An emotional Dan Le Batard explains why Jose Fernandez was a symbol to so many and says Fernandez was the only player that Le Batard's mother wanted to see at the ballpark. (1:39)

Called my mother with the awful news Sunday morning. Had such a hard time getting out the words that she thought something terrible had happened to me.

I know how much she loved Jose Fernandez. As a player. As a personality. As a symbol of strength and pride for our people. Marlins management has extinguished Mom's love for baseball one move at a time over the last two decades. Fernandez was the only thing that brought her limping back to that ballpark to climb those stairs in her old age. The only thing. Such was the reach of his arm and his joy and his story. It could bring even a betrayed 72-year-old Cuban lady in for what felt like an embrace, grabbing her firmly by the heart.

There was a lot of silence on the other end of the phone when I told Mom that Fernandez was dead at 24. But I could hear that she was crying. I didn't have the words to soothe her. So I started crying too.

These kind of emotional connections in sports are so rare. We didn't know him. But we did. Fernandez's exile story was our story, from fleeing to freeing, so we mourned as a family and asked questions with no answers and appreciated life and love a little more than we did a few minutes earlier. My chest hurt, and my mother wept, and my groggy father awoke in a confused and grieving fog, asking "What happened?" This was how the early hours of Sunday felt for a lot of South Florida, so much of South Florida, too much of South Florida, morning turned to mourning.