eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
In August 2016, José Fernández’s girlfriend, Maria Arias, presented him with a special cake at a family dinner to celebrate that they were going to have a baby. For Fernandez, becoming a father marked a new milestone in a young life that had already been brimming with milestones: fleeing Cuba multiple times before making it to freedom in the United States; drafted by the Miami Marlins in the first round in 2011; making the 2013 and 2016 All-Star teams; winning the National League Rookie of the Year award in 2013, and becoming a US citizen last year. Suddenly, early in the morning of September 25, his life came to a tragic end in a boating crash that left his family, friends, and the baseball world devastated. This book is a Miami Herald tribute to baseball’s unforgettable young pitching sensation and lover of life.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781633536135 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Mango Media |
| Publication date: | 01/30/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 192 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
NIGHTMARE
Sunday, September 25, 2016
CATASTROPHE
Miami Marlins pitcher José Fernández, who fled Cuba on a speedboat eight years ago to become one of baseball's dominant players and a hometown hero to fans well beyond the stadium walls, died early Sunday in a violent boat crash off South Beach. He was 24.
Two friends were also killed in the accident, which remains under investigation and led Major League Baseball to promptly cancel Sunday's home game against the Atlanta Braves.
Fernández, a right-hander with a wildly precise fastball and brutal curveball, was originally scheduled to start in Sunday's game but was rescheduled for Monday's Mets game, a rare weekend day off that may have led the young pitcher to stay on the water longer.
News of the death was relayed to the Marlins when they were called about the crash Sunday morning and asked to confirm Fernández's address. Stunned teammates appeared in black jerseys at an afternoon press conference, still clearly numbed by their teammate's sudden death.
"When I think about José, I see such a little boy. The way he played, there was just joy with him," Marlins Manager Don Mattingly said, unable to continue speaking.
Late Sunday, authorities still had not confirmed the identities of the other passengers aboard the 32-foot SeaVee, named the Kaught Looking, but they were identified by WSVN, who talked to their families at the medical examiner's office, as Eduardo Rivero and Emilio Macias. The medical examiner posted death notices for both men on its website with no ages or other identifying information except that both died at 3:15 a.m. Sunday.
Macias' Facebook page said he worked in wealth management for Wells Fargo Advisors. Rivero's Facebook page said he worked for Carnival Corporation. Sunday evening, members of the Braddock Senior High alumni Facebook group identified the victims as former students.
Both Macias' and Rivero's families set up gofundme accounts Sunday to help pay for funeral expenses.
The Miami-Dade Police Department said one of the men is the son of a department detective but provided no other information.
The crash occurred about 3:15 a.m., so violent that the noise alerted a Miami Beach police officer on patrol who used his cell-phone to call a Miami-Dade County Fire Rescue patrol boat, said Fire Rescue Captain Leonel Reyes. About the same time, a Coast Guard patrol boat returning to the Miami station also reported seeing the boat overturned on jetty rocks at Government Cut. Its navigation lights were still on, with debris in the water.
Within minutes, Miami-Dade divers were on the scene and found two bodies under the boat, submerged in water washing over the jetty, Reyes said. Divers located a third body on the ocean floor nearby about 4:15 or 4:30 a.m., he said.
Unsure if there were more victims, divers continued searching through the night and early morning. A Miami-Dade helicopter also searched from above, along with the Coast Guard boat, officials said. The search was called off about 9 a.m. after the victims' families said no other passengers were aboard. Fire Rescue then transported the bodies to a staging area at the Coast Guard station in Miami Beach, Reyes said.
Investigators said they were not sure where Fernández and his friends, dressed in T-shirts and shorts, were headed, or where they'd come from. But they say the boat was traveling south at full speed when it struck the jetty and flipped.
None of the three was wearing a life vest. Investigators do not believe alcohol or drugs played a role in the crash, but toxicology tests will be performed as part of the autopsies. Lorenzo Veloz, spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, told USA Today that Fernández likely died on impact.
"It's a tragic loss for the city of Miami, for the community, for baseball, and for anyone who ever met José," said Veloz, who said he had run into Fernández on the water several times during routine safety checks.
"I'm sorry. I'm getting goosebumps right now," he said. "It's really hitting home."
The Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will head the investigation of the crash.
Fernández, who posted a picture of his pregnant girlfriend just five days ago, was considered one of the Marlins' biggest stars and one of the best pitchers in baseball. He was the team's first-round draft pick in 2011 and the National League rookie of the year in 2013. He was finishing up his finest season in the majors, and expected to make his final start of the season Monday after his appearance Sunday was pushed back.
His death hit teammates hard and triggered an outpouring of grief. On their way into the stadium Sunday, Marlins slugger Giancarlo Stanton and A.J. Ramos walked with their heads lowered and said nothing. Second baseman Dee Gordon openly wept. Mourning fans came to leave flowers. In New York, Cuban player Yoenis Céspedes taped up a Fernández jersey in the team's dugout.
During the press conference, Marlins President David Samson said after the team received the morning call, they struggled to come to grips with the news. Fernández's number 16 was stenciled at the mound in Marlins Park, and his number displayed prominently around the stadium.
"When you talk about a tragedy like this, there are no words. There is no playbook," Samson said. "We will play tomorrow."
Politicians around Miami and the state also offered condolences to Fernández's family and vowed to celebrate his life.
"His death is a huge loss for our community," Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado said in a statement.
Athletes shared their memories as well.
"Hermano, wherever you are, you know how much I loved you," tweeted Yasiel Puig, who like Fernández was a Cuban athlete and one of baseball's most exciting, rising stars in recent years. "Sin palabras. My heart is with the families."
Stanton tweeted: "I gave him the nickname Niño because he was just a young boy Amongst men, yet those men could barely compete with him. He had his own level, one that was changing the game. EXTRAORDINARY as a person before the player. Yet still just a kid, who's joy lit up the stadium more than lights could."
Growing up in communist Cuba, Fernández was jailed after failing on one of several attempts to flee the nation. In a harrowing escape hard to believe even in bigger-than-life Miami, he rescued his mother in dark waters in the Gulf of Mexico after hearing someone go overboard, not realizing until he found her that it was his mother. They crossed the border from Mexico, stepping foot in Texas, on April 5, 2008. He was 15.
"I've been in jail. I've been shot at. I've been in the water," Fernández told the Miami Herald in 2013. "I'm not scared to face [New York Mets slugger] David Wright. What can he do?"
An avid boater, Fernández filled his Instagram account with pictures from the water, including shots of him holding catches including dolphin and snapper, the Miami skyline from the water and relaxing on the beach. Many reference J's Crew, a saltwater fishing team. One includes a picture of the Kaught Looking, with the "K" facing backward — the baseball symbol for a strike called by an ump — and lined in Marlins colors.
Veloz, the fish and game officer, said the boat was well known to authorities. Veloz said he had even stopped the boat several times with Marlins players aboard, including Fernández, to conduct safety inspections.
Still, even though it sounds like the captain of the boat had experience and navigational equipment, nighttime brings the most perils for boat operators. Hazards can be impossible to spot without the aid of a GPS device or careful attention to navigation lights designed to identify safe channels and flag obstructions.
When divers arrived early Sunday, the night was still dark and water very choppy, Reyes said. What caused the accident was unclear, he said.
"Even though we're not investigators, we ask ourselves the same question. These are young kids and why and how, we couldn't tell anything," he said. "They weren't dressed for partying. Just in T-shirts and shorts. They could have been just going out for a nice night and ended up in tragedy."
While darkness presents its own challenges, lights ashore cause problems, too, and interfere with night vision, Reyes said.
The brightness of South Beach at night can also obscure lights on markers and buoys that indicate safe passage, said one local rescue captain.
"When you're facing the city, those lights are very hard to discern from the street lights and car lights," said Rand Pratt, owner of the Sea Tow operation based in Key Biscayne. "It's pretty significant, especially if you're coming in from the ocean to the city."
Tides can also obscure the jetty, which at high tide can sit just inches above the water line.
"They just stick out a foot" at high tide, Reyes said. "They're very dangerous at night. The visibility is not very good."
Boaters who spoke to the Miami Herald on Sunday also said the north jetty juts out farther to the east than the south jetty, which sometimes catches boaters off-guard. The rocks farthest to the east are submerged, as well, and marked on the edge by a buoy that knowledgeable captains know will tell them if they're too far inland.
Photos of the vessel show damage to the hull near the front of the boat, in a spot that would have been underwater during operation. Veloz said the boat is believed to have struck the jetty. But Omar Blanco, a lieutenant in the county fire department and head of its union, said it's not just the jetties that can cause boaters problems, but the submerged rocks around them.
"We've seen that happen all the time," Blanco said of boating mishaps near Government Cut. "There are rocks underwater you don't see. People run aground there."
No information on services had been released late Sunday, but the families of Macias and Rivero had started GoFundMe pages to raise funds for funeral expenses.
"It brings us great grief to announce the passing of our new beautiful angel Eduardo Rivero," his page said. "A man full of life, full of love, and full of happiness, was taken too soon with so much left to live for. Due to this tragedy we reach out to you for help as his family cannot afford funeral arrangements."
Macias' page called him "an amazing son, brother, grandson, boyfriend, cousin, friend. Due to this unexpected tragedy we reach out for help to assist our family with funeral expenses. We will forever be grateful."
By 2 p.m. Sunday, the jetty was cleared of the wreckage and a sunny day had brought out the normal crowds of beachgoers and strollers.
Juan Viviescas, 16, stood alone at the end of the South Pointe pier, staring at the jetty. He wore an orange Marlins athletic shirt, and teared up as he spoke of his favorite player.
"I'm a pitcher also," said Viviescas, a junior at Mater Academy in Hialeah Gardens. "He had so much support because of how he played the game. With so much heart and intensity. Like it was his last game."
Viviescas came to South Beach with his mother and father on a Sunday that was supposed to unfold very differently. Viviescas hadn't been to a Marlins game since the summer started. "I was actually going to go today. With my parents," he said.
Clark Spencer, David J. Neal, Douglas Hanks, David Smiley, Jenny Staletovich
Sunday, October 2, 2016
ANATOMY OF A TRAGEDY
The season was dwindling down to a few games and the Marlins were once again on the verge of going home without making the playoffs, but José Fernández was still bubbling like a Little Leaguer on Opening Day as he talked to reporters.
He was excited about pitching his next game, gushing over an upcoming family vacation in the Keys, wired about his plans to bicycle 30 miles a day over the winter. Reminded that he hadn't either pitched a complete game or hit a home run this season, he retorted with mock hauteur: "Not yet." A boundless future was always in front of Fernández.
"We have an incredible group of guys here," he said of the Marlins. "Things here and there happen, stuff happens, we know how it is. But I think we do believe in ourselves as a team."
But Fernández's future was not boundless. It would end 12 hours later on a pile of rocks in the inky predawn blackness of the sea just off South Beach, where his boat upended like a broken toy. As Fernández said, things happen, but few are as tragic and mysterious – and, possibly, needless – as the September 25 crash that ended the lives of an ebullient young rags-to-riches star and two others aboard his boat, and broke a million hearts across South Florida.
It will be months, if ever, before government investigators figure out exactly what happened out there in the dark water around the craggy stone jetty that protects Government Cut, the channel between PortMiami and the open sea.
All the known witnesses are dead. The shattered remains of Fernández's sleek, fast boat – the Kaught Looking, written in the Marlins' font with the K facing backwards like the ones baseball fans make on their score sheets to record a called third strike on a pitch so crafty or overpowering that a batter can't even swing at it, just watch in frustration and awe as it crosses the plate – will provide some clues. So, maybe, will the testimony of friends who saw or talked to him in his final hours. But a detailed reconstruction of those hours is full of mystifying gaps.
A night of foreboding
Practically everybody in baseball agrees that there was no more exuberant player in America than José Fernández. If he made a great play, he laughed and smiled. (There's a hugely popular video of him, a couple of years back, miraculously snatching a rocket-shot line drive out of the air over his head, robbing Colorado Rockies shortstop Troy Tulowitzki of a hit. You can easily read Tulowitzki's bewildered lips: "Did you catch that?" And Fernández's chortled reply: "Yeah, I did!") And if somebody made a great play against him, he also laughed and smiled: OK, you got me that time.
His congenital joy extended to his personal life, and why not? He escaped Cuba on a boat and arrived in Florida as a penniless 15-yearold; even when he first reported to the Marlins, he didn't have a suitcase, just a couple of shopping bags carrying everything he owned. Now he was making $2.8 million a year as one of the brightest young pitchers in the game, expected to grow to a multiyear contract worth $200 million or more when he became eligible for free agency after the 2018 season.
Certainly there was no trace of ill humor when he gave his final interview to Clark Spencer and Tim Healey, beat writers for the Miami Herald and South Florida Sun Sentinel, respectively, shortly before the Marlins played the Atlanta Braves on the night of Saturday, September 24. And he was still jovial – maybe even more so – after the Marlins won. Fernández's next pitching assignment had been unexpectedly delayed 24 hours until Monday, so he could go out after the game. He began asking friends on the team if they wanted to join him for a nighttime spin on the Kaught Looking.
Fernández loved the Kaught Looking nearly as much as he loved baseball. It was a 32-foot, open-air SeaVee powerboat that could hit 60 mph. He used it for both fishing (favorite prey: swordfish) and partying and sometimes just to pop over to the Bahamas for lunch on Cat Cay. Social media sites bristled with pictures of his boating buddies wearing T-shirts labeled J's Crew (possibly named for organizer Jessie Garcia) and rocking rods, reels and bikinis.
To many people, the idea of cruising the waters off South Beach in the wee hours of the morning sounds like a walk on the wild side. But in the nocturnal rhythms of baseball players, who don't get off work until 10:30 or 11 p.m., late-night socializing is simply a routine fact of life.
Nonetheless, Fernández couldn't find any takers for his offer that Saturday night. "That night I told him, 'Don't go out,'" recalled outfielder Marcell Ozuna, Fernández's best friend on the team. "I told him I couldn't go out that night because I had the kids and my wife waiting for me."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "José Fernández"
by .
Copyright © 2016 Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald.
Excerpted by permission of Mango Media, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
FOREWORD,
INTRODUCTION HEARTBREAKING GOODBYE,
Chapter 1 NIGHTMARE,
Chapter 2 IN MOURNING,
Chapter 3 INSPIRING STORY,
Chapter 4 READY FOR THE BIG LEAGUES,
Chapter 5 ALL-STAR,
Chapter 6 PASSION FOR LIFE,
Chapter 7 GOLDEN ARM,
Chapter 8 BECOMING A U.S. CITIZEN,
Chapter 9 THE 2016 SEASON,
Chapter 10 A REMARKABLE JOURNEY,
AFTERWORD,