Jose Fernandez
The baseball world will need some time to recover from the loss of Jose Fernandez. In a sport played on a diamond, Fernandez — killed in a boating accident early Sunday with two others — was a distinct jewel. He won 12 games and posted a 2.19 ERA in 2013 when he was named the National League’s Rookie of the Year. After missing much of the 2014 and 2015 seasons recovering from elbow surgery, Fernandez regained full command of his fearsome arsenal this year. His final season as the Miami Marlins’ ace will go into the books in bold face: 16-8 record, 2.86 ERA, and a franchise-record 253 strikeouts.
,p.In identifying the faces of baseball’s future, few were as prominent as Fernandez’. Mike Trout. Bryce Harper. Maybe Kris Bryant. Now that image will only bring sorrow, and the heavy wonder of what might have been.
Baseball has endured an inordinate number of tragedies like this over my lifetime. Angels outfielder Lyman Bostock was shot to death in 1978. The next year, Yankees catcher Thurman Munson — seemingly bound for the Hall of Fame — died in a small plane crash. Indians pitchers Steve Olin and Tim Crews died in a boat crash during spring training in 1993. Alcohol-related car accidents claimed the lives of Cardinal reliever Josh Hancock (2007), Angel pitcher Nick Adenhart (2009), and Cardinal outfielder — and former Memphis Redbird — Oscar Taveras (2014). Taveras and Fernandez were born within six weeks of each other in 1992. Baseball has been tragically cheated out of dozens of Fernandez-Taveras confrontations. What value do we put on the moments that never happen? (Cardinal pitcher Darryl Kile died at age 33 of a heart attack in a Chicago hotel room in 2002. It may have been “natural causes,” but it was just as sudden, just as shocking.)
Professional athletes who die young gain a form of immortality. How many people were murdered in 1978 but don’t get mentioned in a column of any kind 38 years later? The number of automobile fatalities remains staggeringly high, each one ruinous to connected families and friends. And there are boating accidents like the one that took Jose Fernandez. Is there a lesson to be taken about when, where, and how to go boating? When it’s safe to be behind the wheel of a car? I suppose this should be part of the deceased’s legacy. But the hole in the heart of baseball’s vast community is too deep, and the new absence too profound for any immediate shift in value structure.
Baseball will move on. The Marlins will surely retire Fernandez’s number 16 and stories of his sizzling fastball will keep his memory alive. In a few short months, a baby girl will be born and someday relish the stories of her father’s challenging defection from Cuba, his rise to fame and prominence as a major-league pitcher, and the boyish glee he took in playing a game most of us must leave behind as boys. But she’ll also feel the hole, the absence. The prayers we say today — and the pain that will linger beyond the baseball season — are for that little girl, and a dad taken too soon.
• My favorite image from last week’s Triple-A National Championship at AutoZone park came during the seventh-inning stretch when a large group of children from Richland Elementary School led the singing of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” in right field. Most of those kids were at least threatening their bedtimes on a school night, and publicly. But they did so on a professional baseball field, future big-league stars merely a glance or shout away. It was glorious. I didn’t care if I ever got back.