Sports have an uncanny ability to make people feel connected to people they’ve never met, to teams they’ve never played for and to events that we are only spectators for.
Which is why last Sunday I walked around with a pit in my stomach because José Fernández, a 24-year-old baseball player I had never met, had died suddenly in a boating accident.
It’s why thousands of people from the Miami community turned out for a public memorial for Fernández on Wednesday, and more watched as the service was televised.
