While hundreds of people gathered in the rain Wednesday night to remember late Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez in a candlelight service on the baseball field of his former Tampa high school, no one was watching his No. 16 jersey hanging in the dugout.
It wasn’t until after the vigil ended and friends, family and former teammates of Fernandez parted ways that Alonso High School coach Landy Faedo and others noticed the Ravens jersey was missing from its rightful place, reports WFLA TV.
Faedo filed a police report with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, which alleges that the jersey was taken at some point between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. No suspect has been identified. The police must conduct their search without the help of surveillance cameras: There are none surrounding Alonso’s baseball field.
It was an unfortunate conclusion to an emotional event that gave Alonso loyalists a chance to reflect on the pitcher who came into their lives as a 15-year-old after his fourth attempt to defect from Cuba. Fernandez helped lead the school to two Florida state championships and ended his high school career with a 30-3 record.
“It’s unexplainable, the kind of kid he was,” Nathan Hahn, Fernandez’s former teammate at Alonso, told the TV station. “It’s not anything you can really put into words no matter how many words people can say about him. You just can’t capture it.”
Now, all they ask is that his jersey be returned to the place where it belongs, the place Fernandez first called home.
