Editor’s Note: This story is from the pages of Dodger Insider magazine, 2024 Volume 7. Magazines are available at entry at parking stands at Dodger Stadium.
by Cary Osborne
The quietest place in a bustling Dodger clubhouse is the corner locker near the entryway.
It shouldn’t be. Foot traffic is at its highest right here.
But Kiké Hernández sits in a chair and shuts off the external noise. He puts pen to journal paper and lets his thoughts travel from his head to his fingertips before and after each game.
He writes before the game:
The date
The game number of the season
The opponent
Three keys to keeping it simple at the plate
Three affirmations
Three gratitudes
He writes after the game:
Three wins in the last 24 hours — on or off the field
An area where he can improve
An at-bat by at-bat breakdown
Hernández has played 11 Major League seasons — eight now with the Dodgers. He is widely recognized around the game as one of its most lighthearted figures. Whether it’s wearing a banana suit early in his first year with the Dodgers, or his smile with a facial contortion that looks like Batman’s archnemesis the Joker, or his quick wit — Hernández has infused personality into every team he has played on.
But there’s a seriousness that is less often captured by cameras.
Hernández has long been considered one of the game’s most versatile players. He has played every position in his career other than catcher. But what he’s most serious about is being a winning player.
Hernández played in a Major League postseason each year from 2015–2021 — the first six seasons with the Dodgers and the 2021 season with the Boston Red Sox. But 2022 and 2023 were difficult times with the Red Sox. He was out of the postseason in 2022, and he played — though he didn’t know it at the time — with a hernia in 2023. The difficulties weighed heavily on his mind.
In his goal to regain his positive perspective and excel across the board as a husband, father and a baseball player — with the first two parts of that being primary — Hernández received the help of a mental performance coach who advised him to journal.
“It’s helped me make incredible strides mentally and figure out ways how when things are not going well at the field, how to go home and not let those things affect you,” Hernández says. “Just how to be present in each and every moment — whether it’s at the baseball field or at home or whatever it is.”
Hernández is 32 years old. He was 23 when he played his first game with the Dodgers on April 28, 2015. On Aug. 31 of that season, with the Dodgers trailing the Giants 4–4 in the bottom of the 14th, he peeked out of the tunnel that leads to the Dodger dugout wearing a banana suit over his uniform. The Dodgers won the game 5–4, and the term “rally banana” was born.
The TV camera caught the moment, and the legendary Vin Scully said on the broadcast: “Is that Enrique Hernández?” Then he answered his own question. “Figured.”
All season, the young, multipositional spark plug with the given name Enrique provided levity as well as production for the club.
“There’s still that side of me,” Hernández says of the lighter side. “Everybody understands their role in a clubhouse, and I understand what my personality brings to the table. And I know it’s a little easier for me to find energy even when I don’t have it than it is for other more normal people than me.”
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Matt Kemp, the Dodger great who played with the team from 2006–2014, returned for the 2018 season. He remembers the impact Hernández had on him. Hernández’s energy and ability to keep things loose was a difference maker for the 2018 club, Kemp says.
“You know who he is as a person, just how much fun he has,” Kemp says. “I never had so much fun playing baseball than with that team, and being on that team.”
Kemp doesn’t hesitate to add that it’s not just levity that Hernández brought to the table.
“He’s super serious about baseball,” Kemp says. “Loves baseball. Wants to win. He’s a competitor.”
That helps explain the moments — including the three home runs in Game 5 of the 2017 National League Championship Series against the Cubs and the pinch-hit, score-tying home run in the sixth inning in Game 7 of the 2020 NLCS against the Braves. Hernández has a career .893 OPS in his postseason career, including 2021 with the Red Sox, with 13 home runs in 72 games.
The Dodgers reacquired Hernández on July 25, 2023 in a trade with the Red Sox, but he was a free agent this past offseason. He had a strong desire to return to the Dodgers again — to be a winning player for a winning team.
“I didn’t want to go anywhere just to play,” Hernández says. “I wanted to go somewhere where I was going to have the opportunity to win again. I feel like I bring things to the table that are not always on the back of a baseball card. And those are things that are more valuable when you’re playing winning baseball and you have a winning culture. And I just want to be a part of that. I understand that I’ve had some great moments in October, and I think of myself as a playoff performer, and I wanted to be somewhere where I was going to have a chance to be in October again and have an opportunity to help a team win a World Series.”
Hernández had a challenging first half in the batter’s box in 2024. But outside of it, he has contributed in ways that indeed don’t show up on the back of his baseball card. This has been yet another season where the Dodgers have leaned on his versatility. He has played seven different positions in the field — including pitcher on July 9. He has also supported younger players in the clubhouse, offering wisdom and counsel through the difficulties of a long season. He has also been a support to veteran players.
Dodger infielder Miguel Rojas, one of the players who the Dodgers traded to Miami when they acquired Hernández for the first time in a 2014 offseason trade, recalls a late June game in San Francisco where his teammate wasn’t playing but still contributing. Rojas says Hernández watched video in game of one of Rojas’ at-bats and gave him feedback.
“He’s one of the guys that I see every single day — playing or not — he’s watching the game. He’s watching every play,” Rojas says. “He’s a guy who really cares about all this.”
Rojas says he has often been compared to Hernández throughout his career — two multipositional players from Latin American countries. They didn’t know each other well until Hernández was traded from Boston to the Dodgers. But then they found out they have more in common — their wives have the same name (Mariana), their daughters were born on the same day (Jan. 15), and both players have the same shoe size (11).
“I feel like he’s my lost brother,” Rojas says.
So they’ve shared shoes, bats and batting gloves and an admiration for each other.
Rojas, from Venezuela, says one of the things he most admires about Hernández, from Puerto Rico, is that he’s a winner.
“He really needs the big spot, like the big moments when the lights are brighter,” Rojas says. He performs better, and I feel like that’s why every team wants a Kiké on the roster.”
Like Saturday, when he reached 10 years Major League service time. Hernández entered the game in the seventh inning as a pinch hitter and drove in trying runs in the ninth and 10th innings and scored the winning run in the 11th against the Red Sox.
Dodger fans have long appreciated him for being both the joker and the winner.
Hernández has been a fan favorite since he first arrived in the 2014 offseason trade with the Marlins that also brought Austin Barnes over and sent Rojas, Dee Gordon and Dan Haren to Miami. Dodger fans gave Hernández a huge ovation July 26, 2023, in his first at-bat at Dodger Stadium after he was re-acquired.
It’s also because of the fans that he tries to excel.
“I guess it’s something that you earn, and the way that they’ve embraced me and shown their love and support for so many years — it’s something that doesn’t go unnoticed,” Hernández says. “I said it many times, it’s something that I’ll never know how to repay them. They have definitely made me feel comfortable. It’s made me feel like I’m at home and that I’m appreciated.”
From Dodger Insider magazine: Kiké Hernández, ode to joy was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.