CHICAGO _ There is a facial expression a ballplayer gives when approached at his locker by a reporter that reveals he's been caught and yet would rather be rushing somewhere else, anywhere else than into an interview.
Jose Fernandez, his hand reaching into the top shelf of his locker, gave me that look. His words said he had time for a few questions.
His face said he really wished he didn't.
With the mention of one name, that sag gave way to a smile _ that big, beaming Jose Fernandez smile that draws TV cameras constantly to the Marlins' dugout.
Aledmys Diaz.
"I'm here because of his dad," Fernandez said that March 2015 morning, gesturing around the Marlins' clubhouse at Roger Dean Stadium. "I'm pretty sure that I'm a baseball player today thanks to his dad."
Early Sunday morning, in Miami, the young pitcher who had learned baseball from Diaz's father and uncle was taken from baseball in a boating accident. Fernandez was 24.
The Miami Marlins announced his death Sunday morning.
The Associated Press reported that officials found an overturned boat early Sunday morning in Miami and three bodies. The Marlins canceled their Sunday game, and sympathy and notes of support came flooding in from throughout baseball.
On Twitter, the Cardinals, like many teams, expressed "thoughts and prayers go out to the Fernandez family and the entire Marlins organization during this difficult time."
The Cardinals know the sinking feeling of this news well.
Nine years ago, early on a Sunday morning, the Cardinals received word that pitcher Josh Hancock had been killed in an automobile wreck a short walk from Busch Stadium. During a World Series game in October 2014, the Cardinals heard that a single-car wreck in the Dominican Republic had killed their young, rising-star outfielder Oscar Taveras and his girlfriend, Edilia Arvelo. Alcohol and blood-alcohol levels well above the legal limits had been involved in both fatal accidents.
For the second time in three years, there will be a team reporting to spring training in Jupiter, Fla., mourning a sizable absence.
It was just months ago that Fernandez shared a major-league clubhouse for the first time with his boyhood friend, Aledmys.
At the All-Star Game in San Diego, Fernandez scored one of the permanent lockers in the visitors' clubhouse at Petco Park, and Diaz was lined up not too far away in a temporary locker constructed to make room for all of the National League All-Stars. For Fernandez, this was home. A former rookie of the year and an annual Cy Young Award contender, Fernandez as a fixture as an All-Star. The surprise was Diaz, a rookie who 12 months earlier had been designated for assignment by the Cardinals and available to any team interested in spending a waiver claim on him.
On the Monday before the All-Star Game, Fernandez told me that he had been looking for Diaz and had I seen him and where could I find him and was he in San Diego yet ...
The questions came out in a stream until he gave a reason.
"I'm going to give him one of the biggest hugs I've given in a long time," Fernandez said.
As boys on Eighth Street in Santa Clara, Cuba, Fernandez and Diaz would take the two-mile hike to the nearby ballpark for practice. Diaz's father, Rigoberto Diaz, had introduced the game to Fernandez and talked his mother into letting him join the other boys for practice and games. Diaz's uncle, Nelson Diaz, became Fernandez's coach, a treasured instructor who started the right-hander on the way toward the majors.
There is a photo that MLB.com got of their team, and in it Aledmys Diaz is on a knee in the middle of the picture. He's smiling and a red hat is propped up on his head. Three kids to his left his a younger boy wearing a yellow hat, his legs crossed, and he appears to have something in his mouth that is just obscuring a wide grin.
That's Fernandez.
Fernandez came to the States before Diaz. As a teen in 2008, his first view of Miami was from a boat off the Florida coast. Three times he attempted to defect from Cuba, according to reports, and once he was imprisoned by Cuban authorities for a few months. (You can see a video of his reunion with his grandmother here.) When Fernandez won the NL Rookie of the Year award in 2013 and finished third in the Cy Young Award voting, his boyhood friend, his teammates, his fellow Cuban, Diaz was caught in a limbo, between the nation where he grew up and the game he wanted to play.
Diaz had defected in July 2012, but didn't sign with the Cardinals until the spring of 2014.
Fernandez and Diaz grew up a few doors down from one another, played ball together two miles away from their homes, swapped video cassettes of major-league games from the States just to see them, and that's why it meant so much for Fernandez to see Diaz there in the same clubhouse at the All-Star Game in San Diego.
Their lockers were as close as their homes, neighbors again.
This time as major-leaguers.
"Very special. Very special," said Fernandez that day. "With everything _ to be here in the same clubhouse, in the same All-Star Game. Very special."
They both expressed hope it wouldn't be the last time.
