You search for words. But you will not find the right ones.
Death is always sad, too often tragic. Young death is worse yet. And then there is something about young athletes dying because publicly they so often represent our vibrancy and spirit and possibilities.
Jose Fernandez was 24. Past tense, was 24.
He died in a boating accident early Sunday morning in Miami. That the Marlins ace died at such an early age is sad. That he died on the water feels twisted, macabre.
Fernandez tried four times to defect via the sea from Cuba. Three times he was intercepted by the Coast Guard, sent back and imprisoned. On the fourth time he made it to Mexico, but not before his mother fell overboard, and the 15-year-old Fernandez dove in to the surging waves to save her life.
The family settled with his stepfather, Ramon Jimenez, in Tampa, and four years later the Marlins made Fernandez the 14th overall pick in the draft. Two years later he was a major league sensation, the 2013 Rookie of the Year, third in the Cy Young at just 21.
Three years later, he is dead.
It is gut-wrenching to a sport, an organization and, really, for us all. Fernandez was not just a great pitcher. He was – sorry for this word – lively. His every pitch, movement came with animation. Fernandez’s love for the game and competition was displayed in every offering.
At a somber press conference attended by the whole Marlins team, manager Don Mattingly could hardly get out these poetic words: “When I think about Jose, I see such a little boy. The way he played, there was just joy with him.”
Fernandez was a precocious craftsman – not just dynamic fastballs, but sliders and changeups that would dazzle and baffle. Few pitchers could make hitters look as overmatched.
But also in his every movement, Fernandez was a passionate, charismatic showman, embracing the game, the attention, the theatrics of it all.
“He loved to be out there, and it was his stage,” Terry Collins said.
Fernandez was 16-8 with a 2.86 ERA and 12.5 strikeouts per nine innings this year – which led all starters by a full strikeout. He jumped directly from Single-A to go 38-17 with a 2.58 ERA and 11.2 strikeouts per nine innings for – I can’t believe I am writing these words – his now-completed career.
Fernandez was already arguably the greatest pitcher in Marlins history, just two years away from a free agency that promised someone born in Santa Clara, Cuba, untold riches. He was that good. That word again, “was.”
Like Len Bias. It was just beginning. Like Oscar Taveras. Like Drazen Petrovic. Like Hank Gathers. Like Sean Taylor.
We have the image of who they were because they performed their athletic art to mass audiences. But we also have images of who they might have been.
Fernandez might have been a Hall of Famer. That is how brilliant his right arm was. Few – if any – were as good for their first 76 starts as he was.
Start 77 was supposed to be Monday, against the Mets. He was scheduled initially to work Sunday vs. Atlanta, but after throwing 111 pitches Tuesday against the Nationals, in a year when he already had delivered more innings than ever (181 2/3), the Marlins decided to back him up one day.
He will never make that start now, obviously. And there wasn’t even a game Sunday against the Braves, MLB announcing the cancellation after absorbing the news that the 32-foot boat Fernandez was on had struck a jetty near south Miami Beach, capsized and killed Fernandez and two others aboard.
It made me remember that I was in Cuba in March. I saw the waves crest over the seawall on the Malecon, and finally understood better what those who leave face. The courage needed to just get into that water to try for freedom here is overwhelming.
Jose Fernandez and his family got into the water. He made it here … finally.
So how can this be? How can we be writing less than a decade later that he died on the water a free man living out his baseball dream?
Unfathomable.