Kiké Hernandez reveals what he really wanted as his Players Weekend nickname and wishes he could play shirtless

He also tells us how often that Drake song gets sung to him.

This weekend is the second annual Players Weekend for Major League Baseball, where players get to choose a nickname (within reason, at least) to have on their backs instead of their last names, wear alternate jerseys and hats, and have a tribute patch naming someone of their choosing who matters to them from their life and career.

It’s one of the most fun times of the year for baseball. So we talked to one of the most fun players in the league, Enrique Hernandez, about Players Weekend nicknames, what emojis he would put on the back of his jersey, and what other uniform changes he would choose if he had the option.

Whitney McIntosh: You went with Kiké for your Players Weekend nickname this year, just your every day nickname. Were there others you were considering?

Kiké Hernandez: Swiss Army Knife, and for trademark reasons we didn’t use it. If we didn’t have to give out nicknames during Spring Training, if had a little bit more time, I probably would have done Chase Is My Daddy.

I was going to ask about you doing Utley’s Son or something.

Yeah, but Chase Is My Daddy because “daddy” sounds better. There’s a lot of moms that like him out here.

Didn’t know you had to submit nicknames quite that far in advance so that makes sense.

Well it’s our marketing guy, you know Lon Rosen? He wanted us to do it during Spring Training so that he could see it at the stadium. But I guess the shipment to sell them at the stadium never got to the stadium.

Oh no! Well we’ll always have the idea of Chase Is My Daddy. What is your favorite nickname of all your teammates?

My favorite nickname on the Dodgers is probably D. Mountain. Rich Hill’s.

Okay that’s mine too. Did he have to be talked into that at all or did he just do that?

No, no no. Same as Chase, the older guys have to do what the younger guys say and of course everybody knows what Richard’s nickname is and then another name for hill is mountain. That’s what we’ve been calling him for two years now and he decided to go with it for the Players Weekend jersey. I don’t think he asked his wife for permission or anything but it worked.

If you could change a nickname for someone on the team who would it be?

Probably Chase. I would probably go from Silver Fox to Kiké’s Dad.

You guys might have to get custom jerseys of that, just for normal life.

Oh yeah I’m giving it to him for his 40th birthday.

Amazing. Brad Boxburger did emojis on his jersey this year.

I know, that was fantastic.

If you could use fun emojis what would you have chosen?

Probably the poop face.

Now I’m wondering if there were emojis that the league would have turned down.

Well, it’s 2018 and there’s a lot of sensitive people out there. I’m sure they’re going to find something wrong with everybody’s nickname.

You’ve obviously had some fun this year, with overalls in your engagement pictures and a batting practice speedos joke after the batting practice controversy. What else would you wear on Players Weekend, besides the different jerseys and custom cleats, if you could?

I would go jersey-less. I would wear no shirt and I would have a spray paint artist come draw a jersey on me for sure. That would be the best thing to do. Except you can’t dive because that would hurt a lot.

But the range of motion is probably amazing.

It would be incredible, I would never be so free ever again.

With the cleats and the nicknames and everything, Players Weekend is a chance for people to show off their personality and for fans to get to know them as well. What’s your favorite part of Players Weekend?

I would say the shoes. Obviously you could get the most creative with your shoes. You’ve gotta wear the socks that they give you, wear the jersey that they provide. Yeah you can choose your nickname but there’s no limitations with your shoes and I think your shoes are the coolest thing about this.

Why did you choose the cleats you’re wearing this weekend?

Adidas Create a Team reached out to me and asked me if there was a specific theme that I wanted to do for my cleats for Players Weekend and I said yeah I’d like to go with superheroes. So they asked me what my favorite superheroes are and I said Batman because he’s my favorite superhero of all time and then I went with Deadpool just because it’s the funniest movie out there. It’s a little not for kids but I just said it’s my favorite modern superhero. They sent me two pairs of those and I’m going to wear the left of Batman and the right of Deadpool.

I also went with Dame Lillard basketball shoes, he just came out with some colorful ones called the Summer Camp Edition and I put some cleats on those because it’s Players Weekend, it’s the summer, it’s all about having fun and it’s like summer camp. It’s all about having fun. Adidas also sent me a neon green pair of cleats that pretty much describe my loud colorful personality.

A little off topic but I do have to ask, how often do you get people singing “Kiki do you love me” at you since that song has come out.

How many times? Cardboards, it’s a lot. Probably about the same amount of Instagram followers that I have. [Ed. note: Hernandez has 435,000 Instagram followers at the time of publishing] It’s not helping the case that I don’t like when people call me Kiki. It’s not helping my case at all. But, what can I do? I guess it’s free publicity for me from Drake.