The thing that tickled me the most about the furor over Jose Fernandez’s alleged attitude and maturity issues late in the season is that the complaints came from people who haven’t had a fraction of the adversity in their life that Fernandez has had. Comment thread commandos who want to lecture a guy about Playing the Game the Right Way and such.

Reminder: Fernandez came from Santa Clara, Cuba, from which he defected along with his mother and sister in 2008. During the trip his mother fell overboard and could have died, and a young Fernandez rescued her. All of this came after three failed defection attempts, each of which landed the teenaged Fernandez in jail. Yet he and his family kept trying. They wanted to come here and be prosperous so bad that they risked life and limb on multiple occasions to do it.

But go on, folks. Keep talking about how Fernandez “doesn’t have his head straight.” Keep running your mouth about how his priorities are wrong and maturity is lacking. Keep saying how he’s not supposed to show exuberance and emotion. You’re clearly an authority on the matter.

Anyway, one postscript to Fernandez’s journey stateside is that he had to leave his grandmother behind. And Fernandez loved his grandmother. On Monday, they were reunited after five years. MLB Productions has video of it:

[mlbvideo id=”31220231″ width=”400″ height=”224″ /]

Go on and tell him he doesn’t get it. Then, when you’re done with that, please kindly stuff it.