It’s taken me a while to organize my thoughts on this. Better writers have written better tributes and mine merely echoes their sentiments, but I thought it was important to write my tribute to José Fernández.
I sat in the cafeteria at the hospital where I spend my Sunday mornings on my break, eating breakfast and setting my fantasy lineup. I was mid-muffin when suddenly I saw a stream of tweets that were all variations on “oh my god.”
Not 10 minutes before, I was discussing what the Red Sox would do for pitching next season with the emergency department security guards. We flirted with the idea of the Sox trading for Fernández, the 24-year-old Miami Marlins superstar, blissfully unaware that he and two friends had died in a boating accident six hours earlier. When I learned of his passing, any feelings of hunger or thirst vanished. My muffin lost its taste and I felt numb.
Fernández lived more in his 24 short years than most people do in their entire lives. At age 15, he attempted his fourth defection from Cuba.One night, Fernández heard a splash in the water and dove into the pitch-black water to rescue whoever had fallen overboard. When he reached the passenger, he discovered it was his mother and swam her back to safety.
At first I thought there was no way Fernández's death could be true. But then more confirmations came and it hit me. One of the best pitchers, competitors and people in baseball of my generation had died. I had never felt this way about the death of a stranger, but Fernández was special. He was young, talented, and above all else, had more fun than anyone in the sport. His childlike zeal drew me in to baseball in a way few players ever have.
Even more so now, with the spreading of the mentality of baseball players like Brian McCann and Jonathan Papelbon, “enforcers” of baseball’s unwritten rules, baseball needs more players like Fernández. Guys like him, Yasiel Puig and Bryce Harper are like lighthouses of joy shining through the archaic fog of “playing baseball the right way." Fernández wasn’t concerned about what others thought of his exuberance, best evidenced by his smile after the benches cleared when McCann lectured him about admiring his first career home run for a longer period than McCann deemed acceptable.
That's why Fernández meant so much to me. He was what baseball at its best should be: unapologetically fun. He was, as a player, what I am as a fan. Fernández exuded pure joy in the most uninhibited ways, evidenced by his reaction to a 2013 Giancarlo Stanton mammoth home run, and had a blast every time he stepped onto the diamond.
As Dan Le Batard of the Miami Herald wrote, “Fernández played the way the best Latin music feels,” and I can’t think of a better description.
