Seventeen thoughts on Keith Hernandez and the Mets' retirement of No. 17
By Tim Britton Jan 13, 2022 63
The June 1983 day Keith Hernandez walked into the Mets clubhouse for the first time, he was greeted by none other than The Franchise, Tom Seaver.
"Welcome to the Stems!" Seaver said.
"Stems?" a confused Hernandez asked.
"Mets spelled backwards," the pitcher explained.
As much as anyone else, Seaver knew how the Mets had fallen by 1983; his trade, of course, had been the downfall's prime mover. Hernandez would get a crash course in '83 about how different life could feel on the other side of the standings.
"I went, 'Where am I?'" Hernandez recalled Wednesday, one day after the Mets announced they would retire his No. 17. "I left a team that was in first place and the defending world champion. Oh my gosh."
When Hernandez arrived in Queens, the Mets were no longer the lovable losers of the expansion days, and they certainly weren't the upstart underdogs that Seaver had piloted to two pennants and a championship. They had finished no better than fifth in the six-team National League East in the previous six seasons — 1983 would make it seven in a row — and they'd lost 90 games each year but one. The exception was the split season of 1981, when New York's winning percentage extrapolated to a 98-loss campaign.
"It was a very unsettling year for me," Hernandez said of 1983.
Hernandez became one of the first major signals of change. Despite that last-place finish in '83, he re-signed that winter with the Mets, spurred on by his father's research into the club's promising farm system. Davey Johnson was hired as manager for '84, and the Mets went on to win 90 games that season and in five of the next six. A World Series title came in '86.