When you're a major league baseball player who is forced to watch his team play while being quarantined in a Cleveland hotel room what do you do? For Kiké Hernandez, the answer was simple.
"I FaceTimed a few of (the other members of the quarantined Red Sox)," Hernandez said Tuesday night before his first game back after suffering through COVID-19. "At the time, we didn't know what's going to happen, if I was able to going to leave at 10 days or whatnot. So (clubhouse manager Tommy (McLaughlin), you know, he sent me my bag with some of my gear in case I had to spend more than 10 days in Cleveland to find somewhere to go hit or whatever. Didn't end up happening because I left at day 10. But I just pretended like I was at the game. I’d put on my pants, put on my top, my hat, and I’d wear a mask just if I was in the dugout and I would start FaceTiming guys, try to lighten up the mood. And it was, it was cool to see how engaged everybody was watching the games, you know, they weren't just shutting it down and doing their own thing. Everybody was engaged. As not cool as it was, it was kind of cool."
Hernandez finally finds himself back in the Red Sox' lineup, playing center field and hitting leadoff against the Rays Tuesday night.
It is the first time he has seen action since Aug. 26, with Hernandez having been diagnosed with COVID upon arriving in Cleveland.
"So I guess the day before the night that we flew in, the last game against the Twins here, I had body aches throughout my entire body," he explained. "And I was like well, these games are taking a long time. They're four and a half hour games. It's really humid outside. I was getting on base a lot of the time. I was like, I’m not used to getting on base this much. Maybe I'm just tired. Maybe I'm dehydrated. And then the first morning in Cleveland, I woke up and I never thought it was COVID because I wasn't feeling any sinuses, any throat, nothing in my chest. And then the morning I woke up and Cleveland I was congested and I was like, ‘Well, that's not good.’ The body aches got worse and I was congested. So I asked for a test and sure enough it turned out positive right away and it was a long day of a lot of phone calls and trying to find my close contacts and all that.
"I would say I tested positive around 10 a.m. and after noon, I pretty much spent the entire day sleeping, laying in bed, and the next day I kind of slept half the day and then I woke up to watch the game and then I went back to bed till the next day. The next day I woke up and I was feeling pretty good."
Hernandez admitted while meeting with the media in the home dugout that the entire experience has altered his perception as a big league ballplayer.
"It puts things into perspective," he said. "This career is very short. Pardon my French, but, shit happens. It was 10 days, but it just puts you in a different perspective about like, everyday that you're in the big leagues, you need to enjoy this thing, because this career just goes by so quickly. I always talk about how much I embrace being in the big leagues, and trying to have as much fun as I can on a daily basis. But those are the days, those are the times, that it really brings it back to you where, you need to enjoy this on a daily basis. It's a long season. It's a long grind. You go through good runs, bad runs. And you know, you're still living the dream. You're still playing in the big leagues. So I think I, not learned, but it was a reminder that I need to really enjoy this every single day."
