Last Season a Sore Spot for Hernandez

VIERA, Fla., Feb. 20 -- Now it can be told. His right knee was so messed up last season, Livan Hernandez said Monday, it had to be drained of fluid every three starts. He would pitch for the Washington Nationals one night, no doubt going seven or eight innings and resisting any attempt to pry the ball out of his hand, then wake up the next morning barely able to walk. At the All-Star Game in Detroit, he had to cut short his bullpen warmup because of the pain, but still managed to slog through an inning.

With one notable exception -- "The day people think I went crazy," Hernandez said with a laugh -- the extent of Hernandez's pain, and the seriousness of his knee injury, was only hinted at last year. He hid it well, leading the Nationals with 15 wins and leading the majors with 246 1/3 innings pitched, despite dealing with various degrees of pain for all but the first month of the season.

"The team was in first place when I got hurt," Hernandez said, explaining why he kept pitching. "I talked to a couple of people [in the Nationals' front office]. I say I want to continue because I want to help the team keep winning."

Hernandez spoke Monday after his first workout of the spring, a day later than the rest of his teammates. (His late arrival was approved by the team in advance.) It also was his 31st birthday, though he looks almost exactly the same as the rookie who was the most valuable player of the 1997 World Series for the Florida Marlins.

Hernandez arose at 4 a.m. Monday at his South Beach condo in order to make the three-hour drive to the Nationals' spring training facility. He arrived just before 8 a.m., and one of his first acts was to walk to the boombox in the center of the clubhouse -- the one that had sat mostly silent all weekend -- and put on some Latin hip-hop music, which came thumping out of the stereo at earsplitting volume.

"A lot of people are sleepy," he said. "So I want to wake them up."

Hernandez is the team's ace and its heart, and the mood of the clubhouse perked up noticeably as he made his rounds, shaking hands and slapping backs. "He picks up the spirits and the attitude in the clubhouse," Manager Frank Robinson said.

When he threw his first bullpen session of the spring later that morning, his form appeared free and easy. Perhaps he had forgotten what it is like to pitch pain-free.

On Oct. 5, Hernandez had surgery in Miami to repair a small tear in the lateral meniscus of his right knee, the source of all that pain and aggravation during the 2005 season. Although his doctors told him it might take six months -- which would be right around the time of the Nationals' Opening Day -- to fully recover from the surgery, he said Monday that he is close to 100 percent and is in no danger of missing his April 3 assignment at Shea Stadium.

"It feels great to be the Opening Day pitcher again," he said. "I've got to be ready, 100 percent, for the first day. I'm working hard for this. I want to be better than last year."

A year ago, Hernandez went 12-3 in the season's first half, most of it achieved despite a sore knee that he first noticed during a game at Arizona on May 9. Choosing to pitch through the worsening pain, he fell to a 3-7 mark in the second half as the Nationals' unlikely run to playoff contention ended in mid-September.

"He still wanted to go as many innings as he possibly could," Robinson said. "He felt like every time he took the ball he was going to go nine innings, no matter what. I really admire him for that. I really appreciate that. . . . The good ones, they perform even when they're not 100 percent."

The low point came July 20, barely a week after the All-Star Game, when Hernandez, after a tough loss to Colorado, threatened to shut it down for the season and have knee surgery -- only to turn around the next day and berate stunned reporters for the way his comments were reported.

He never even missed a start, even though the pain was forcing him to alter his pitching mechanics just to get the ball to home plate.

Now it can be told: On the day Hernandez "went crazy," he wasn't crazy at all. Just hurting.