Jose Fernandez's tragic death darkens one of baseball's brightest lights
The wickedness of his breaking ball was exceeded only by the wattage of his smile. His personality, not just his arm, made Jose Fernandez of the Miami Marlins one of baseball's brightest stars in ascension. At 24, Fernandez not only played baseball well but also played it with elan. He mowed down hitters with an alluring combination of molten ferocity and boyish joy.
No pitcher in the game, especially one who already was a two-time All-Star, owned a brighter future than Fernandez. He was on track to be a free agent at only 26 years old, he had the perfect wide-set pitcher's build that Tom Seaver had, and he had already struck out more batters through his first 76 starts than all but two pitchers in baseball history, Dwight Gooden and Yu Darvish. Last week he announced his pride at being an expectant father for the first time.
And then, in a dark instant, the future was gone.
A 32-foot boat, a rocky jetty in the waters off Miami Beach, the darkness of 3:30 a.m. Sunday and what authorities termed a "severe impact" of the boat upon the rocks ended his life and all that promise. Two men perished with him.
Fernandez died in the same waters that nourished his dreams. As a boy accompanied by his mother, three times he tried to escape Cuba for America by boat--he could see the lights of Miami--and three times he failed to evade Coast Guard patrols that sent him back. Once he wound up in a Cuban jail for months. Fernandez finally succeeded by sailing south, toward Mexico, where he crossed into the United States through Texas, whereupon he settled in the Tampa area with his stepfather.
A first-round draft pick by the Marlins in 2011 and the National League Rookie of the Year in 2013, Fernandez was an instant success. When he blew out his elbow in 2014, Fernandez, a fierce worker, made it back in 14 months without any diminution in his stuff. His rate of strikeouts per nine innings actually improved after the surgery, from 10.3 to a staggering 12.1.
Fernandez averaged 96 mph with his fastball, but his curveball is the pitch that astonished even the most grizzled baseball observers. It came in different shapes, sizes and speeds--at its hardest, at 87 mph, it morphed into a slider--with the sweeping action of a fighter jet. He could start the baseball at the hip of a righthanded batter and have it cross and dive to the lefthanded batter's box. Batters hit just .138 off the Fernandez curve, which will go down with the curveballs of Sandy Koufax, Bert Blyleven, Kerry Wood and Clayton Kershaw as the most vexing parabolas any pitcher ever traced in the air with a baseball.
Fernandez last pitched Sept. 20. He beat the first-place Washington Nationals, 1-0, at Marlins Park with eight shutout innings in which he allowed three hits and struck out 12. Think of all the marriages between a pitcher and a place and none fit better than the one between Fernandez and Miami, the city of lights and of possibilities across the water from his birthplace. The win improved his record in that stadium to 29-2, the all-time best record by any pitcher in any ballpark (with a minimum of 40 starts). His ERA of 1.49 there is the best except for only one man in one place: Koufax in Dodger Stadium (1.37).
Fernandez was on track to pitch Sunday, but Marlins manager Don Mattingly pushed his start to Monday to accommodate a start by Adam Conley, who was coming off the disabled list, and to give Fernandez more recovery. Given an extra day, the waters called to him.
Few pitchers ever worked with more zest than Fernandez. His enthusiasm could chafe opponents, especially in the many times when he dominated them. Fernandez was the embodiment of life--life on his pitches, life on his face and life in his body language--and so shall he remain in death, only now as a shocking reminder of the ephemera of life.
A deadly boating accident in the darkness recalled the deaths of Cleveland Indians pitchers Tim Crews, 31, and Steve Olin, 27, on Little Lake Nellie in Central Florida in 1993. The last All-Star to die while still active was Houston Astros pitcher Darryl Kile, who passed away from a heart defect during the 2002 season. Kile was 33.
Since then baseball has been stunned by the untimely deaths of New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle in a plane crash in 2006 and St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Oscar Tavares and Los Angeles Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart in car accidents in 2014 and '09, respectively. Both of the latter two men were just 22 and had just started major league careers that were filled with promise.
But the death of a player this accomplished and this young is virtually unprecedented. Chicago Cubs second baseman Ken Hubbs, the 1962 NL Rookie of the Year, died before the '64 season in a plane crash at age 22. Hubbs was a .247 hitter with 14 career home runs who never had made an All-Star team. Fernandez is the youngest All-Star to die.
The second and final All-Star Game for Fernandez, just two months ago in San Diego, showcased his boyish exuberance. Before the game, Fernandez joked that he might just groove a pitch to David Ortiz, the Boston designated hitter who would be playing in his final All-Star Game.
It wasn't until Fernandez was in seventh grade that he was even able to watch major league ballplayers on television in Santa Clara, Cuba. He was permitted to watch then because the Cuban team was playing in the World Baseball Classic against the team from the Dominican Republic. Fernandez watched Ortiz hit a home run and immediately was enthralled by the big man's strength and style. Later, when Fernandez made it to America, the first baseball jersey he purchased was an Ortiz jersey. They met for the first time last year.
In San Diego back in July, Fernandez found himself facing Ortiz with the bases empty and one out in the third inning. It would be the last All-Star at-bat of Ortiz's career. With his first pitch Fernandez floated the cookie he promised--a batting practice fastball to Ortiz, only one that was wide of the plate. Ortiz took it for a ball. Fernandez's competitiveness then kicked in. He battled Ortiz to a full count. Then, on the seventh pitch of the at-bat, Fernandez threw a slider. It missed for ball four. Ortiz chuckled at the idea that Fernandez would not challenge him with a fastball, and Fernandez laughed himself and light-heartedly blamed catcher Buster Posey for calling the pitch.
It was a small, sweet moment that defined Fernandez. Here he was facing his boyhood hero in the major league All-Star Game, something that once could not have even seemed possible to him. The smile on his face gave way his pure joy. It was the baseball version of A Midsummer's Night Dream, and the life of the young man who lived it, gone just two months later, now gives melancholy to Shakespeare's words: "Swift as a shadow, short as any dream; Brief as the lightning in the collied night."
This article originally appeared on Sports Illustrated
