Mets broadcaster Keith Hernandez was caught sleeping on the job recently, but if a former teammate had his way, he might have been sleeping with the fishes.
Baseball veteran Bernie Carbo said he tried to hire goons to find Hernandez and “break his arms” after the former All-Star first baseman outed Carbo in federal court as the man who introduced him to cocaine.
A year before Hernandez led the Mets to their 1986 World Series title, he testified in federal court that Carbo, a journeyman outfielder, had turned him on to the drug.
Carbo, now 62, told ESPN that he wanted to punish his former teammate for ratting him out to the feds. Carbo said he called the thugs off after they convinced him that he would be easily implicated.
“I knew some people, and I had $2,000, and I asked them to break his arms,” Carbo told ESPN’s “Outside the Lines,” in an interview airing Sunday.
“When I went to an individual to have it done, he said, ‘We’ll do it in two or three years if you want it done, but we’re not going to do it today, Bernie. If we went and broke his legs today, or broke his arms, you don’t think they would understand that you are the one that had it done?’ ”
Hernandez, 56, a Mets analyst for SNY, did not return calls for comment.
Last week, Hernandez was caught on camera napping during a game.
Hernandez played with Carbo on the St. Louis Cardinals before joining the Mets in 1983. He said Carbo introduced him to cocaine in 1980.
Hernandez admitted his cocaine use when he testified during a 1985 trial against a Pittsburgh drug dealer who supplied major-league players with drugs.
Hernandez insisted that he stopped using cocaine shortly before he was traded to the Mets.
Carbo, in the same ESPN interview, apologizes over the drug issue.
“If I was to be with Keith Hernandez today, I would tell Keith Hernandez I’m sorry that I introduced you to the drug and I’m sorry that I was your problem,” Carbo said.
Carbo was best known for a pinch-hit home run he hit for the Boston Red Sox in 1975, sending Game 6 of the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds into extra innings.