This is a story about what might have been. A dream. A nightmare. A fantasy. A baseball tragedy.



This is a story about the late, great José Fernández — his life, his hopes, his dreams, his magnetic smile, his burgeoning stardom, all erased, just like that, in a late-night boat crash just 29 months ago … his legacy still shadowed by a toxicology report that showed alcohol and cocaine in his bloodstream that night.



Why write about him now? Why go down that complicated, emotional, what-might-have-been wormhole? Because throughout this offseason, we couldn’t stop thinking about him, for exactly the same reason so many other people in the sport couldn’t stop thinking about him.



Because this would have been his time. This would have been his moment. This would have been his payday. But sadly, hauntingly, what it actually turned into was the José Fernández Free Agent Winter That Never Was.



Because if he...