Jose Fernandez’s tragic death sparked an outpouring of emotion from seemingly everyone who had ever come into contact with the 24-year-old pitcher. That means players, coaches and managers but also writers, who did their best Sunday to put into words what made Fernandez so special.
Fernandez’s death brought a wave of emotional and powerful tribute pieces that help shed light into the pitcher’s talent, personality, struggle and triumph. I couldn’t possibly read every word written about Fernandez on Sunday, so I’m almost certainly missing some wonderful pieces, but here are the Jose Fernandez tributes that stuck out to me the most.
The death of this player is a loss for us all; by Dan Le Batard, Miami Herald
I know how much she loved José Fernandez. As a player. As a personality. As a symbol of strength and pride for our people. Marlins management has extinguished Mom’s love for baseball one move at a time over the last two decades, but Fernandez was the only thing that brought her limping back to that ballpark to climb those stairs in her old age. The only thing. Such was the reach of his arm and his joy and his story. It could bring even a betrayed 72-year-old Cuban lady in for what felt like an embrace by grabbing her so firmly by the heart.
There was a lot of silence on the other end of the phone when I told Mom that Fernandez was dead at 24. But I could hear that she was crying. I didn’t have the words to soothe her. So I started crying, too.
Jose Fernandez: The American Dream; by Jeff Passan, Yahoo
He is gone now, taken early Sunday morning in a boating accident at 24 years old, far too young, though any age would’ve been too soon for Jose Fernandez, because he was that infectious, that magnetic. Small was not in his vocabulary. His fastball was the fastest, his curveball the nastiest. When he hit home runs, he admired them like the beautiful, fleeting moments they were. He was the loudest voice in the room. At first, it could be corrosive, but then you realized it was Jose, and the lilts of his never-ending observations grew charming.
Watching Jose Fernandez pitch was great. Seeing him around others was even better; by Rohan Nadkarni, Sports Illustrated
In a matter of minutes, Fernandez went from high-fiving a child to making grown men look foolish. He moved the Indians down that night, finishing with 14 strikeouts while giving up just three hits. Cleveland’s hitters looked flabbergasted at the plate, and the young fan who got to hang out with Fernandez before the game was probably having one of the best days of his life.
“It’s so much fun, every pitch for me,” Fernandez said afterward. “The fans have just been incredible. The way you treat them with love and you get a lot of love back, that’s just amazing.”
Jose Fernandez’s tragic death darkens one of baseball’s brightest lights; by Tom Verducci, Sports Illustrated
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.
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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.
Star light, Star Bright: Remembering Jose Fernandez; by Joe Posnanski, NBC Sports
This is how it is with athletes. Jose Fernandez was a man first, of course, a young man who by all accounts was coming into his own, figuring out his place in the world. But he was also a brilliant athlete, and in the minutes after hearing about his shocking boating accident, we ponder the loss of a 24-year-old pitching genius. The most powerful images are not of the past but of a missing future, of brilliant strikeouts that will not be, of those blaring cheers that will instead be silence, of a Hall of Fame ceremony for a kid who escaped Cuba and became a star that would have melted our hearts.
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