Dodgers Interview: Kiké walks media through crazy final double play
TORONTO — Game 6 ended on a blur and a glove. Kiké Hernández charged a looping liner in left, felt the play before he fully saw it through the lights, and finished it with a throw that turned into the cleanest chaos of October: catch, fire, pick at second, game over. The Dodgers lived to see a Game 7 because their veteran utility man read every small cue the moment offered. He’d been thinking about this exact situation before the pitch.
“With Glasnow’s stuff I was anticipating the ball going to the left side,” Hernández said. “I was playing shallow with the tying run at second. If he got a hit through the six-hole, I wanted to be in far enough to keep the runner at third and the batter at first.” He added the tiny sound that changed everything: “As Glass threw the ball the crowd got quiet and I heard the bat break. I got a really good jump.”
Then the lights tried to steal it. “Halfway in the ball got in the lights and I was like, not the right time to stop to see where it is,” he said. “Just keep going. You have an idea where it’s going to go. At the very end the ball got out of the lights and went in my glove.”
He already had the next move plotted. “I felt the guy on second took a little too big of a lead,” Hernández said. “Off the bat he might have thought it was going to drop, so he was kind of off the bag. I was coming in full speed, and I didn’t want to throw hard because I’d probably throw it over his head. Unbelievable pick by Miggy. I didn’t give him the best throw, but he stayed with it. We forced Game Seven.”
That feel for the whole diamond showed up earlier, too, on the lodged-ball sequence in left-center that could have unraveled the inning. “I put my hands up right away,” Hernández said. “He [Justin Dean] put his hands up after I did and I was screaming at him to get the ball and throw it in. In some parts of the rule, the ball being stuck doesn’t mean they’re going to call a ground-rule double. I lost my voice a little bit, but I was yelling to throw it in. I’m glad the umpires made the right call.”
How did he know the runner was too far off second on the final play without looking? It’s years of playing everywhere, then trusting the senses. “Playing outfield, especially in left, it’s right in front of me,” he said. “You don’t have to look to know where the runners are. You feel it. It’s similar to the Milwaukee series when I threw a guy out at first. The play’s in front of you and you feel it.”
He circled back to the broken bat as the tiny hinge that opened the door. “Yes and no,” he said when asked if the crack was the difference. “I think anticipating was the most important part. I read the swing, heard the bat, and sometimes you put a good swing and the bat still breaks at the end. If I don’t hear it, maybe I don’t break in as quickly. But I heard it, I broke, I caught it, we won.”
There was no interest in getting ahead of himself, even with the childhood dream now 24 hours away. “Game Seven,” Hernández said, smiling. “Amazing. This is what we dream of. Ever since we were little kids, we put ourselves in the backyard in Game Seven of the World Series. Baseball deserves a Game Seven. This has been a great World Series, and the fact we’re getting one is well deserved. Both teams have played their butts off. Tomorrow it’s a one-game series and we’ll see who plays better.”
On Thursday night, it was the small things: starting depth, jump off contact, a throw that needed a perfect pick, and a teammate there to make it. Hernández didn’t try to make it pretty. He made it on time. “I got a good jump. The ball went in my glove. Throw it fast,” he said. “Sure enough, Miggy made a great pick.”
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