Fernandez’s’ girlfriend delivers baby girl

It’s a girl! Maria Arias, who was Jose Fernandez’s girlfriend, delivered their child overnight Friday. The baby’s name: Penelope. Fernandez picked out the name in August after fifinding out the baby’s sex. The Marlins pitcher and two companions died one month later in a boating accident.

“We’re excited, happy,” Marlins reliever A. J. Ramos said of the news. “But you’re also sad because Jose won’t get to see her.”

Fernandez was excited about becoming a father. At his funeral service, Fernandez’s agent, Scott Boras, described a conversation he had with the pitcher.

“He wanted to know, am I going to be a good father?” Boras said during the eulogy. “And I told him, you’re going to be a great father because you’re going to treat your child in the same way that your mother treated you and you’ll know exactly what to do,” he said. “The next day he ordered a baseball glove in all those colors he loved and he put ‘Penelope’ on it.” The baby weighed 9 pounds, 15 ounces. “It’s great,” outfifielder Giancarlo Stanton said. “A piece of him shall live on in flflesh.”

Said third baseman Martin Prado: “We all know that part of Jose is always going to be in that little girl’s heart.”

The family attorney for Fernandez — Ralph Fernandez, no relation — told the Herald on Saturday that he intended to fifile court papers that would assign the pitcher’s estate to Penelope.

The families for Eduardo Rivero and Emilio Jesus Macias, who were also killed in the boat crash, have fifiled wrongful death lawsuits.