Keith Hernandez can’t smell a bat quite as well as Brandon Nimmo can, and Gary Cohen has a suspicion as to why that might be.
During the third inning of the New York Mets’ indefensible 5-4 loss to the Atlanta Braves Tuesday night, Nimmo fouled a pitch off and held the bat up to his nose before stepping back into the box. Hernandez has cited Nimmo’s habit multiple times this season, with the Mets Hall-of-Famer attempting to shut down claims that a bat burns a little bit after a hard foul.
“Brandon always likes to sniff his bat after he fouls one back, to see if there’s any smoke coming up,” Hernandez said. “I never bought that.”
Ted Williams famously claimed he could smell the wood burn after fouling a ball back. Nimmo appears to believe in the theory, while Hernandez clearly does not.
“It’s kind of like if you had two sticks and you were rubbing them together to try and get fire,” play-by-play voice Gary Cohen said. “Here you have a stick and a horsehide-covered ball, and they cause some friction.”
Hernandez said he tried to smell the burn after fouling a ball back, but after attempting it about 10 times and still failing to detect any smoke, he gave up.
“Maybe it’s that your olfactory properties are not quite what they should be,” Cohen added to garner a chuckle out of Hernandez.
Keith Hernandez was one of the most prominent MLB players involved in the 1985 Pittsburgh drug trials and previously admitted to using “massive” amounts of cocaine earlier in his playing career. He claimed the substance abuse lasted for about three seasons. Cocaine use can impact the sense of smell, although it’s entirely possible Cohen’s quip about Hernandez’s olfactory properties was unrelated to his previously admitted drug use.
Maybe it’s his below average olfactory properties that prevented Hernandez from smelling smoke. Maybe Hernandez didn’t stroke the ball hard enough to burn wood. Or maybe smelling smoke after a hard foul is just a myth. Either way, Nimmo doesn’t seem ready to stop trying.