader—for a drink one early evening, and he’s going to divulge a bit about his past ... Keith Hernandez, you must understand, does things his way—and if you’re sharp enough to notice—it’s usually a better way ... a grand slam home run of a book about 1970s and ’80’s baseball, and a wonderful book about the hardest thing to master in all of sports: swinging a stick to mightily redirect a curving sphere zipping 95 miles per hour.
Keith Hernandez doesn’t like baseball memoirs. 'It feels like they’ve become a paint-by-numbers exercise,' the former first baseman laments at the outset of his own entry in the genre. What he offers instead is an impressionistic account of his baseball boyhood, a kind of “Remembrance of At-Bats Past,” complete with a baked good to set the memories in motion.
I’m Keith Hernandez is stuffed with bad writing choices. Almost half the pages have a footnote that offers a superfluous fact or purposeless story. Some passages are inset for no evident reason ... Hernandez’s writing style is frustrating, but the book is a failure because he resists any clear-eyed reckoning with his insecurities ... Hernandez does not explain why he lacked self-belief. Perhaps it is unclear to him. But it is obvious to any reader: His father, John, a former minor league first baseman, forced his major league dreams upon his son ... I’m Keith Hernandez does not grapple with the irony of his rise to stardom. Without his father’s tutelage and drive, he may have never reached the big leagues. Yet to be truly great, he had to shape his own destiny and become his own man ... 'I realized why he’d been so hard on me,' he reflects [about his father] ... This final gesture of acceptance seems inauthentic, reflecting an unwillingness to confront his demons. It provides an unsatisfying ending to a flawed book.
His book is weird. I’m not saying I didn’t admire the approach—a failure-drenched coming-of-age-in-the-minors tale, alternating with snapshots of a cranky broadcaster slogging his way down the Long Island Expressway ... There are good stories of being red-assed by Bob Gibson and sagely mentored by Lou Brock, of encounters with Baseball Annies and Roger Waters, but dare I say this book has a hole in it? One precisely the size and shape of my heart? ... If he’s not going to write a better book than David Wells then at least I can dream that he’s the more coherent man. But is he? Smart and demonstrably thoughtful as he is, Hernandez boasts, he exhorts the doubtful to follow his example of hard work and adaptability, he blusters about changes to the game and to society, he drops names—in other words, he writes exactly the sports memoir expected of him ... Didn’t anyone think to suggest to him that 2018 might be past time to retire his anecdote about gathering with his Tulsa teammates to watch through pre-cut holes in a set of hotel drapes as one of his teammates has sex with a 'fairly attractive,' and presumably unsuspecting, woman? ... I’m dropping it [the book], in favor of his Twitter feed—it’s better written!
The author establishes early on in I’m Keith Hernandez that this is no ordinary memoir, citing among his inspirations a visit to a grocery store to buy eggs and an episode of Seinfeld in which he starred and from which the title is drawn...More importantly, he establishes what it is not: a look back for Mets fans at the 1986 season and/or for Cardinals fans at 1982.
In the introduction to his entertaining memoir, two-time World Series Champion and five-time All-Star Keith Hernandez claims he didn’t want to write a 'boring' baseball book. Mission accomplished...as the outspoken first baseman-turned-broadcaster covers the highlights from his impressive career trajectory, ... Hernandez brings a witty veteran’s view to today’s game These observations, however, along with his bar-conversation writing style and self-deprecating humor, will appeal to baseball fans of any era.
A former major league baseball All-Star and MVP—and current TV analyst for the New York Mets—reviews his boyhood and the dawn of his professional career and reveals some of the secrets of his success. Although Hernandez claims that he doesn’t want his text to be like other baseball memoirs, in fundamental ways, it is exactly that. The author provides game-by-game accounts, descriptions of influences (good and bad and mixed), and details about influential managers such as Ken Boyer and fellow players, including Pete Rose ... Often candid and even self-deprecating memories by an athlete who once stood at the summit of his profession.
