Death of Fernandez brought year of change
Teammates have different outlook
MIAMI – Jose Fernandez’s locker is a private monument to a public tragedy.
In a corner of the Miami Marlins’ clubhouse, visible to his teammates and few others, preserved behind a glass window, his belongings sit not quite the way he left them that night, but close enough in the closedoff cubby. His glove, his hat, his socks, his shoes — lots of shoes — his pants, his black No. 16 jersey, it’s all there.
It was there for the home opener in April, when the Marlins won a game Fernandez probably would have wanted to start. It was there in July, when the Home Run Derby and All-Star Game, baseball’s midsummer family reunion, came to Little Havana. It was there three weeks later, when Penelope, the daughter Fernandez never met, visited
on what would have been his 25th birthday. And it was there Wednesday, the one-year anniversary of Fernandez’s final game, which he later described in a private moment with one teammate as the best he ever pitched.
Justin Bour, the Marlins’ first baseman, sits at his own locker three steps from Fernandez’s in the bowels of Marlins Park. He takes a moment before each home game to look and remember.
“It’s just a reminder that life is precious and you only get one,” Bour said. “Don’t waste it.”
Fernandez, a CubanAmerican star in the Cuban-American capital, died one year ago Monday. A state investigation concluded that Fernandez, drunk and with cocaine flowing through his veins, crashed his speeding boat into a jetty off Miami Beach in the middle of the night, killing himself and two others.
Since then, the locker has remained largely the same. So much else — for Fernandez’s family, Fernandez’s team, Fernandez’s friends and Fernandez’s legacy — has changed.
The family
Seven-month-old Penelope Jo Fernandez was named by her father last summer, when Fernandez and his girlfriend, Maria Arias, found out Arias was pregnant. The little girl is at the center of an unusual dynamic between Arias and Fernandez’s family, including his mother, Maritza, and grandmother, Olga. Fernandez’s relationship with Arias was a new one, and now the families are linked forever.
Maritza sees Penelope a couple times a week, sometimes doubling up as grandma/babysitter.
“It’s a sound relationship,” said the Fernandez family’s attorney, Ralph Fernandez (no relation).
Aside from Penelope, Maritza’s year has been painful. She visits the rocks where her son died — the rocks where the family spread his ashes — at least weekly, Ralph Fernandez said.
With the anniversary approaching, she found a reason to get out of town for a few days and took it.
“Each day is as painful as the last and as painful as the next,” Ralph Fernandez said. “The anniversary, for most people it’s something that highlights it. For Maritza, it’s like any other day. She says she feels the same today.”
The Fernandez family has stayed largely out of the spotlight, though the door is always open at Marlins Park, where they have visited once. That came July 31, Fernandez’s birthday. For many of the Marlins, it was the first time they met Penelope.
When Dee Gordon, the Marlins’ second baseman, ended up with Penelope in his arms, he made a beeline through the clubhouse to show her Fernandez’s locker.
“We hadn’t seen her,” Gordon said, smiling at the memory. “I was just happy to see the baby.”
The Fernandezes have also established the JDF16 Foundation, a charity meant to, as its website puts it, “reflect the values that Jose embodied: love of family and a passion for helping youth.” On Fernandez’s birthday, the family made its first donation through the fund, awarding $25,000 to the Kiwanis Club of Little Havana for baseball equipment for local kids.
The team
It might still feel callous to discuss, with so much more going on, but is nonetheless part of the reality: Losing Jose Fernandez changed everything for the Miami Marlins as a baseball team.
A year ago, the Marlins were a rebuilt club seemingly on the cusp of genuine postseason contention, even if they did finish with more losses than wins. Minus their best pitcher, the Marlins’ decisionmakers decided last winter to keep the group together, patch up the starting rotation without an ace, load up on relievers and hope the lineup took a significant step forward.
The result: a likely seventh consecutive season with a losing record, a likely 14th consecutive season without making the playoffs, and an infinite list of what-ifs.
A few Marlins acknowledged occasionally wondering about the hypothetical.
“It’s a big part of baseball history right now, part of Marlins history,” former Miami closer AJ Ramos said this week while in town with the Mets.
Ramos is among those whose fates might have changed. With the Marlins out of contention, he was traded in July to New York, going from a bad team to a worse one.
“I don’t know what would’ve happened, but it would’ve been different,” Ramos said. “Different than now.”
Fernandez’s career specifically could be an alltime what-if. His statistics, from two full seasons and two partial ones through age 24, are stunning: 38 wins to 17 losses, 2.58 ERA, 1.05 WHIP, 589 strikeouts in only 471 1⁄3 innings.
It was, by many measures, one of the best starts to a pitching career baseball had ever seen.
“We definitely didn’t see the best of Jose,” said Adam Conley, who had played with Fernandez since the Marlins drafted them in 2011. “If he was here now pitching for us, he’d be better than we’d ever seen him. And he’d come back next year better. If he signed somewhere as a free agent and became a veteran and was around, I think he’d be better then.”
And then there is the franchise’s bigger picture. The debate surrounding Fernandez for years was about what would happen as he approached free agency. The Marlins had two options: trade him for a haul of players who could help the organization over the long-term, or let him reach free agency and hope to re-sign him. The never had the opportunity to decide.
In the months after Fernandez’s death, Jeffrey Loria decided that after a decade and a half of owning the Marlins he was ready to sell. He has neither publicly explained his reasoning nor said whether Fernandez’s death played a role. Team president David Samson cited at the start of spring training “a confluence of events that have taken place,” but declined to get specific.
“It’s very personal reasons I don’t want to discuss,” Loria said last month. “Very.”
Loria declined an interview request for this story.
“This still remains a sad time in all our lives,” he said in a statement through his spokesman. “Although a year has gone by, Jose’s presence is fresh in our memory and always will be.”
The life philosophies
On the middle knuckle of Dan Straily’s right index finger is a small scar, left over from when Straily — pitching for the Reds against the Marlins last summer — bunted a Fernandez pitch foul, pinching a tiny piece of skin against the bat.
Bour has a rubber “Play Like Jose” wristband, faded a bit from being worn every day.
During runs along South Beach, Samson frequently passes the Government Cut jetty, and last month — on mile No. 9 of a 14-mile, marathon-training run with several other Marlins employees — he stopped there for a moment to take it in.
The Marlins don’t require physical reminders to bring Fernandez to the mental forefront, but they’re there anyway. Christian Yelich said that only a few days go by until Fernandez — the pitcher, the friend, the jokester — inevitably comes up in conversation again.
“Some of the guys in here still talk about it. We’re at lunch or dinner or something, in a small group, we’ll still talk about it. We’ll talk about that day,” Yelich said. “I’m sure a lot of people don’t really realize that.”
Enduring the death of a friend has altered the way some of the Marlins live their lives. The clichés borne of tragedy — live every day to its fullest, live passionately like Jose did — have manifested themselves in small but real change.
Ramos, for example, said he lost his inhibitions about displaying emotions while on the mound. And Yelich and Bour are more willing to embrace the life experiences afforded to them by their pro baseball careers.
When USA Baseball asked Yelich to play in the World Baseball Classic — an invitation that arrived in the weeks after Fernandez died — it was an easy yes. The next WBC wouldn’t be for four more years, and who knew what might happen between now and then? Yelich played, starred and helped the United States win gold in March.
During road trips in years past, Bour was content to sleep in, eventually drag himself out of bed and head straight to the ballpark. Not anymore.
“I’m seeing what different places have to offer instead of the inside of a hotel room,” Bour said. “I want to be able to get out there and see the world while I have a chance to. With this job that we have, we get the opportunity to travel and go to amazing cities and stay in nice places. … I’ve kind of gotten out of my box, I guess you could say, started to get out there a little bit more.”
Bour is also planning an offseason trip with a few Marlins staffers to Japan, where they’ll visit Marlins outfielder Ichiro Suzuki.
“Some guys in here talk about traveling in offseason, because they don’t know how long they’ll have that opportunity,” Yelich said. “I don’t think guys would have thought like that last year.
“When you talk to people at night, you tell them how you feel. Your family, your friends — you don’t take it for granted anymore. Everyone walks out of this clubhouse every night and says, ‘All right, dude, I’ll see you later.’ That’s exactly what happened that night. You come back and everything’s changed. So you don’t take it for granted.”
The lesson
Last year’s tragedy turned into a lesson learned, too. Or at least embodied one everybody is innately aware of.
On the day of the first spring training full-squad workout, the Marlins’ ninth day together as a team since Fernandez’s death, Samson spoke to the club about decisions and consequences and being smart.
It wasn’t anything they didn’t already know, nothing they hadn’t been told on countless occasions prior. But this talk was different.
“It took on a different tone,” Samson said. “It’s not someone else’s teammate, someone else’s friend. It’s your teammate and your friend. I think everyone listened a lot more. I think everyone realized the frailty of life and the strangeness of happenstance.”
Fernandez’s decisions were the underlying theme.
“You have to recognize that everything you do or say has consequences,” Samson said. “That was Jose. He lived for that. He lived for the right to choose. And he lived for the right to suffer the consequences. And he died for that as well.”
That isn’t lost on the Marlins. They mourn and miss their friend, but they don’t ignore the reality that he was responsible for three deaths, including those of his passengers, 27-year-old Emilio Macias and 25-year-old Eduardo Rivero.
Alcohol, drugs, latenight rambunctious revelry — that is all readily available to rich and famous major leaguers, if they want it.
Conley compared it to a fish staring at a worm.
“That bait looks pretty good. You take a big ol’ bite out of that bait and you think you’re going to get yourself a nice meal and comfort yourself and fatten up your belly a bit,” Conley said. “Underneath that bait is a hook. It’s not going to let go of you. Sometimes that hook, the consequences are more serious than others. For Jose, that hook one time cost him his life.”
Said Yelich: “Sometimes as a professional athlete, you kind of get caught up living in a so-called fantasy world. The feeling of invincibility sometimes — ‘Oh, it’ll never happen to me.’ Till it does. That reality hit us all hard last year, obviously.”
The legacy
The question of Fernandez’s lasting legacy, mixed and complicated, is one that needs more time to be answered in full. How will, or should, he be remembered? How best to recognize one of the best young pitchers ever who threw it all away — ending three lives?
Had he lived, Fernandez would have faced charges of manslaughter, boating while intoxicated, vessel homicide and reckless or careless operation.
The parents of Macias and Rivero sued Fernandez’s estate in March, alleging negligence and wrongful death. They are seeking punitive damages, which could amount to millions of dollars.
Separately, Fernandez’s estate has filed a federal court case seeking to limit its liability to the value of his boat. That case is on hold until the other lawsuit is resolved.
“The families I represent continue to grieve over the loss of their loved ones,” said Chris Royer, of Fort Lauderdale’s Krupnick Campbell law firm, who represents the families of Macias and Rivero. “Emilio and Eddie left many friends and close relationships that bear scars and sadness. The loss of potential and dreams applies to all three of the victims. We continue to be open to resolve this matter with the lawyer for Jose Fernandez’s estate.”
In a small act of remembrance, the Marlins all season have worn a black and white “16” patch on the chest of their jerseys. “It’s there right in front of you,” Samson said. “There’s no hiding from it.”
But beyond that everpresent fabric, there are signs that suggest hesitation in glorification.
Last November, five weeks after Fernandez’s death and two days after the release of his autopsy results, the Miami-Dade county commissioners voted to rename a portion of NW 17th Avenue near Marlins Park “Jose Fernandez Avenue.” Close to 11 months later, there is no sign of a street sign, though a county Public Works and Waste Management official said there are loose plans for an eventual ceremony.
In April, the Marlins announced their intention to place a 9-to-10-foot bronze statue of Fernandez outside Marlins Park, a move criticized immediately. Loria, an art dealer, was working closely with sculptor William Behrends on the project that was given a timeline of at least six months until completion — October, around when the Marlins now expect the sale of the team to close. Regarding the status of the statue, Samson and Behrends deferred comment to Loria, who declined an interview request.
At the All-Star Game — an exhibition that many involved said Fernandez inevitably would have qualified for and probably started had he been alive — acknowledgment of Fernandez was limited to a brief inclusion in a highlight reel of past Marlins All-Stars.
On the Marlins’ official website, a “16” logo along the top banner was quietly removed from the home page around Opening Day.
The organization and community have not avoided associating with Fernandez, but they also have not actively moved to permanently memorialize him.
Except, of course, for his locker inside Marlins Park.
“He’s going to be with us, no matter the group of guys who are here,” said infielder Miguel Rojas. “We might be gone in a couple of years, this is going to be a new group of guys in 10 years, but they’re going to know Jose pitched here his whole career and he did great for the organization and the community.”