No. 120: TONY FERNANDEZ / As great as he was, there was always a sense of what might have been

The winter after he established himself in the majors, I met him on his own turf and that came to mind when he died far too soon. Inspiring on so many counts but with an arc that breaks your heart.

TONY FERNANDEZ would have turned 61 today. To mark his birthday, I’ve posting a few items here.

FIRST, here’s a link to an earlier SubStack entry about attending a fantasy camp where Tony, then a young major leaguer, was an instructor. (This story is in the archive and thus behind the paywall, so it’s accessible to those with paid subscriptions or comps.) This piece spins out of an assignment for a feature for T.O. Magazine, a defunct city mag back in the late …