Fernández's indelible imprint still felt on Marlins' franchise 10 years after his tragic death

MIAMI -- Long before Jacob Misiorowski and Paul Skenes became appointment television, there was José Fernández.

Every fifth day, the baseball world hyped up “José Day.” There was a palpable buzz in the Marlins’ home ballpark in Little Havana, which became the place to be in the South Florida sports scene.

From the moment Fernández debuted at 20 years and 250 days old, everyone knew he was something special.

It was his childlike exuberance matched with an equally competitive nature, the rare combination of joie de vivre and a masterclass in pitching. His infectious smile and big personality drew baseball diehards and casuals alike.

Fernández, who fled Cuba on a boat with his mother as a child, experienced true hardship that made the pressure of Major League Baseball seem easy compared to real life. He was the American Dream personified.

“He was a ball of energy,” former teammate and Marlins.TV broadcaster A.J. Ramos said. “Whenever he was in the clubhouse, you knew it. Whenever he was pitching, you knew it. I think that's why he brought a lot of people to the stadium. Anytime he was on the mound, he brought energy, and it was entertaining.

“That was his superpower was that energy, and I think that's why he was so good on the mound. Because yeah, he had talent, but there's a lot of people that had talent. He had this just unreal energy that you just felt when he was around.”

Ten years ago this Friday (Sept. 25, 2016), Fernández, 24, and two others died in a tragic boating accident that altered baseball history and the Marlins’ franchise as well as the careers and outlooks on life of those who knew him.

Ramos remembers that fateful Saturday night. Following a win over the Braves, Fernández asked around the clubhouse if anyone wanted to go out to the popular waterfront bar and restaurant American Social on his boat. Ramos declined because of the quick turnaround for a Sunday matinee.

All night, Ramos felt restless. He eventually gave up and entered the kitchen to find roommate Giancarlo Stanton unable to sleep like him.

Hours later, Tom Koehler entered the clubhouse fresh off the paternity list and quickly realized something was wrong. Inside the office, manager Don Mattingly, general manager Michael Hill and president David Samson were discussing something serious.

“Everybody had a blank stare,” Koehler recalled. “It was like, ‘Hey, close the door.' Then I remember David saying, ‘Text all the guys. Tell them the game's canceled. Don't tell them why. Get here as fast as they can.’”

Ramos woke up to the news from his agent. Around that same time, Christian Yelich heard and told roommate J.T. Realmuto. Justin Bour discovered the news via Koehler’s text.

Once everyone arrived at the ballpark, they quietly sat in a circle inside the clubhouse and tried to process what had happened. Samson rattled off what was known at the time, how the rest of the day would go and what to expect moving forward.

The only one with experience dealing with something similar was veteran Jeff Mathis, whose Angels teammate Nick Adenhart died in 2009. The club was suddenly under a microscope to see how it handled things.

“You just kind of like deal with it as you go,” Mattingly said. “You don't really know where to go next. You don't know what to do. It's not like you can script what we're going to do or anything else. It was just kind of like listening to the guys and the things they wanted to do. Anything they wanted to do I felt like was OK. And anything that we wanted to do to honor him in whatever way they wanted to I felt like was OK.”​

The first order of business was taking a bus to visit Fernández’s mother.

“Me now being a parent, I can't even imagine,” Ramos said. “I just remember not knowing what to say, and knowing that there was nothing that you can possibly to say to her. She was at the dugout every game, his biggest fan all the time.”

The Marlins learned the world doesn’t stop for tragedy. A long shot to make the postseason, the Marlins needed to play out their final six games of the season before going their separate ways.

Still in shock, the death began sinking in the following day when the Marlins hosted the Mets.

The somber affair included a trumpet rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” paired with a Fernández video montage. All on-field personnel wore black No. 16 Fernández jerseys. Each time a player took the field for pregame warmups, fans stood to applaud. Prior to first pitch, the Marlins gathered on the mound and left messages. The Mets shared their condolences to their counterparts.

There was no pregame music and no walk-up songs. The silence was deafening until Dee Strange-Gordon made even the most agnostic believe in something.

After mimicking the right-handed-hitting Fernández’s batting stance for the first pitch from Bartolo Colon, leadoff batter Strange-Gordon went back to the other side of the box and lifted the next offering to the second deck for his first homer of the season and ninth of his career.

Strange-Gordon couldn’t hold back the tears as he rounded the bases and crossed home plate, falling into the arms of teammates Marcell Ozuna and Martín Prado before being consoled inside the dugout by the rest of the team.

“That's one of the greatest baseball things I've ever seen,” said Yelich, who was on the dugout steps. “I had like the perfect view of the ball. He hit the ball and I was like, ‘There's no way. There's no chance.’”

Added Mattingly: “That just felt like a God thing for me. Maybe people look at it differently, but it's hard to think that that's random. That just ‘happened’ to happen that day.”

Slugger Bour would collect his first career triple, bellyflopping into third base and eliciting a roar from the crowd. Ramos, who was an All-Star with Fernández that season, pitched a scoreless ninth to finish off a 7-3 win.

“That was just one of those bigger-than-baseball type of moments,” Bour said. “Really eye opening. Didn't feel real. None of it did.”

“That was one of the hardest times that I ever had on the mound, just trying not to break down,” Ramos said. “It's weird because everyone's wearing No. 16, and certain guys would turn the corner, and you just get a glimpse of like, ‘Oh, José.’ My mind didn't want to believe it.”

“I think everybody really wanted to win that first night back,” Yelich said. “I knew we were going to win that night just because we just couldn't lose. I knew we were going to win, and then after that, I knew we were going to lose. But nobody cared because it was just like we were done.”

Two days later, the Marlins -- wearing white RIP T-shirts with Fernández on the front -- walked alongside his hearse, which transported him from the ballpark to the church for the funeral. Temporary walls pasted onto the ballpark’s pillars allowed anyone to leave messages of grief.

Photos shared across social media showed one solitary rain cloud hovering over the ballpark. Others captured a rainbow ending there.

After their 5-2 loss to the Mets later that day, the Marlins flew to Washington to close out the season – but not before a team dinner that night that served as a celebration of life.

“Even when I think about it now, it still lives in me as a lesson to tell the people around you that you love them, because you never know when your last time speaking to them is going to happen,” Ramos said. “You don't expect that to happen to a person like José Fernández.”

Fernández’s passing had immediate ramifications on the Marlins.

In the hopes of complementing their young core of Yelich, Stanton, Strange-Gordon, Realmuto, Bour and Ozuna, the Marlins signed veteran Edinson Volquez and traded three prospects, including Luis Castillo, for Dan Straily to supplement the rotation.

Stanton would become the franchise’s first National League MVP the following season, and Ozuna also made a strong case for MVP candidacy. Strange-Gordon would hit .308 and lead the Majors in steals. Bour clubbed 25 homers, while Yelich and Realmuto combined for another 35 home runs.

But the Marlins finished second in the NL East with a 77-85 record, missing the postseason for a 14th straight season.

“That's just a tough hole to fill, especially in Miami,” Mattingly said. “It's not like you're going to go out and sign three free agents. You had to do it through a trade or some way, or your young guys had to step forward and things like that. That was really where you kind of end up unloading some young guys that are pretty good in the Minor Leagues that if you probably hold tight, you're sitting a lot better a year later.”

Added Koehler: “Everybody wants to pretend that we could just move on and play, but you're replacing somebody that nobody ever expected to be replaced. Everyone expected him to be there forever.”

Though 10 years have come and gone, Fernández’s impact lives on.

Mattingly recalled chatting with Fernández about him wanting to become a leader but needing to make an effort and set an example. A crying Fernández wound up unloading some personal troubles to Mattingly.

“It turns into a dad talking to his kid instead of a manager talking to a player, and that's just that emotion of him,” Mattingly said. “What was going on was right on his sleeve and things like that. It makes you pay attention to guys and try to understand them and what's going on with them.”

Bour, who also lost Angels teammate Tyler Skaggs in 2019, learned the fleeting nature of life. He has the Fernández jersey, his bat and photos from that Mets game in his office.

“Being in player development and being around talented players, I think about the talent that José was,” said Bour, who works for the Brewers. “You see little sparks of guys with just a lot of energy and you start to be like, ‘Oh, this guy's got a little bit of José in him’ or something like that.”

Regardless of whom you speak to from the 2016 Marlins, two words always come up when they look back on that traumatic time: “What if?”

Owner Jeffrey Loria eventually sold the team after the 2017 season. Within two years, Yelich, Stanton, Ramos, Ozuna, Bour and Realmuto had been dealt.

Since then, Yelich has become an NL MVP and the face of the Brewers. Stanton joined Aaron Judge in the Bronx and has become one of the most clutch postseason performers of all time. Mattingly, who helped the Marlins snap a long playoff drought in 2020, reunited with Realmuto this season in Philadelphia.

“After that, we knew where it was headed,” Yelich said. “I wish we could’ve seen how it played out. I wish for his family, obviously, it didn’t happen, and for the other lives that were lost. Just one of those tragic baseball stories.”