by Los Angeles Dodgers utility man Kiké Hernández was feeling good after his team eliminated the San Diego Padres in the NLDS. Maybe a little too good.
More than two months after the Dodgers’ victory in Game 5 of the NLDS, Hernández revealed that the F-bomb he threw on live television got him fined and almost much more.
The fun came in his postgame interview with Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports. When asked what was different about this year’s Dodgers team, which had just reached the NLCS for the first time in three years, Hernández asked if they were live and then said bluntly, “The fact that we don’t care ***,” with a mischievous grin.
Oddly enough, the uncensored video of the response is still on Fox Sports’ MLB account.
In an interview with “The Shop,” LeBron James’ talk show, Hernández revealed that the league was not happy with his language. He reportedly faced a suspension, which would have kept him out of Game 1 of the NLCS, but avoided that portion of the punishment thanks to the efforts of his agent at Wasserman and his representatives at the MLB Players Association.
However, he was fined and issued an apology that he admitted was half-hearted.
Hernández’s full answer:
“I did get a fine for that. I would have gotten an even heavier fine and a match suspension, but having a good agent and having a good players’ union came in handy. They abolished the suspension and they have I had to reduced the fine a bit, which was good. I did have to apologize, which to be fair you could say it’s 50/50.
“What I answered was my honest answer from the bottom of my heart and I didn’t think there was any other way to describe the team. I felt like I had been thinking about my answer for a while because I didn’t. I want to answer it this way. But when I asked if we were live, he said yes and I thought, ‘There must be some kind of delay.’ There was no delay and I was swearing live on TV. There was a lot of criticism about that.”
Hernández’s availability in Game 1 of the NLCS paid off for the Dodgers, as he went 2-for-4 with two runs in a 9–0 loss. And then, of course, they won the World Series.
Hernández, who has always been highly regarded by the Dodgers for his defensive versatility, came up big in that series with a postseason performance of .294/.357/.451 at the plate. Now that he’s a free agent, he remains a possibility to return to the team during a busy offseason.
