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Joaquín Andújar

Pedro Guerrero

Juan Marichal

Dennis Martínez

Luis Tiant

Fernando Valenzuela

Great Lives from History: Latinos

Willie Hernández

by Doug Feldmann

Puerto Rican-born baseball player

Hernandez rose from relative obscurity to win the American League’s most valuable player and Cy Young awards in his first season with the Detroit Tigers in 1984, establishing himself as one of the premier relief pitchers of his day.

Areas of achievement: Baseball

Early Life

Guillermo Hernández Villaneuva (gee-YEHR-moh hur-NAHN-dehz VEE-yah-new-AY-vah) came from a family of softball players on the northwest coast of Puerto Rico, a clan in which the women were as accomplished on the diamond as the men. With eight children, the family could nearly field an entire team; however, the extreme poverty in which Hernández and his siblings lived took an emotional toll on him. It would affect his mental approach to the game of baseball in later years. Once, while waiting in line at a store with a few coins to buy his mother a humble Christmas present, young Willie saw another boy riding a new bicycle. That image would burn into his memory and become a reservoir of motivation, anger, and rage when facing a tough hitter in a key situation as a major-league pitcher.

Willie Hernández.

324_Hernandez_Willie.jpg

(AP Photo)

The son of a factory worker, Hernández played shortstop and third base before becoming a pitcher. By the age of eighteen, he was a local legend in Aguada, signing with the Philadelphia Phillies for a $25,000 bonus. In his early years in professional baseball, however, Hernández relied too much on his strong arm and did not understand the finer points of pitching. He was picked up by the Chicago Cubs, with whom he made his major league debut as a twenty-two-year-old early in the 1977 season.

Life’s Work

Hernández languished in obscurity in the Cubs’ bullpen until he joined the Detroit Tigers on March 24, 1984, just a few days before the regular season was about to begin. By that time, he had recorded just twenty-seven saves in seven seasons with the Phillies and Cubs and yearned to find a larger role with another club. He had begun his transformation in 1983, helping Philadelphia to the National League pennant and pitching four scoreless innings in the World Series. That year, he incorporated a screwball into his pitching repertoire— a pitch that breaks in the opposite direction of a curveball and that he learned from former Baltimore Orioles pitcher Mike Cuellar while Willie was getting some extra experience over the winter while pitching in the Puerto Rican League. He coupled his new screwball with another new pitch in his arsenal— a cut fastball, which handcuffed righthanded hitters by breaking in toward them from Hernández’s left arm. Yet another legendary pitcher, Ferguson Jenkins, taught Hernández this pitch, as the future Hall of Famer was finishing his own career with the Cubs. The tutelage from Cuellar and Jenkins completed Hernández’s new, dominating array of weapons, which he took with him to the American League.

Hernández in 1984 became only the seventh pitcher in Major League Baseball (MLB) history to win both the Most Valuable Player and Cy Young awards in the same season. During the year, Hernández failed to save only one game (a contest in late September, after the Tigers had already clinched a play-off spot), with 18 of his saves requiring two innings of work or more and 6 requiring three innings or more. To illustrate how Hernández immediately stabilized the Tigers’ bullpen in 1984, one only need consider that in 1983 the Detroit relief corps failed to hold a lead in the seventh inning or later a total of 27 times.

Hernández proceeded to save the final games that clinched the American League Eastern Division, the American League pennant, and the World Series title for the Tigers as well. When the final out of the World Series was recorded, so many well-wishers had crowded around the pitcher that his chewing tobacco was knocked loose from his cheeks and swallowed, forcing Hernández to make a quick exit from the on-field celebration to head the Tigers’ clubhouse with an upset stomach.

Hernández followed his stellar 1984 campaign by becoming the first Tigers pitcher in history to post back-to-back seasons with at least 30 saves in 1985. Soon after, however, Hernández’s popularity faded along with his effectiveness on the mound. He was defeated ten times in 1985, leading to a gradual downfall that included his insistence on being called “Guillermo” instead of “Willie” and dumping a full water cooler on the head of columnist Mitch Albom in a clubhouse tirade in spring training of 1988— even though Albom claimed the two men had not spoken with each other in five months. (A year earlier, Albom had written an article in which he criticized Hernández for uttering expletives at the Detroit fans the previous season). Hernández retired at the end of the 1989 season.

Later in life, Hernández needed to have a pacemaker installed to assist with cardiac troubles. He received a scant number of votes for the National Baseball Hall of Fame during his years of eligibility on the ballot.

Significance

Hernández is an important figure in Detroit Tigers history and has the rare distinction of winning the Cy Young and Most Valuable Player awards in the same season. Relief pitchers often get less recognition than starting pitchers, but Hernández made a name for himself with his dominance, reliability, and competitive nature.

Further Reading

1 

Anderson, George “Sparky.” Bless You Boys: Diary of the Detroit Tigers 1984 Season. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984. The manager of the Tigers gives an inside look as to how Hernández impacted the team in his first year as a pitcher in Detroit.

2 

Cantor, George. Wire to Wire: Inside the 1984 Detroit Tigers Championship Season. Chicago: Triumph Books, 2004. The author describes the day-to-day highlights of the great season enjoyed by Hernández and the Tigers.

3 

Lombardi, Stephen. The Baseball Same Game: Finding Comparable Players from the National Pastime. New York: iUniverse, 2005. The author

4 

describes Hernández’s achievements in the context of the accomplishments of other relief pitchers during his era.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Feldmann, Doug. "Willie Hernández." Great Lives from History: Latinos, edited by Carmen Tafolla & Martha P. Cotera, Salem Press, 2012. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLL_10013240031601001.
APA 7th
Feldmann, D. (2012). Willie Hernández. In C. Tafolla & M. P. Cotera (Eds.), Great Lives from History: Latinos. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Feldmann, Doug. "Willie Hernández." Edited by Carmen Tafolla & Martha P. Cotera. Great Lives from History: Latinos. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2012. Accessed October 22, 2025. online.salempress.com.