Looking Back on a Legendary Career
by Gregg Evans for Uplantica Sport
July 3, 1931
RIVALS STADIUM, RAILEY, CARROL — Alfredo Hernankez emerged from tragic and unlikely beginnings to become one of baseball’s most well-known touring players. His career was ground down early by injuries as he made the transition to organized professional baseball, but his history in the game and his affable personality made him one of the Railey Rivals’ most beloved players from their founding in 1928 through his retirement this week at the age of 31.
The Hernankezes were immigrants from the southern Carrol coast whose newlywed home was destroyed in a fire resulting from a lightning strike. Julieta and her husband, Alfonso moved south to attempt to make a living fishing in the Spereaux islands during the upheaval of the naval massacres of the 1880’s and 90’s, when skirmishes between Spereaux independence fighters and mainland Uplantic forces strained the male population who had historically manned a robust fishing industry. The war with mainland armies nearly destroyed the island nation. Leading up to the surrender of Spereaux independence forces in 1893, and the eventual founding of the United States of Uplantica in 1902, the United Spereaux Navy suffered severe losses that led to the deaths of nearly 1/6 of the adult male population, and about 1 in 500 of adult females.
The ravages of war, coupled with a generational pandemic illness in 1889 that left tens of thousands more dead across the main island of Spereaux, resulted in a generation of children from broken families that found their way to the streets of Flambeaux by the hundreds as the Spereaux people strained to recover. Alfonso Hernankez sold his fishing boat and nets and stayed in the city full-time to assist his wife, whose work caring for neighborhood children had bloomed into a full orphanage with several full-time young residents.
The Hernankez family welcomed their own first child on New Year’s Eve, 1899. Alfredo spent his early years living, learning, and playing amongst the children of his parents’ orphanage. Unfortunately, tragedy again struck the Hernankezes in August of 1908, when an unknown assailant entered the family’s personal quarters after midnight and silently slit the throats of Alfonso and Julieta before setting fire to the building with 9-year old Alfredo still asleep in the room and 28 people in the sleeping halls below. All in all, 14 died in the attack, including two adult staff and ten children. The crime has never been solved, and there is no known motive for wanting to harm the Hernankezes, who were renowned in the community. One of the orphans, Alfredo’s best friend, 11-year old Goddard Tremblay, saved young Alfredo from the flames, which helped forge what would become a lifelong bond between the two.
Now an orphan himself, Alfredo was sent by the Spereaux government with Goddard and two other boys to a farm outside of Burnson, across the Chanel Trambucet on the southern coast of Carrol. The boys worked on the farm and took weekly lessons at a rural schoolhouse. It was in school that Alfredo and Goddard were introduced to baseball on the sandlots of Burnson. Despite their tragic early lives, the two orphans remained unmovable positive and magnetic spirits, so much so that they recruited enough local kids to form their own ragtag team of nine. The boys were eventually allowed to build a field of their own on a tucked-away corner of the land next to the farm, and they organized ballgames against other local teams. Though they played by an antiquated set of regional rules that would seem bizarre by our standards today, the basics of pitching and batting were there, and teenaged Alfredo Hernankez was a good pitcher. He was a very, very good pitcher. So good, in fact, that he attracted the attention of the South Carrol Baseballers in 1919 at the age of 18.
In those early pro years, Hernankez pitched in hundreds of games, year-round, in exchange for room and board with the team, which was constantly on the verge of going out of business. Through it all, Hernankez was the main draw. During his time with the Baseballers, although they didn’t travel too far from Burnson, word about Hernankez’s overpowering fastball spread throughout the southwest.
The Baseballers were a precursor to the much more successful and renowned South Carrol Coyotes. By 1922, Alfredo’s friend Goddard had become a top hand at the farm, and when the Baseballers organization finally went belly up that fall, he was able to convince the crew manager to appeal to the successful farm’s ownership. It was a desperate move, but it paid off for everyone. The owners of the farm agreed to help fund a touring baseball team with Goddard and Alfredo at the helm. They called the team the Coyotes, and the duo’s infectious positive energy attracted top players from around Carrol and beyond, including the likes of future UA stars with the Trail Blazers, infielder Jesus Terawaa and pitchers Jeff Rogers and Charles Spencer. At their frequent off-season get-togethers, the former Coyotes players laugh about being on opposite sides of the bitter “River Rivalry” between Railey and Prissley, despite being such close friends from their years touring the southwest with the Coyotes.
By the time Alfredo Hernankez donned a Rivals jersey in 1928, a lifetime in baseball was beginning to catch up with his body. He strained his shoulder in June of that first UA season and then tore his shoulder labrum after returning that August. He came back in 1929, but dealt with recurring back tightness and arm soreness. Even though he missed a lot of time, Hernankez still dazzled when he was well enough to pitch. His skills and his fame as one of touring ball’s pioneers, along with being one of the first and biggest names to take a chance on the new organized league, all mixed with a lovable, loyal, intelligent persona, have made Alfredo Hernankez an all-time legend and one of baseball’s most beloved figures.
Since tearing his shoulder this week for the second time and being forced into an early retirement, he has said that he will be heading back to live with his wife, Ashley, and their two children alongside Alfredo’s long-time companion Goddard Tremblay and his wife, May, on the same farm outside of Burnson where the boys became young men so many years ago. Hernankez purchased majority ownership of the farm last year. He had no comment when asked by reporters after his retirement ceremony at Rivals Stadium on Wednesday whether he would seek a job in coaching or in a baseball front office.
Personally, I suspect that while his playing days may be numbered, Alfredo Hernankez’s life in baseball is far from over. He is one of the most passionate, ingenious, and respected men in baseball’s young history, and I simply don’t believe he’ll walk away completely. If I’m wrong about it, then I know you’ll join me in wishing him a wonderful life, however he plans to spend it.
Thank you, Mr. Hernankez, for your part in creating the beautiful game of baseball!
Uplantic Sports Today 