Palladino: Fernandez's Death Leaves Emotional Hole In Mets, Too
By Ernie Palladino
» More Ernie Palladino Columns
Nobody ever wants to play a game like the Mets have to Monday night.
It's one of those contests where enthusiasm takes a back seat to grief, even as New York remains in the battle for a wild card spot with San Francisco and St. Louis. It's one where two teams quite literally drag themselves onto the diamond, simply because there is a game to be played.
Death never gets in the way for long.
The Mets were supposed to face Jose Fernandez, one of baseball's most electrifying young pitchers. Instead, they get Adam Conley, who was supposed to start Sunday against Atlanta in Miami. Only, Sunday's game never happened.
The Marlins cancelled that home game because early in the morning, all the enthusiasm and camaraderie and -- good heavens -- the wonderful fastball/slider combo Fernandez brought to the mound was snuffed out, as were two other comrades in a boating accident.
MORE: Marlins: Jose Fernandez Killed In Boat Crash Off Miami Beach
It so happens that the Mets begin a three-game series with Fernandez' Marlins on Monday night. So the tragedy of early Sunday morning will affect them more than if they had, say, the Dodgers or Cubs on the schedule. It's always a little different when playing the team which suffered the loss.
Life does get too close sometimes. Dealing with death, even if it's not one of your own, is often easier at a distance.
PHOTOS: Sports World Remembers Jose Fernandez
Terry Collins could already feel it Sunday before his team ripped through the Phillies 17-0. In a pre-game press conference, he said he would call his team together before the next game, lay out the emotions of the moment, but also remind his players about Fernandez' passion and respect for the game.
And he would expect from his own players no less. And that includes Jose Reyes, a former teammate of Fernandez so distraught at the news that he couldn't address his feelings to the media.
None of it will be easy. Players have a certain affinity for their brethren who rise above the mediocre. In a mere 70 starts interrupted by Tommy John surgery, Fernandez, a 24-year-old Cuban, had certainly done that. He was one of the fast-rising greats. Teammates loved to watch him on the mound, mowing down enough batters to create a 38-17 record, a 2.58 ERA, with 589 strikeouts. The opposition, while cursing as he would run up eight, 10, 14 strikeouts, still marveled reverently at his dominance.
Fernandez was fashioning a Hall-of-Fame career. But more than that, he had created an aura of passion and good-natured enthusiasm that endeared him to virtually the entire league.
Pirates manager Clint Hurdle recalled in an extended tweet the time he spent with Fernandez at a baseball writer's dinner in 2013. They spoke. And ever since, when the two met each other, it was an arm around the shoulder and, "Hey, papi, how you doin', man?"
Yankees pitcher and ex-Marlin Nathan Eovaldi took timeout from his own Tommy John rehab to recount to WFAN beat reporter Sweeney Murti his relationship with the young stud. They kept in touch after Eovaldi's departure from Miami, texting about family and baseball. Only a month ago did Fernandez excitedly message him about his girlfriend's pregnancy, and how much he looked forward to becoming a dad.
Fernandez didn't have it easy. It took him four tries to get him out of Cuba in 2008, one of which landed him in jail, and the fourth of which landed him in the eight-foot waves of the Gulf of Mexico, which he braved as he swam to rescue his mother.
Trials like that tend to make one appreciate the chances one gets in life. And few showed more appreciation than the young star with a smile that lit up stadiums.
His death affected the entire league.
It is the Mets, however, who will play in a game nobody ever wishes on any franchise.
After losing a transcendent personality like Fernandez, it won't be easy to get back to business.
But the game pushes forward.
And the Mets and Marlins must push ahead with it.
Please follow Ernie on Twitter at @ErniePalladino