MIAMI _ Jose Fernandez's locker is a private monument to a public tragedy.
In a corner of the Miami Marlins' clubhouse, visible to his teammates and few others, preserved behind a glass window, his belongings sit not quite the way he left them that night, but close enough in the closed-off cubby. His glove, his hat, his socks, his shoes _ lots of shoes _ his pants, his black No. 16 jersey, it's all there.
It was there for the home opener in April, when the Marlins won a game Fernandez probably would have wanted to start. It was there in July, when the Home Run Derby and All-Star Game, baseball's midsummer family reunion, came to Little Havana. It was there three weeks later, when Penelope, the daughter Fernandez never met, visited on what would have been his 25th birthday. And it was there Wednesday, the one-year anniversary of Fernandez's final game, which he later described in a private moment with one teammate as the best he ever pitched.
Justin Bour, the Marlins' first baseman, sits at his own locker three steps from Fernandez's in the bowels of Marlins Park. He takes a moment before each home game to look and remember.
"It's just a reminder that life is precious and you only get one," Bour said. "Don't waste it."
Fernandez, a Cuban-American star in the Cuban-American capital, died one year ago Monday. A state investigation concluded that Fernandez, drunk and with cocaine flowing through his veins, crashed his speeding boat into a jetty off Miami Beach in the middle of the night, killing himself and two others.
Since then, the locker has remained largely the same. So much else _ for Fernandez's family, Fernandez's team, Fernandez's friends and Fernandez's legacy _ has changed.
