Marlins’ Jose Fernandez, 24, dies
Pitcher, who was one of baseball’s rising stars, killed in boating accident
Miami Marlins ace Jose Fernandez, who combined extraordinary pitching ability with a harrowing story of defecting from Cuba to become a culturally significant figure in his team’s home city, died early Sunday morning in a boating accident that also took the lives of two others. He was 24.
The tragedy shook, in no particular order, the Marlins organization, the city of Miami, the Cuban-American community and the entire sport of baseball. Odes to him toggled between praise of the lightning in his right arm — which allowed him to become the National League rookie of the year in 2013 — and remembrances of the infectious smile and pure exuberance that, friends and teammates said, made him one of the game’s most genuine characters.
Indeed, as Marlins President David Samson told reporters at a news conference early Sunday afternoon at Marlins Park, “There’s so many layers to this story.”
Three times as a teenager, he tried to defect to the U.S., and he spent time in a Cuban prison following those failures. On his successful trip, the boat on which he rode encountered choppy waters, waves that tossed his mother overboard. It was Fernandez who dove in to save her.
Once in the U.S., Fernandez grew acclimated by attending high school in Tampa, became bilingual, and ended up fitting perfectly into the cultural mix of Miami. Put that made-forHollywood backstory together with his arsenal as a pitcher and his almost relentless positivity, and the list of players with a brighter future in the sport than Fernandez — indeed, the list of players more important to baseball — is so short it may not exist at all.
“When I think about Jose, it’s going to be thinking about a little kid,” said Marlins manager Don Mattingly, who spoke haltingly while trying to hold back tears at an early afternoon news conference at Marlins Park. “I see such a little boy in him . ... As bad as he would make you (look) with some of the stuff he would do (with pitches), you just see that little kid you see when you watch kids play Little League or something like that. That’s the joy that Jose played with and the passion he felt about playing.”
The Marlins gathered Sunday at the ballpark, where the grounds crew painted Hernandez’s number 16 on the back of the mound and placed his black cap on the pitching rubber. But the club canceled Sunday’s game against the Atlanta Braves as the organization grappled with a crippling loss. Several of Fernandez’s teammates, either alone or in pairs, walked to the mound to pay tribute. Second baseman Dee Gordon appeared to sob.
“There are no words to describe how this organization feels,” team President David Samson said at the news conference. “Jose is someone we have known since he was a drafted young man. I think when you talk about a tragedy like this, there are no words that come to mind. There’s no playbook.”
At a news conference Sunday morning in Miami Beach, Lorenzo Veloz, a spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, told reporters that a 32-foot SeaVee was traveling at full speed when it struck the rocks of a jetty that sticks into the ocean. Veloz said there was no evidence of alcohol or illegal substances but added that none of the three passengers was wearing a life vest.
“It does appear that speed was involved due to the impact and the severity of it,” Veloz said. “It does appear to be that they were coming at full speed when they encountered the jetty, and the accident happened.”
Veloz said the boat was owned by a friend of Fernandez who frequently hosts Marlins on it.
“I have stopped that boat before for safety inspections with other Marlins players on board,” Veloz said. “We know that this boat knows the area. We just can’t answer why this happened.”
None of the 14 ballparks that hosted games Sunday escaped the impact of Fernandez’s loss. Commissioner Rob Manfred issued a statement that the entire sport “is shocked and saddened” by Fernandez’s death. Players’ union head Tony Clark, in another statement, called Fernandez a “remarkable young man and a tremendously gifted athlete.” The Marlins noted what Fernandez had announced earlier in the week on Instagram — that he and his girlfriend were expecting their first child, which Samson said was a girl.
In St. Petersburg, Florida, the Tampa Bay Rays were preparing to honor retiring Boston Red Sox star David Ortiz with a pregame ceremony. But Ortiz, who adored Fernandez and had joked with him as they faced each other in All-Star Game in July, said such a ceremony would be disrespectful to Fernandez’s memory.
In Los Angeles, Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig, a Cuban defector who counted Fernandez as a friend, spoke to reporters in the corner of the home clubhouse, describing their dinner together in Miami just weeks earlier. Puig received the news early in the morning and could no longer sleep. About four minutes into an exchange with reporters, tears streamed down Puig’s cheeks.
“That was the best part of playing in Miami, was facing him, especially when people came to see him and came to see myself play,” Puig said through an interpreter. “We were players and definitely one thing that I was looking forward to every time I was there.”