Dodgers Interview: Teoscar gives his side of the story in bizarre double play
MILWAUKEE — The fourth inning in Milwaukee turned inside out in a heartbeat. Bases loaded. Teoscar Hernández on third. Max Muncy lifted a ball to deep center that looked like a grand slam. Then chaos. Sal Frelick chased it, got a glove on it, but the ball hit near the top of the wall, popped back up, and settled back in his glove. Everyone froze for a beat. Hernández did too, and the inning ended on a head-spinning double play.
Hernández owned it without hedging. “It was one of those plays that if you asked me two days ago what I would do, I would say as soon as the ball touched the glove, I’d go,” he said. “In the moment I got blocked. There’s not an explanation. I messed that up. It’s that simple.”
He said he saw pieces but not the whole picture. “I saw it when the ball hit the glove. I went,” he said. “Then I saw it bounce off the glove and I reacted bad. It’s one of those moments you blow your mind.” He kept the blame on himself. “There’s nobody to blame but myself,” he said. “It happens. You move on.”
Hernández didn’t realize the carom meant the ball was live. “At first I didn’t see the ball hitting the wall,” he said. “I thought he bobbled the ball, brought it back, whatever happened. I didn’t see the ball hitting the wall.” He didn’t need to watch the replay on loop. “I saw it once,” he said. “Once the play was over I realized I messed up. You don’t have to see it over and over to realize you made a mistake. Now it’s in the past. Hopefully it doesn’t happen anymore. Next time, I’ll be ready.”
He still liked the team’s pressure throughout Game 1. “Yesterday we should have had more runs on the scoreboard,” he said. “Because of that play we didn’t. I feel like we took great at-bats. We put pressure. We got a lot of traffic. We just didn’t get the big hit besides that play that should have been better.” As for the plan for tonight behind Yoshinobu Yamamoto, he kept it simple. “Same plan,” he said. “Put pressure. Try to score some runs early in the game.”
On his own October surge, he kept the focus on the group. “I don’t know the key,” he said. “I try not to think about myself. It’s more about what I can do to help the team any way possible. Try to get on base. Try to get better pitches to hit.” He drew a line between regular season habits and playoff urgency. “In the playoffs you don’t think much about your stats,” he said. “It’s about what can I do today to help this team win. I’m not worried about numbers. I’m about celebrating with a win at the end of the game.”
Hernández also tipped his cap to Milwaukee’s preparation. “They were attacking us,” he said. “We took good at-bats. We just didn’t get the big hit.” His conclusion was short. “It happens,” he said. “Move on.”
Because it’s Milwaukee in October, the Pfister Hotel ghost stories even slipped into the session. “For me it’s whatever,” he said. “I don’t believe in ghosts. I have stayed there before. I never see anything or hear anything.” He changed hotels for family peace of mind. “My wife is on this trip and she said she doesn’t want to stay there,” he said. “We had to find another hotel.” He’s heard tales anyway. “Other players and other wives say something happened a couple nights,” he said. “Lights go off and on. Doors, noises, footsteps. I’m not the guy who’s going to say I experienced that because I haven’t.”
The headline for Dodgers fans stays the same. One wild sequence took a run off the board, but the message from Hernández was accountability and reset. “I messed it up,” he said again. “It’s in the past.” And for tonight: “Same plan,” he said. “Pressure early. Help the team win.”
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