I was not a huge baseball fan as a kid. I didn’t play little league ball, or collect and trade baseball cards with my friends, or memorize stats of baseball heroes and other more obscure players. My great-uncle Orville took me and my younger brother to Phillies games back in the early 1960’s and I remember watching games with him on their big TV set while smoke from his Lucky Strikes swirled between him and the TV. I was living in Washington DC when the prospect of a major league team coming to the Nation’s Capital was on everyone’s tongue. I lived in the Capitol Hill neighborhood and was glad when the home of the Nationals would be in downtown rather than the suburbs. RFK stadium was about a mile away and the new stadium, once built, was only a fifteen minute walk from my home. We had season tickets and it was fun going to games even if the Nationals weren’t doing all that well in those first few years.
I moved to Miami in 2008 and tried to become a Marlins fan but they didn’t make it easy. We didn’t get season tickets. I remember too many hot Sunday afternoons watching losing games in the huge temporary home of Dolphins Park. The new stadium downtown is a great venue and I may be alone in liking the homerun sculpture in far center field. But watching games has been fun and the players seemed to truly like one another. We watched Chris Coghlan, Hanley Ramirez, Dan Uggla, Cody Ross, Logan Morrison and in the last few years, Dee Gordon, Giancarlo Stanton, Martin Prado, Christian Yelich and, of course, Jose Fernandez. I watched Jose pitch his last game last Saturday on TV. I watched Barry Bonds playfully kiss him after he pitched a great game. I read that Jose said afterwards that he thought it was his best game ever.
I was on Virginia Key with a friend early last Sunday morning when we noticed a helicopter and a number of flashing blue lights just beyond Fisher Island. We commented that ‘there must be something going on’. A little after 9am a friend in DC texted asking if I had heard about Jose’s death. I spend the next 4 hours glued to the TV screen. Tears welled up in my eyes more times than I care to recall. And I didn’t know why. I watched Jose’s funeral procession on TV this past Wednesday winding its way through Miami on its way to St. Brendan’s Church. And my eyes welled up with tears again. I guess I am finally becoming that baseball fan I never was in my youth. Did you see Dee Gordon’s home run Monday night, his first of the year? Did you see Jose’s childhood friend, Aledmys Diaz’s grand slam home run on Tuesday night, his first grand slam ever? The Marlins are going to miss Jose. But I think his love of the game will permeate the Marlins for years to come. I can’t wait for next season.