They say that somewhere in the world there is someone who looks like you, and it turns out that Max Scherzer’s doppelgänger resides eight kilometers from the National Park.
“I was in a grocery store [in 2015] I was going down the hall and a random guy was yelling at me, ‘Hi Max, Max,’ and I thought it was a wrong identity, like this guy had a friend named Max, ”Kevin Kramer told The Post on Monday.
The man believed he was buying milk alongside the star pitcher the Nationals had just signed on a seven-year, $ 210 million contract, and invited him to throw the first pitch in his baseball league.
“It was then that he hit me,” Kramer said (and no, Kramer didn’t pitch that first pitch).
Since then, Kramer, a Washington Heights native who grew up idolizing the Mets pitching the great Doc Gooden, has received plenty of free drinks in DC bars, cheers in the Metro-North after the Nationals’ victories, a police escort. for the World Series parade, and yes, even some interested women have shown interest thanks to the strange resemblance.
Therefore, one can expect some Nationals fans to be confused on opening day when they see a man they think is Scherzer drinking a few moments before the ace takes the mound against the Yankees.
At first glance, the 46-year-old Kramer and 35-year-old Scherzer look identical. They are only two inches apart: Kramer is 6 ft 1 while Scherzer is 6 ft 3. The only apparent difference is in the eyes. Scherzer, likely a first-voting Hall of Fame member, has a rare condition called heterochromia iridis, which causes the eyes to be two different colors.
Scherzer’s left eye is brown while his right is blue.
Kramer has brown eyes, but he often wears blue contact lenses to add fun. He picked up an additional supply of blue contact lenses for Thursday, when he and Nationals fans, who are not allowed to enter his stadium for the foreseeable future due to MLB and local government coronavirus guidelines, They will gather in pubs outside the stadium to see how the team begins. his title defense in a shortened 60-game season.
On Sunday, Kramer went to the National Park to record a video for his Tik Tok social media account, where he posts images and videos of himself posing as Scherzer only to laugh. It’s all a hobby for Kramer, who runs his own full-time search firm in Arlington, Virginia.
“A woman came up to me and said, ‘I hate to bother you, but it’s my husband’s birthday, would you mind taking a social distancing photo?’ And I said, ‘I’m happy to take a picture with you, but I think you will be disappointed because I am not who you think I am.’
“They are very confused,” Kramer said of the fans’ reactions when he gets clean.
Others think he is lying when he says he is not Scherzer, who is in fact the three-time Cy Young winner, but is just trying to avoid all the commotion that comes with being one of the area’s most famous athletes.
Before last year’s World Series, Kramer, whose popularity began to take off during the playoffs, went to the National Park to film a segment with a local Fox affiliate.
“I put on Nats hat, I put on Nats jacket, I put on a black glove [a Scherzer staple] and I have a blue contact lens in my right eye. Basically I’m Max, ”said Kramer. “And I wasn’t ready to be Max.
“This guy gives me his Nationals hat,” Kramer said, and not knowing what to do, “I took his hat and signed his name on his hat.”
After a brief conversation, it became clear that the man they thought was Scherzer was not.
“These guys were obviously starting to question what was going on here and I started to feel a little awkward,” Kramer said, offering to buy the fan a new hat when the confusion occurred, only to be told that it was not a problem.
Then came the World Series parade. While Scherzer and the rest of the Nationals stars partied in floats during the World Series celebration, DC’s first World Series title since 1924, Nationals fans cornered under Kramer, some hoping to that their babies wait for a photo with the Fall Classic hero. Kramer said there was no time to explain to these people that he was not who they thought he was. Eventually, he became so agitated, said Kramer, that he received a police escort, although officers knew he wasn’t really the real Scherzer.
It is unclear if Scherzer knows of Kramer’s existence, although Kramer sent him a letter explaining the phenomenon.
At one point in his life, Kramer thought he was on his way to having more in common with Scherzer than looks.
Kramer was a true pitcher when he grew up, like Scherzer, wearing No. 32 (Scherzer wears No. 31) and played against Red Sox legend Manny Ramirez, the former Mets (and current presenter of the New York Post podcast. Mets) Nelson Figueroa and former MLB pitcher Francisco Rodriguez in the Parade Grounds summer league, who has seen many other professional baseball players pass. Kramer was a reliever at Pitt, where he won a Big East championship, but a professional career was not on the cards because of his stuck speed in the 1980s, he said.
Kramer has still found fame, though not in the way he would have imagined, and even led him to be connected to a lost cousin in California who saw him appear in the media.
And of course there are the women, as Kramer, who has an 8-year-old son, is an eligible bachelor these days.
“Let’s say this,” said Kramer. “To make people think you look like Max Scherzer. It certainly doesn’t hurt.
“Ladies like Max Scherzer.”
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