Elliott: Remembering Tony Fernandez, plus arrangements
Tony Fernandez; the Blue Jays all-time hit leader, will be laid to rest Tuesday, Feb. 25 at Funeraria Biandino, Abraham Lincoln in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. A memorial service will be held at the ball park Fernandez played as a youngster in San Pedro de Macoris the next day.. Flowers can be sent to his wife Clara in Weston, Fla. Donations can be made to the Tony Fernandez Foundation, 47 Metcalfe Drive. Bradford, Ont. L3Z 3C8.
February 16, 2020
By Bob Elliott
Canadian Baseball Network
To write about Tony Fernandez you have to start at the start.
And the start was the 1978-79 winter ball season when Tony La Russa managed Estrellas Orientales club of San Pedro de Macoris and the Dominican Winter League.
In the early afternoons, La Russa would hit ground balls on the rough Estadio Tetelo Vargas stadium surface to a 15-year-old infielder, with a bad leg, who lived in a house beyond the right-centre field fence.
Before the final game of the season, the young infielder told La Russa, “Some day I am going to come to the United States and play for you Mr. La Russa.”
The youngster never played for the Chicago White Sox, Oakland A’s or the St. Louis Cardinals -- the three teams the Hall of Famer managed ... however. Boston Red Sox manager John McNamara managed the American League in the 1987 All-Star game at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. La Russa was one of his coaches.
“So, technically the young man was right, I’ll be hitting him ground balls this afternoon,” said La Russa on the workout day.
The young man was Tony Fernandez, who died Sunday at the far too young age of 57. Fernandez was taken to a Florida hospital where he was placed into a medically-induced coma over complications from kidney disease. He had battled kidney problems for several years and was first hospitalized with poly cystic kidney disease in 2017.
Fernandez is the third member of the Jays Level of Excellence to die. Jays fans lost Hall of Famer Roy Halladay in a plane crash Nov. 7, 2017 and broadcaster Tom Cheek in 2005.
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Fernandez’s first scheduled start in the minors was not an indicator of how his career would unfold. He missed the bus.
“Tony went for a walk, didn’t show at the hotel until half an hour after we left,” said Epy Guerrero, the scout who signed Fernandez and accompanied him from the Dominican to the Jays’ class-A Kinston affiliate in 1980.
“Fred Manrique played short since Tony was late. Then I hit Tony.”
You hit him?
“With my tongue,” Guerrero explained of the tongue lashing he gave the 18-year-old. “My No. 1 rule: be on time.”
Fernandez was on time after that playing 17 seasons in the majors, 12 with the Jays, playing more games (1,450) and collecting more hits (1,543) than any of the 782 players to wear the Toronto uniform -- from Jeremy Accardo and Juan Acevedo to Gregg Zaun and Eddie Zozky.
He was 3.7 years younger than the rest of the league, which in those days was better than the Florida State League.
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My first exposure to Fernandez was the final six weeks of the 1985 season.
General manager Pat Gillick was asked who the MVP of his first-place team was by a group of reporters?
“Jesse Barfield?”
Gillick shook his head no.
“Dave Stieb?”
No.
“Jimmy Key or Doyle Alexander?”
No.
“Lloyd Moseby?”
“No, I’d say it would have to be our shortstop.”
At age 23, Fernandez had batted .289 with 31 doubles, 10 triples, two homers and 61 RBIs while compiling a .730 OPS and providing excellent defence in 161 games.
If you go by wins only -- the 1985 Jays with the most wins in franchise history despite carrying two Rule V players in OF Lou Thornton 16 starts, 75 at-bats) and INF Manny Lee (five starts, 40 at-bats) -- the 1985 Jays were the best with 99 wins
Tony Fernandez in the Blue Jays dugout at the Rogers Centre when the team celebrated its 40th anniversary,
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The only time I was ever afraid in a ball park -- the San Francisco earthquake doesn’t count, I did not know it was an earthquake -- involved Fernandez, in 1989, when the Jays were in Arlington, Tex. to play the Texas Rangers.
Kelly Gruber hit a homer to bring up Fernandez and a few pitches later Ranger reliever Cecilio Guante’s threw a pitch up and in. The ball caught part of Fernandez’s ear flap and part of his face. His eye? We couldn’t tell.
Now this was the old Arlington yard which would be full of Texicans until the start of football season. We thought could have been in a funeral home from the silence.
Fernandez went face down in the dirt and did not move. I remember some one in the pressbox saying “it’s been six minutes .... it’s been eight minutes.”
Eventually, trainer Tommy Craig was able to get Fernandez to sit up. And from the noise someone walking by outside the park might have thought Ruben Sierra had hit a walk off grand slam.
Fernandez had a fractured orbital bone which had to be repaired by surgery at Arlington General Hospital. Closer Tom Henke visited and when he walked in and saw the small hole in Fernandez’s cheek said “Dang ... Tony you now look like George Bell’s twin.”
Fernandez responded through teeth clenched “Don’t make me laugh, it hurts.”
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At the 1990 winter meetings at the O’Hare Hyatt in Chicago, the Jays were on the aggressive. On Sunday they added CF Devon White and days later acquired 2B Robbie Alomar and RBI machine OF Joe Carter for 1B Fred McGriff and Fernandez.
The next spring I landed in Arizona to talk to George Bell, now of the Cubs, who predicted that the Toronto Maple Leafs would win more games than the Jays. The next day it was off to Yuma, to Padres camp.
When Fernandez had his contract renewed by the Jays he “called down the wrath of the Lord on both Pat Gillick and Gord Ash.” He didn’t say anything controversial and I headed to the work room -- two trailers with not enough room for my laptop. So I told a couple of friends from San Diego I was headed to the hotel. An hour later there was a torrential downpour.
Over the next two years all four made all-star appearances.
Somewhere in there my phone rang. It was Bob Nightengale, who was covering the Padres at the time. “You are not going to believe this but our trailer just got hit by lightning.”
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Fernandez’s second stint with the Jays came in 1993 after Dick Schofield had season-ending surgery. Not only did Guerrero sign Fernandez but he also played a role in the shortstop’s return.
“My best friend, Pat Gillick phoned me at 3 a.m. and woke me up,” Guerrero said from the Dominican. “He told me to get on the first flight to New York and go to Shea Stadium.”
Fernandez was with the Mets and in manager Dallas Green’s crowded dog house.
“I didn’t have a field pass, so a Dominican radio announcer -- Billy Arroyo -- got me past the guards and I talked to Tony,” Guerrero said.
GM Gillick wanted to know about Fernandez’s .225 average. Was he ready to play?
“I told Tony ‘you have play for us, we are in bad shape, we have Alfredo Griffin, but we need an everyday shortstop,” Guerrero said.
After the Jays gave up outfielder Darrin Jackson, Guerrero told Fernandez to get on the first plane to Detroit to join the Jays “and get another ring.”
Guerrero signed Carlos Delgado, Kelvim Escobar, Jose Mesa, Junior Felix, Nelson Liriano and Cesar Izturis to name a few Jays plus Damo Garcia with the New York Yankees.
“I used to coach with Licey in the capital,” Guerrero said. “We’d go to Tony’s town of San Pedro. Tony’s family lived behind the right field fence, he’d jump it and always be around our dugout when he was 12 or 13. I’d hit him ground balls.
“One day I told him ‘you know you’re going to be an all-star,’ he grew, we signed him and I said ‘now you’re going to be an all-star ... for Toronto.’”
The Jays would not have been repeat winners without Fernandez, who lead the Jays with nine RBIs in the World Series.
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Fernandez’s third stint with the Jays came with Gord Ash signed him to a free agent contract Dec. 8, 1997. He made 81 starts at second and 52 at third base.
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And Ash brought Fernandez back a fourth time when he signed Fernandez to a free-agent deal June 8, 2001. He started nine games at DH and one at second.
Fernandez achieved a lot being named to five all-star games and winning four Gold Glove awards ... beating out Cal Ripken.
Some have written he rivals Ripken. Fernandez played 2,150 games, only 1,573 at shortstop.
Comparing to Ripken he falls short, but he remains one of the better players (George Bell, Joe Carter, Carlos Delgado, and Dave Stieb plus Hall of Famers Alomar and Halladay) in the 43-year history of the organization
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Deepest sympathies to his wife Clara, and their children Joel, Jonathan Abraham, Andres and Jasmine.