The Miami Marlins are preparing to play their first game since the death of their team-mate José Fernández, who was killed in a boating accident on Sunday.
Fernández had been due to start against the New York Mets on Monday night but instead the Marlins will take the field without a beloved team-mate and one of the brightest talents in baseball. The pitcher was just 24 when he was killed.
“Deep in our hearts there is a lot of pain,” third baseman Martin Prado said. “Somehow we’ve got to overcome that.”
“All I can do is scream in disbelief,” said Tony Perez, a Marlins executive who, like Fernández, was born in Cuba. “José won the love of all. I feel as if I had lost a son.”
Fernández fled Cuba as a teenager on his fourth attempt. He had been put in prison after an earlier unsuccessful attempt, and saved his mother from drowning as they finally made their way to the United States. His story – and death – affected players across Major League Baseball. “I don’t have the words to describe the pain I feel,” the Boston Red Sox veteran David Ortiz said. “José was one of the special cases. The story behind him and his family and the way everything happened. You know how remarkable his career was going. But the most important thing was his kindness and the kind of person he was. It’s hard, man.”
But while the tributes poured in for a player named the National League rookie of the year in 2013, a tweet by a Florida politician on Sunday caused widespread anger. Republican Florida state representative Matt Gaetz tied Fernández’s death in with Colin Kaepernick’s protest against racial inequality in the United States. “To all who will kneel during the anthem today - just remember how Jose Fernandez risked his life just for the chance to stand for it,” Gaetz tweeted on Sunday, shortly after the pitcher’s death was announced.
To all who will kneel during the anthem today - just remember how Jose Fernandez risked his life just for the chance to stand for it
— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) September 25, 2016
Gaetz was widely condemned for using Fernández’s death to push his own political views but later defended his actions. “My point is that while America remains imperfect, so many do so much to enjoy our freedoms,” he tweeted. “Seems ungrateful to kneel. Just my opinion.”
Meanwhile, authorities have named the two other men who died in the accident. Emilio Macias, 27, and Eduardo Rivero, 25, were in the boat with Fernández when it struck a jetty off Miami Beach in the early hours of Sunday morning.
