ond in the ACC, and he had career bests with seven tackles,

The season began back in early March, with a cover story in ESPN The Magazine in which Bryce Harper, the 23-year-old reigning MVP of the Washington Nationals, declared that baseball is a tired sport.It will end with the crowning of a World Series champion.In between, the season has played out in the background of a presidential race in which immigration became one of the pivotal issues.Jose Fernandez was an immigrant. He tried and failed three times to defect from Cuba before he and his mother finally made it on a fourth try. Last year, he became a U.S. citizen. And on the baseball field, he was anything but tired.Harpers argument was the games unwritten code limits self-expression. You cant do what people in other sports do, he said. Im not saying baseball is, you know, boring or anything like that, but its the excitement of the young guys who are coming into the game now who have flair.He singled out Fernandez. Jose Fernandez is a great example. Jose Fernandez will strike you out and stare you down into the dugout and pump his fist. And if you hit a homer and pimp it? He doesnt care. Because you got him. Thats part of the game. Its not the old feeling -- hoorah ... if you pimp a homer, Im going to hit you right in the teeth. No. If a guy pimps a homer for a game-winning shot ... I mean -- sorry.Fernandez not only had the flair that Harper admires but an unfiltered joy for the game. As teammates, opposing players and reporters talked about Fernandez the past two days, everyone mentioned that he simply loved playing baseball, always played with a smile, heck, could even make Barry Bonds laugh in the dugout:On Twitter, two moments from his rookie season were continuously retweeted as a form of grief therapy. The first one was when Fernandez improbably snagged a line drive off the bat of Troy Tulowitzki:Did you catch that? the cameras captured Tulowitzki asking. Fernandez grinned. Yeah. Of course he did.The second one was his reaction after Giancarlo Stanton hit a game-tying home run in the ninth inning of a game nobody now remembers except for this:The Marlins announced that they will retire Fernandezs No. 16. There were cries to allow him to be elected to the Hall of Fame or name an award after him. But this should be Fernandezs lasting legacy: Keeping baseball fun again.Thats an important idea to understand in this most divisive of years. Watching the pregame ceremony at Marlins Park before Mondays game, I saw Giancarlo Stanton and Christian Yelich, a black man and a white man, doing their pregame sprints together, both with red-rimmed eyes. I saw teammates from America, from Cuba, from Taiwan, from Japan, from the Dominican Republic, from Venezuela, all wearing jerseys with Fernandezs No. 16 on the backs. I saw Bonds, the son of a major leaguer, a man with his own large footprint on this game, crying as a high school choir sang the national anthem. I saw Dee Gordon, another son of a major leaguer, cry as he rounded the bases after impossibly leading off the game with his first homer of the season. I saw the Marlins place their hats on the mound after they had defeated the Mets.It was a team rallying around a kid who was born in Cuba, escaped to Mexico on a boat, made his way to Florida and became a baseball star with a movie-star smile. It was all a reminder that this game brings together players from all over the globe. They all bring their own codes, their own style of play, their own idea of flair. Its up to all of us -- players and fans -- to understand our differences, to understand there are different ways to play this game. That a bat flip is sometimes just a bat flip. That we can have Mark Fidrych talking to the baseball, Rickey Henderson making one-handed snatch catches, Dennis Eckersley pointing at batters after a strikeout, the Red Sox Idiots breaking a curse and Asdrubal Cabrera hitting a walk-off home run and throwing his bat like hes competing in the Olympic hammer throw. Its all baseball.I read somewhere -- sorry, forgot who wrote it, but it was a good line -- that Fernandez was one of those players kicking and screaming to bring baseball into the 21st century. Theres something to that, although as Jeff Passan of Yahoo wrote, Fernandez had a blissful ability to take neither himself nor what he was doing too seriously.In other words: Have some fun. It is, after all, just a game. Wholesale Knicks Jerseys . -- Running backs Darren McFadden and Rashad Jennings were back at practice for the Oakland Raiders on Wednesday despite being hampered by hamstring injuries. Cheap NBA Jerseys . -- An ugly goal by Nick Bonino helped the Anaheim Ducks overcome the defensive-minded Phoenix Coyotes on a night when their ragged power play continued to struggle. http://www.cheapknicksjerseys.com/ .com) - Yankee Stadium is the home of the Bronx Bombers, but on Sunday afternoon it will open its gates to host the latest addition of the Hudson River Rivalry. Cheap New York Knicks Jerseys . Once again, DeLaet finished tied for second at a PGA Tour stop on the weekend, this time at the Waste Management Phoenix Open. The pride of Weyburn, Sask. Cheap Knicks Jerseys China . The 28-year-old from Calgary matched his career best after missing just one shot in his two rounds of shooting in the mens 10-kilometre sprint competition. Smith finished in 23 minutes 15. WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Wake Forest has its longest winning streak under third-year coach Dave Clawson. Now the surprising Demon Deacons want more.They will have their best start since 2008 if they beat Delaware of the Championship Subdivision on Saturday night.Wake Forest (2-0) started with victories over Tulane and Duke for their first consecutive wins since 2013, the year before Clawson arrived to replace Jim Grobe. Beating the Fightin Blue Hens (2-0) would give them their first 3-0 start since 2008 , and their longest winning streak since the 2011 group won four in a row.I told the players if they like that feeling the locker room after the (Duke) game, they have to be willing to make the same investment every week. So far this week they have, Clawson said. They havent felt it a whole lot around here lately, and they want to feel it again.Both of Clawsons teams at Wake Forest have taken care of their FCS opponents, beating Gardner-Webb and Elon by a combined 64-10. But Clawson -- a former Richmond coach who routinely went up against Delaware during CAA play -- is wary of the Hens, who he says were more competitive last year against North Carolina than the 41-14 final score would indicate.I think (this game) comes at a great time for us, coach Dave Brock said. It gives us an opportunity to travel down there ... and see how we stack up, how we match up.---Some things to know about the Delaware-Wake Forest game:- KENDALLS TIME: Sophomore Kendall Hinton will make his second career start at quarterbacck after leading all four scoring drives in the 24-14 victory over Duke.dddddddddddd Hinton and John Wolford had split time during the first two games before Hinton took over for good midway through the second quarter. Hinton brings more mobility to the position but is capable of throwing, too, passing for 133 yards against Duke .- CARNEY-VAL: Wake Forest RB Cade Carney is coming off one of the best games in school history by a freshman. He rushed for 108 yards with three touchdowns , becoming the first Demon Deacons freshman with that many TDs in a game since Chris Barclay also had three against Purdue in 2002. Hes also the first freshman to rush for 100 yards in a game since Josh Harris and Deandre Martin against Army in 2012.- DUKE IS DUKE: Keep an eye on DL Duke Ejiofor, who single-handedly disrupted the Blue Devils offense last week. His 3+ sacks on the season rank second in the ACC, and he had career bests with seven tackles, three sacks and four tackles for losses against Duke.- FAST-STARTING HENS: Delaware is off to a 2-0 start for the third time in five years, after beating Delaware State and Lafayette by a combined 80-20, and is trying to start with three straight wins for the first time since 2012. The Hens have not beaten a Bowl Subdivision team since they topped Navy in 2007 behind QB Joe Flacco.---OnlineAP College Football website: www.collegefootball.ap.org Cheap NFL Jerseys Wholesale Jerseys Wholesale NFL Jerseys Jerseys From China Wholesale NFL Jerseys Cheap NFL Jerseys Cheap Jerseys ' ' '