Fernandez had a smile that could light up a stadium

At some moment today we all heard about the most devastating news that the baseball world has faced in years, Marlins 24 year old ace Jose Fernandez was killed in a boating accident. My first reaction to this news was disbelief, I had just watched Fernandez dominate my NL team, the Nationals, earlier in the week. He couldn't be dead. The next feeling was a sadness unlike any I had experienced before, I was in tears about the death of someone I had never met. I was in mourning over not only a bright career ending so suddenly, but also an amazing young life ending too soon.

Four months ago, on a sunny weekday afternoon my freshman team baseball coach called us over to sit with him in the grass before practice. This didn't seem unusual, until we saw our coach sitting there, clearly holding back tears. An eerie silence fell over our group of 17 as we sat down. Our coach looked up at us, and gave us the horrible news we had all been afraid of. A teammate of ours (who will remain nameless), one that I knew particularly well, had a relapse in his remission from cancer. That teammate of mine was my backup at first base, and we had spent countless hours together in the previous months doing seemingly endless drills. Something I'll never forget is how he embraced his role as backup/DH, something I wouldn't have handled that well. After sitting there in silence for a minute, we talked about how we could help our friend and his family, and then, suddenly, we all got up and started practice. We knew that's what we needed to do to get past our sadness.

One of the things that amazed me most about today was realizing how much of an impact Jose Fernandez had on the baseball world. The out pour of sadness from players, writers, and fans across the country was something I had never seen in my time as a baseball fan. Fernandez seemed to touch a person in every clubhouse in the MLB, including the one in Seattle. Leonys Martin knew him from their days as children in Cuba, Robinson Cano became friends with him, and honored him with writing on his cap. The biggest impact Jose had on our beloved team was that he had on Steve Cishek, who was his teammate for most of 3 years in Miami. Cishek was somehow able to pitch today in all his grief, completely embodying the "Keep Fighting" mantra the team has been using. The two tributes that struck me the most were those of two of his closest friends, Yasiel Puig, and Lance McCullers. Puig, posted two loving tributes on twitter. McCullers, who knew Fernandez from when they were teenagers in Tampa, gave a heartbreaking interview about his friend.

Over the next few days, word spread throughout the school about our friend's condition. The reactions from people who barely knew him, or were great friends with him was incredibly moving. People from the basketball program came to us asking for what they could do because he had played basketball too. Classmates of ours that only knew him from the hallways or classes were rocked by the news and came together to support him. This is instantly what I thought of when scrolling through twitter today, just on a much larger scale.

The people in the baseball world hit the hardest by this news were his teammates on the Miami Marlins. The images from today that resonated with me were the ones from Marlins park. Justin Bour and Christian Yelich knelt by the mound with their arms around each other, clearly emotional about the loss of their dear friend and teammate. Don Mattingly and the Marlins held a press conference in sadness, holding a Fernandez jersey proudly, while discussing the life and career of Fernandez. Almost every Marlin posted on twitter about Jose, and linking all of those would be absurd. The common theme in their posts was disbelief that he was gone, and stories about what an amazing friend and person he was. Baseball was not important today in Miami, just remembrance.

Over the course of 3 months you can't help but getting close to people you spend a significant amount of time with. We all had a different connection with our teammate, and felt the hole left in the dugout by his absence. There were five games left in the season, the first one just two days after receiving the news, and against one of our rival schools. We came out on to that field with our heads not on the game, but on our sadness, and we got blown out. We had a team meeting before the next practice about how to handle the rest of the season, and proceeded to go on a 4 game win streak to close out the season, which we dedicated to him. We all honored him in some way for those last two weeks, and missed him greatly.

My last thought on the death of Jose Fernandez are that a great man and baseball player was taken from us much too soon, and we should all cherish life the way he did. He was everything baseball is supposed to be. He was talented, played with a fire lit beneath him, and loved everything about the sport. Everyone has a favorite highlight from his short career, whether it was the fight caused after his home run against Atlanta, or his comeback from Tommy John. He will be greatly missed in the baseball world.

We didn't know if or when we would see our teammate again. He shocked us a few weeks after the season by showing up at our post season awards ceremony. He was able to receive the award for Most Inspirational Player, which he won unanimously. He returned to school a few days later, and has been healthy since. We're all looking forward to a full season with him in the Spring.

The baseball community is a family unlike any other, and today we are in mourning. Jose Fernandez was our brother and now he is gone. May he rest in peace. I hope you all find a way to cope with this shocking news.

-Josh Kuh