There are comebacks. And there are Comebacks.
Bo Jackson is having a comeback. Roberto Hernandez had a Comeback.
Hernandez is on the verge of becoming the dominant pitcher in the White Sox bullpen this spring, just 22 months after doctors told him he would never pitch again.
In fact, what the doctors told him was that he might die. He had two blood clots lodged in his right arm-two clots that were so large they could only be removed surgically. “I cried when they told me I’d never pitch again,” he remembers. “If it hadn’t been for my wife (Ivonne), I don’t think I would have made it.”
But he made it. And so rapidly that he stunned even himself.
He underwent 10 1/2 hours of surgery at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago on June 4, 1991. A day later, he had a second operation for internal bleeding.
He remained hospitalized for a week, but two weeks later he was doing so well that doctors gave him permission to start working out. By July, he was pitching again in the minors and on Sept. 2-less than three months after his surgery-Hernandez made his major-league debut for the Sox against Kansas City.
It was some debut. He pitched six innings of no-hit ball and wound up going seven innings to get the win.
A storybook comeback. The stuff Hollywood scriptwriters dream about. But it almost went unnoticed. That same game was Jackson’s return, too-the first time he’d played in the majors after suffering a hip injury that ended his pro football career.
“There were 40,000 people there, but I blocked it all out because I had been to hell and back,” said Hernandez. “I wasn’t scared. I classify fear as being in that hospital bed, knowing you could lose your limb or your life.”
As inspiring as that game was-and is-he says he didn’t feel he was all the way back from his problems until last season in a game against Kansas City when he faced nine batters. He got five groundouts and a popup and struck out three.
“At the end of ’91, I was just wrapped up in a adrenaline,” he says. “But last year was when I really started feeling confident. It came from talking to (former sox pitcher) Charlie Hough. He taught me to just trust my ability. The biggest thing is you’ve got to have confidence in yourself. And that’s a hard thing to learn.”
Hernandez must have learned it well. He was the most impressive pitcher in the Sox bullpen the second half of last season-easily one of the most dominating relievers in the major leagues.
He struck out 39 batters in his last 40 innings. He was 5-2 with 11 saves after the All-Star break. Opposing hitters batted just .172 against him with runners in scoring position. Overall, the .180 average opponents had against him was the lowest in the league. And he was second in the league with a 1.65 earned-run average.
Neither manager Gene Lamont nor Hernandez enjoys discussing the obvious question: Will Hernandez replace veteran Bobby Thigpen as the No. 1 closer?
“I don’t think of myself as a closer,” says Hernandez, a starter his entire career before the surgery. “Bobby Thigpen can come back. Nobody’s been a bigger help to me making the adjustment than Bobby.”
Hernandez had the chance to make those adjustments because of two doctors-one in Vancouver and one in Chicago. Dr. Lyn Doyle in Vancouver diagnosed the blood clots early in the 1991 season, when Hernandez was pitching for the Sox’s Triple-A affiliate. He’d almost made the club that spring despite pitching with two fingers that felt “frozen.”
“She said, `You better thank God that you didn’t start the season with a road trip into warm weather, because the cold weather in Vancouver helped stabilize the blood clots.’ If I had been in the warm weather, she said, it would have let the clot roam around and I could have been dead.”
The day the clots were diagnosed, the Vancouver club had been scheduled to leave on a trip to three of the warmest cities in the Pacific Coast League-Las Vegas, Tucson and Phoenix. “She said that probably would have killed me,” recalls Hernandez.
The Sox flew him to Chicago for a meeting with Dr. James Yao, one of North America’s most prominent surgeons. Yao cut Hernandez in four places-twice on his right thigh to remove arteries that were grafted into the right forearm. A fourth cut under his right arm pit created a tunnel in his chest muscle to prevent the arteries from being pinched off again.
“One thing I learned from my experience-and I see it in Bo Jackson-and that is that nothing comes easy,” Hernandez says. “After what I went through, if anything comes easy, then you know something is wrong. You have to work hard for what you have and keep working hard.”
