“The Miami Marlins organization is devastated by the tragic loss of José Fernández”. Baseball can be stuffy and set in its ways, and it’s not often a player comes along with a flawless combination of awesome talent and an overwhelming happiness to be able to use that talent while playing a kid’s game every day. The native of Santa Clara, Cuba, became a US citizen previous year and was enormously popular in Miami.
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Many wore his No. 16 jersey and brought flowers, teddy bears and pictures of themselves with the All Star pitcher.
“The navigation lights were still on”. “But we are aware that vessel has traveled several times through the area”.
Reyes said eight divers entered the water to look for possible survivors.
“It does appear to be that they were coming at full speed when they encountered the jetty, and the accident happened”, he said, adding the star pitcher died from trauma and not drowning. “There was not much evidence on the vessel”. Officials later said they were taken to the medical examiner’s office.
Jose Fernandez was a star on the mound, and admired by those lucky enough to share the field with him. The team was scheduled to play the Atalanta Braves tonight, but the game has been postponed until Monday (Sept. 26).
The names of the other two victims were withheld pending notification of relatives, the Coast Guard said.
He tried to defect from Cuba at least three times – landing in jail after one of those unsuccessful tries – before eventually getting to the US and going to high school in Tampa, Florida.
Fernandez eventually reached the United States and went to high school in Tampa, Florida. He was drafted as the Marlin’s first-round pick in 2011.
When he saw someone fall overboard, he didn’t know who it was but was determined to save his fellow passenger. At 15, he and his mother finally made it to Mexico, and were reunited in Tampa, Florida, with his father, who had escaped from Cuba two years earlier. She grabbed his neck and he swam 30 yards back to the boat. There are hundreds of videos of him cheering wildly from the dugout, stories of him taking hours of his time to sign autographs and talk with young fans, and enough photos of that trademark smile to fill dozens of Google searches.
“I thought I was going to die many times”, he said.
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On the field, Fernandez recorded the best FIP of any modern era pitcher – Clayton Kershaw and Sandy Koufax rank second and third – per Jon Heyman of FanRag Sports. His passing is a huge void that won’t be easily filled, but even without his fastball his memory can live on through all the others in the game who can, and should, play like he did.
