LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kiké Hernández returned to the Los Angeles Dodgers on Tuesday, two months after being sidelined with a severe oblique injury that occurred two days into his season debut.
The utility man who turns 35 in late August missed the first two months of the season recovering from left elbow surgery. He was back for two games — going 4 for 4 with two doubles and a home run — before getting injured again in late May during batting practice.
“I feel like everything is in a pretty good spot right now,” Hernández said. “Trying to keep my 1.000 batting average going and be the best hitter in the league.”
Hernández had been projected to be out three months with the left oblique tear. He accelerated the recovery process with a stem cell injection and rehab that included sitting in a hyperbaric chamber daily.
“When you hear that it’s a grade 3 full tear, you kind of get scared and you think the worst,” he said.
Driving home after an MRI revealed the magnitude of the injury, a kind he had never had in his career, Hernández said he experienced his first panic attack.
“Sitting in traffic, I had to call my wife, and I could barely talk,” he recalled. “I was like, ‘Look, this is what happened. I don’t know what’s going on with my body. Maybe I’m too old.’ But just hearing her calm me down, I took a couple deep breaths and I was good to go.”
Hernández said it hurt to sneeze or cough and, typical of the free spirit's candor, he added, “I didn't poop for like six days after I got hurt.”
He played in five games at Triple-A Oklahoma City, going 6 for 18 with a homer in a rehab stint.
With Seattle starting three right-handers in the series, Hernández was expected to come off the bench. Manager Dave Roberts expects him to play mostly third base and left field, although he could spell Andy Pages in center.
“Excited to get Kiké back,” Roberts said. “When he came back a month ago or whenever it was, came out swinging the bat well.”
In his career, Hernández is best known for his October offensive numbers that are better the regular season. He's won three World Series rings with the Dodgers, who are going for baseball's first three-peat since the New York Yankees won three consecutive championships from 1998-2000.
He vows he won't play scared after the injury.
“I only know one speed, and that’s all out,” he said. "I felt a little stiff by pretending to think about the injury. So the way that I am, I just play, and if it goes, it goes. But I can’t change the way that I play because I don’t know how to play any other way.
The Dodgers are set to welcome back closer Edwin Díaz on Wednesday after three months on the IL recovering from surgery for loose bodies in his pitching elbow.
“Getting him back in the mix is going to be fun for all of us,” Roberts said. “So excited about seeing a team we haven’t seen for quite some time.”
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FILE - Los Angeles Dodgers' Kiké Hernández watches his home run take flight against the Toronto Blue Jays during the third inning in Game 5 of baseball's World Series, Oct. 29, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis, File)
It seems as if the world is afire this summer. But even as wildfires in Europe and North America grow more extreme, key worldwide burning statistics are at a record low largely because Africa and Asia are controlling fire more.
Experts say these seemingly opposite trends are happening at the same time because of what humanity is doing to the planet.
“It does seem like a paradox because we’re talking increases in fires, yet the global numbers have been going down and down. But they’re both true,” said fire scientist Mike Flannigan of Thompson Rivers University in Canada.
Spain's wildfire is that country's largest on record at more than 193 square miles (500 square kilometers) while wildfires in Europe have burned just a bit under 2025's all-time high. In Canada and the United States this summer, land burned by wildfires is at least 25% higher than the 10-year average and more than double what it was decades ago, according to national wildfire centers. Entire chunks of the continent were choked by smoke, causing unhealthy air quality.
Fires are worsening in terms of size, intensity, speed and frequency, especially in the U.S., Canada and Europe, said University of Colorado fire scientist Jennifer Balch.
“Extreme wildfires are on the rise globally in different parts of the world. And that’s the piece that you know has us shaking in our boots,'' Balch said.
And yet the world went into July this year with record low global emissions from burning fires, a key measure of their prevalence, the European climate center Copernicus reported. That is because fires in Africa and Asia are way down due to changing agricultural practices, fire management and where people are moving to, said Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at Copernicus. Copernicus calculated that this year's carbon emissions from burning are the lowest since satellites first measured nearly 25 years ago — about half what they were in the early 2000s.
“Africa dominates the global fire activity,” said UCLA water and fire scientist Park Williams. “So if there’s a trend in Africa, then that’s going to be the trend in the global fire activity. In sub-Saharan Africa, fire activity over the last 25 years has gone down pretty dramatically.”
On average, more than three-quarters of the global emissions from the burning of plant material comes from Africa and Asia, Copernicus statistics show. Less than one-eighth comes from North America and Europe.
Traditionally, huge grassland fires on the African savanna burned each year, compared to more intermittent forest fires in other regions, influencing worldwide fire totals, said John Abatzaglou, a fire scientist at the University of California Merced. But with more land being used for housing and farming, humans are limiting savanna fires, while also creating barriers to prevent fires from spreading, he said.
In Asia and the Amazon fires are often used to clear land for agriculture, experts said. So, Williams said, “it really is all driven by human demographic change.”
In North America and Europe there are also “human fingerprints” on the more extreme fires dominating the news, but that is from climate change Abatzaglou said. Climate change from the burning of coal, oil and gas is making it hotter and drier — ideal fire weather — five different experts told The Associated Press.
Hotter temperatures mean humans “have our foot on the gas pedal” for bigger fires, “but we also have lost the brakes on fire” because warmer and wetter nights don't give forests — or firefighters — time to recover during darkness like they used to, Balch said.
When it gets hotter, the atmosphere sucks more moisture out of the ground, making it drier and easier to burn, Flannigan said. Climate change also increases the length of the burning season across North America and especially in northern forests where there used to be only a few days when the weather was conducive to wildfires, but now there are a lot more, he said.
And when climate change makes fire more extreme in places with larger populations, it tends to have a greater impact by burning more valuable property, Flannigan said.
Abatzaglou said that North America has long done a good job of fire suppression. But with climate change making fires more intense and frequent, “we're losing our ability to do that,” he said.
Fire activity is likely to get worse in the coming months because of the developing super strong El Nino. The weather pattern usually triggers more dangerous fires in the tropics, less so in the United States because of more rain, experts said. South American governments are already getting prepared.
“The most predictable outcome of El Nino is going to be more tropical fire, specifically tropical forests,” Williams said.
Williams said El Nino could increase fires in the Amazon region, Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific.
While El Nino means more rain and fewer forest fires in the U.S. West, it can also mean more grass growth in deserts that adds fuel for eventual grass fires, Abatzaglou said. Examples of devastating grass fires include Los Angeles in 2025 and Hawaii in 2023,
Regardless of El Nino, scientists said areas in North America and Europe will have to improve planning and adaptation for worsening wildfires, including prescribed burns to thin excess trees and grasses.
“It’s not a question of whether our landscapes are going to burn, it’s the question of when they’re going to burn,” Balch said.
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FILE - A firefighter watches as a helicopter drops water on the Summit Fire while battling wildfires in Llano, Calif., July 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope, File)
FILE - A volunteer uses a rake trying to help stop a wildfire from advancing in San Martin de Valdeiglesias, west of Madrid, Spain, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez, File)
FILE - Debris from wildfire damage is visible at Collins First Nation in northwestern Ontario, Canada, July 22, 2026. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP, File)
FILE - A firefighter battles a wildfire on the slopes above Simon's Town, South Africa, Dec. 19, 2023. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - A wildfire burns near near Ares, France, July 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner, Pool, File)
FILE - A firefighter monitors a firing operation while battling a wildfire called the Bench Fire in Warm Springs, Ore., July 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)
