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MIAMI — On Monday afternoon, Jose Fernandez sat in a black plastic chair outside Nene’s Barber Shop in Little Havana with a Marlins-Mets ticket folded in his pocket, mourning a beloved young baseball star who shared his name.
One day earlier, Fernandez, 53, was sitting at home when the local NBC affiliate cut in with breaking news: the other Fernandez, the 24-year-old Cuban ace of the Miami Marlins, had been killed in an overnight boating accident.
Though the two were not related, the news immediately took the elder Fernandez back to his own journey from Cuba to Miami, and as he reflected on his treacherous 90-mile passage across the Straits of Florida, the ache in his heart only grew.
Like the Miami pitcher, Fernandez tried unsuccessfully to flee for the United States before his safe arrival in 1991 — the Marlins’ Fernandez successfully defected on his fourth try, in 2008 — and over the four years since his namesake’s major league call-up, Fernandez, like so many others in the area, has reveled in the joy the brilliant righty brought to this tight-knit Cuban community.
“It’s really a part of all of us, baseball,” Fernandez said. “When you’re speaking with the people on the street, in the park, wherever, everybody speaks about baseball. It’s important.”
Yet on this day, baseball — or at least Monday night’s game against New York — was the furthest thing from Fernandez’s mind. And while Fernandez typically savors the opportunity to see two or three games a year live, he had no interest in being at this one, a start Fernandez should have been making.
“When you love baseball or any sport, you have to be sad when something like that happens,” Fernandez said, pointing at a man walking along SW 8th St. — better known as Calle Ocho — in front of the barber shop. “I don’t know you, I don’t know him, but we’re all hurt by what happened.
“I was supposed to be there in the stadium today,” Fernandez added, waving his hand north up SW 16th Avenue, toward Marlins Park, while tugging at his navy blue baseball cap with his free hand. “But I can’t. I’m too sad.”
Instead of going, himself, Fernandez was giving his ticket to a friend, and the least I can hope is that Fernandez’s friend made it to the game. Because if he did, he witnessed something truly special during the Marlins’ 7-3 victory.
It started long before first pitch, outside the building, where fans created a memorial to Fernandez near one of the stadium gates — a collection of posters, hats, shirts and balloons covered in messages for the late star.
Next to the shrine sat dozens of flower bouquets left in Fernandez’s memory, and on the opposite side of the wall, fans of all different ages and ethnicities waited in line to scribble a message or a prayer.
“His story means so much to the Cuban community, but for any baseball fan it means just as much,” 25-year-old James Carras said as he waited to leave a note for Hernandez on the Sharpie-covered wall. “The cross-section of all South Florida sports teams is that you’ll find folks from every different background, and it’s nice to see this kind of response.
“This is absolutely beautiful,” Carras added. “I said a little prayer on the other side, and I have to sign the wall, and I hope they keep this here for a long time.”
Once inside the stadium, fans were met by constant, emotional reminders of a star lost too soon.
Fernandez’s smiling face dotted virtually every video board in the park, and in the outfield corners, his No. 16 could be seen from any seat in the house. Then before first pitch, the Marlins honored Fernandez with a touching tribute that included a lone trumpeter playing a solemn rendition of “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” over a montage of Fernandez photos.
After a moment of silence, the teams took the field for a stirring rendition of the national anthem, and from there, players from both teams embraced on the field for several minutes. Afterward, the entire Marlins dugout — each player and coach wearing a newly-retired No. 16 Fernandez jersey — gathered around the mound, where they each scribbled the number 16 in the clay.
That scene, alone, was enough to make every hair on your neck stand up, but then before most fans could even settle in for the bottom half of the first, second baseman and leadoff man Dee Gordon gave the crowd a goosebump-inducing moment few will ever forget, sending the third pitch he saw from Bartolo Colon into the right field seats for his first home run of the season.
The announced crowd for the game was 26,933, but as Gordon made his surreal jog around the bases, then dipped into the dugout in tears, you’d have sworn it was a packed house for Game 7 of the World Series.
“I told the boys, if y’all don’t believe in God, you might as well start,” Gordon told FOX Sports Florida’s Craig Minervini of the home run after the game. “I don’t have kids, so that’s the best moment of my life, to hit a home run for him.”
The rout was on in the second inning, with the Marlins adding four more runs. That was followed by two more in the third, including a Christian Yelich run on Justin Bour’s first career triple. And while there were moments where the tension in the building ratcheted up — most notably when the Mets, trailing by five, loaded the bases with one out in the sixth — the result never seemed in doubt.
Then after the final out was recorded, the Marlins players returned to the mound, each of them leaving their hat alongside a game ball as a farewell to their fallen brother.
“I think they really wanted to honor Jose, you know, the way he played and how he went about that joy that he had when he played, and that confidence and that energy,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said. “And I really think that was the focus of these guys.
“We talk about these situations being family and these guys, this is their family within this locker room,” Mattingly added. “You travel, you play, you go through things, it’s their only safe place, and I think you’ve seen that. ... This situation kind of galvanizes you to come together.”
Beyond the field, a return to baseball after Sunday’s canceled series finale against the Atlanta Braves has also helped bring together a Cuban community devastated by Fernandez’s passing.
Back in Little Havana, 69-year-old Juan Fernandez, also no relation to the late Marlins star, recalled Fernandez’s impact on the neighborhood while talking with a group of friends at Maximo Gomez Park.
“He mattered to everybody,” he said. “Everybody here is Cuban. I root for the Yankees, but he made me like the Marlins. Because if you can play, you can play.
“It’s tragic, but what can do you?” added Fernandez, who came to the U.S. from Cuba in 1967. “I know everyone has to die, but that’s too young.”
In the same park, Alejandro Diaz described Fernandez’s death as the community losing one of its own.
“You never expect something like this,” Diaz said. “I’m 41 years old and I have a son, and you never want to imagine someone else’s son dying. But he was the best of our community. He went from nothing to where he was, the best pitcher in baseball.
“Miami is like Cuba,” Diaz continued. “We feel here like we are there, and he was pure Cuban — the way that he talks, the way that he acts, he’s real.”
As he walked away from the game of dominoes he was watching, Diaz also recalled his own childhood growing up in Cuba, using his experience playing baseball as a child to illustrate the joy with which Fernandez played the game.
“When I was there, it was the national sport and everybody played,” said Diaz, who came to the U.S. by way of Argentina in 2002. “You finished school and you found a piece of wood and a sock — you’d roll it like this, like a ball — and you’d play.
“Even when you played (competitively), you’d go to a tournament and they’d give you two balls, and if they get lost or destroyed or something, that’s it, game over,” Daiz continued. “And you had to share gloves because you’d only have nine gloves, and sometimes you’d have to wear the righty on a lefty or a lefty on a righty because that’s all you had. It was the only way.
“It’s something that grows in your heart, little by little,” Diaz added of Cubans’ love for baseball, despite a lack of resources. “And when you are there, if you’re a player, you grow up hoping you can come over (to the U.S.) like Jose did and do what you love.”
Unfortunately, there was more sadness than joy at Marlins Park Monday night, but there wasn’t a soul who left the stadium questioning what Jose Fernandez meant to his team and his fans.
And while Fernandez may have thrown his last pitch, it’s evident his legacy will live on for generations to come.
“I came here tonight to pay homage to him, and like so many other folks that are here — they’ve been here since '93,” Carras said. “They were there in '97 and there in 2003, and here we are today. It’s a celebration of his life and his service to the game of baseball, and I just hope he can pass on his spirit to us and that we can all live the way he was living.”
You can follow Sam Gardner on Twitter or email him at samgardnerfox@gmail.com.
