Marlins players turned down invitation to go on boat with Jose Fernandez

As if the pain of losing a 24-year-old teammate isn’t enough, several Miami Marlins players are now haunted with one of the most crippling thoughts a person can have.

That could have been us.

In a chilling feature about the hours before Fernandez and two other men were killed in a boating accident, Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports notes that Fernandez asked several Marlins teammates to go out on his boat with him the night after Saturday’s game against the Atlanta Braves.

After Saturday’s game, Fernandez had asked a number of teammates to join him on the boat. One by one, they declined. And there they were Monday, back in uniform, the uniform he was supposed to be wearing, too, thinking that if not for the instinct that told them to say no, it could’ve been them.

After Monday night’s emotional win over the New York Mets, outfielder Marcell Ozuna revealed that he was one of the players Fernandez asked to join him. Ozuna declined and asked Fernandez to reconsider.

“That night I told him, ‘Don’t go out,’” Ozuna told Andre C. Fernandez of The Miami Herald. “Everybody knew he was crazy about that boat and loved being out on the water. I told him I couldn’t go out that night because I had the kids and my wife waiting for me.

“He told me if I didn’t hear from him by 10 a.m. [Sunday morning] to call him and wake him up so he could get back to the ballpark on time for the game. I told him, ‘yeah no problem, I’ll call you.’ I woke up Sunday and that’s when I found out. I cried and cried.”

It’s hard to imagine the guilt Fernandez’s family, friends and teammates must be feeling. Jose was said to have been stressed out about something before taking his boat out, and it’s clear more than one person believed going for a night ride was a bad idea. The incredibly eerie text messages one of the men who died sent before joining Fernandez indicated things were not going well. They ended much worse.

H/T Hardball Talk