Every Miami Marlins player will wear No. 16 in Monday night’s game against the New York Mets to honor Jose Fernandez, according to Clark Spencer of the Miami Herald.
It will also be the last time the number is worn by a member of the Marlins organization, with owner Jeffrey Loria telling reporters the team will retire the number.
Fernandez died Sunday morning in a boating accident. He was 24.
The Marlins also painted Fernandez’s No. 16 on the pitcher’s mound.
Sunday’s game against the Atlanta Braves was cancelled in the wake of the news.
“As you see around you, there are no words to describe how this organization feels,” team president David Samson said in a press conference Sunday, per Tim Healey and Mike Clary of the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “There’s no playbook. There’s no words of consolation. There’s prayer and there’s thought toward his family, toward his soon-to-be-born daughter. You realize how precious life is, how taking things for granted is a foolish man’s game.”
The baseball community came together Sunday to honor Fernandez and pay tribute to the starting pitcher who had already established himself as a superstar and one of the game’s most charismatic players. There was a league-wide moment of silence for Fernandez and tributes like the one from Yoenis Cespedes of the New York Mets:
“As mad as he would make you with some of the stuff he would do, you just see that little kid you see when you watch kids play Little League,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said, per Tyler Kepner of the New York Times. “That’s the joy that Jose played with, and the passion he felt about playing. That’s what I think about.”
Indeed, it was Fernandez’s love of the game that stuck with those who played with or against him.
“You could see the passion and joy of playing, and you realize it’s not showing up the other team,” Philadelphia Phillies catcher A.J. Ellis said of Fernandez, per Kepner. “It’s the joy of competing, the joy of him and his teammates being successful. You can’t fault anybody for that. You actually admire people for that.”
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