The Los Angeles Dodgers and all other teams across Major League Baseball played with heavy hearts on Sunday after learning in early-morning hours of Jose Fernandez’s sudden death. Fernandez and two other men died in a boating accident off Miami Beach.
The Miami Marlins canceled their afternoon matchup with the Atlanta Braves. Aside from the general bond professional athletes share, close friendships are formed between players across multiple teams.
Such was the case for Kiké Hernandez, who once was part of the Marlins organization. He learned of Fernandez’s death via an update from the MLB.com At Bat app.
“I got dressed and came to the field. I didn’t know what else to do,” a somber Hernandez said prior to the Dodgers’ game against the Colorado Rockies.
The 25-year-old Puerto Rico native has Cuban family members, one of which is his grandfather. “He felt an immense about of pride, because Jose was from Cuba. To have an effect like that on an entire country and sport, just shows you the type of person [Fernandez] was,” Hernandez said.
“He meant that much to Cuba and even the U.S.” Hernandez marveled at, and said he envied the passion Fernandez exuded whenever he was on the mound. It’s a sentiment Yasiel Puig also shared in his emotional reflecting on the friendship he had with the electric right-hander.
“He didn’t struggle that much, because he was that good. But the times that he did struggle, it seemed like he enjoyed it,” Hernandez said. Dodgers reliever, who was drafted by the Marlins in the fifth round in 2006, called Fernandez a “fierce competitor and jubilant teammate.”
“He was a big kid out there. I think I heard (Giancarlo) Stanton say it before: ‘He was like a kid among men, but he dominated the men.’ It’s a rare mixture to see somebody have that much fun and joy but still be a fierce competitor.”
