Major League Baseball quietly has given the Miami Marlins $700,000 as a result of Jose Fernandez’s death in a Sept. 25 boating accident, and the Marlins this past week allocated all of that money to a trust for Fernandez’s three-month old daughter Penelope and to Jose’s mother, Maritza, according to industry sources.
MLB has a policy in which it gives a team $1 million if one of its players dies. But MLB’s insurance company that’s responsible for those payments initially balked at giving MLB (and thus, the Marlins) the $1 million because the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission concluded that Fernandez had been driving the boat at the time of the crash and had traces of cocaine in his system and a blood-alcohol level of .