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Diego Fagundez threw up the "LV" in honor of Austin FC fan club Los Verdes after he scored the club's first-ever goal. (Austin FC/Twitter)
Jersey Number: 14
Hometown: Leominster, Massachusetts
Position: Midfield
Age: 26
Former club: New England Revolution
Background
A decade in our colors. Thanks for all the memories, @DiegolFagundez!#NERevs pic.twitter.com/R3o2nH1Va8
— New England Revolution (@NERevolution) January 5, 2021
Back before Austin FC had even hit the pitch, midfielder Diego Fagundez played foot golf with members of Los Verdes, an Austin FC fan club. Fagundez told them once he made his first goal, he'd throw up the LV in their honor.
Three months later, Fagundez proved true to his word when he made not only his first goal with the program but also the first goal in club history.
"Did I think I was going to be the first person to score a goal for this club and for the city? No, but was given the chance to do that," Fagundez said. "I care about this team as much as (the fans) do, and hopefully I can give a lot more than just one goal."
Before ATXFC, Fagundez had already made MLS history at the New England Revolution. At 26, he's already had 265 MLS appearances and been in the league for 10 years. He's the youngest player to reach 200 appearances and the first homegrown player to log 10,000 minutes in the league.
Fagundez's meteoric rise started young—at 15, he couldn't drive himself to practices when he signed with the Revolution as one of the youngest players in league history. Fagundez was entering his sophomore year of high school when he made his first professional appearance as a sub against Chivas USA. His presence was immediately felt, and 20 minutes into his career he had already made his first-ever professional goal.
Just like the Austin FC goal, Fagundez said he was ready to make a name for himself when he first ran onto a professional pitch. "In my head that day, I said to myself, make sure you do something that people will recognize your name," Fagundez said. "I come to a new team, and I want to do the same thing. I want people to know who I am and what I what I'm capable of."
In October 2018, 23-year-old Fagundez once again hit a career milestone as he reached 50 career goals at an age when many make their professional debut.
A native to Uruguay, Fagundez has made four international appearances with the U-20 Uruguay National Team, where he helped his home country qualify for the U-20 FIFA World Cup in the 2015 Campeonato Sudamericano.
Rumors swirled in 2020 that Fagundez was getting offers from Liga MX clubs at the same time that he was given a not-so-great offer by the Revolution. Instead of leaving the MLS, Fagundez took a chance with the fledgling Austin FC program. The rest is, quite literally, history.
With Austin FC
While at the lake, Fagundez told his father that he was interested in a new program—Austin FC. Three days later, he got the call, and everything but his hair—so far—went Verde.
"Right away, I was very happy," Fagundez said. "My energy is here, I'm 100% committed, And I want to make the city, all the fans, all my teammates and myself all happy."
Now sporting a blonde buzzcut instead of the maroon mohawk of his teenage years, Fagundez has had to prove he's not "washed up" at only 26 years old, and Austin FC provided the perfect opportunity.
He's proven it well—though he hasn't secured a permanent starting spot over Designated Player Tomas Pochettino, he still got his chance to shine when Pochettino was benched due to an MLS request. Just like a decade ago, Fagundez made his presence known when he scored the club's first goal.
Head Coach Josh Wolff said the man of the hour's goal was well-deserved.
"I've always enjoyed watching him play," Wolff said. "Physically, I was really impressed with what he was able to do. I was happy for him."
More than making history, Fagundez is looking to help the team hold up a trophy at the end of the season.
"Goals are nice, but at the end of the day, what matters is trophies and winning games," Fagundez said. "I came here because I want to win games and I want to show the people that I still am capable of playing. Ten years are amazing, let's make it 20."
Off the pitch
"For me, my dogs are like kids--they're family"
— NBC Sports Boston (@NBCSBoston) August 15, 2019
Meet Diego Fagundez's pack in Episode 2 of our Pro Pets series! #ProPetsNBC #WellnessCORE (@wellnesspetfood) pic.twitter.com/wqRT3mCSIF
With his natural soccer IQ, it's no surprise that Fagundez comes from a futbol family.
Fagundez was born in Montevideo, Uruguay to Washington Fagundez, a former professional footballer, and Alicia Pepe, who played club soccer herself.
When Fagundez was too young to drive himself to practice, his father would often nap in the car during training, but eventually, Revs staff invited him in. From then on, Washington was a staple at his son's practices, greeting Fagundez' teammates and coaches as he made his daily walk up the stands to watch his son follow in his footsteps.
Now Fagundez has a family of his own. He's a father to two children, Maria and Liam. Fagundez also has a pack of four dogs, who he calls "part of his family," and due to his passion for eggs, he's got a coop full of chickens as well.
Fagundez has sported many hair cuts and colors throughout his career. When asked if he would ever dye it Verde, the man of many colors said he isn't a big fan of the look. Still, he might just take the step to become Los Verdes' No. 1 player. "You never know," he said. "It might go green someday."
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Bruce McCandless II's untethered spacewalk made history in 1984. The red stripes above his knees were the only way that NASA could determine which astronaut was Bruce and which was his fellow spacewalker, Bob Stewart. (NASA)
'Wonders All Around' is a new book by Austinite Bruce McCandless III about his dad, the astronaut Bruce McCandless II. (Bruce McCandless III)
I met McCandless III, who lives in Austin with his wife Pati, for a coffee a few months ago, thanks to the introduction from a mutual friend. As we talked about losing our dads, being writers and parents and living in Austin while still dealing with COVID, his dad's famous flight didn't come up, but the process of writing such an epic biography of a complex, only recently passed man was something worth unpacking over coffee.
I hadn't read the book yet, but over the next few weeks, I got to know the McCandless family in such a sweet way that I wanted to write a little about the book here to perhaps inspire you to seek out a copy of "Wonders All Around."
As much as this is a book about space, it's also a book about grief. And persistence. And stoicism. And masculinity and maternality.
The elder McCandless died in 2017, just a few years after losing his wife, Bernice, to cancer.
This passing of the torch from father to son left the younger McCandless inspired to take on this decades-long narrative. McCandless III sets the tone for the book with a memory of the family sitting around the dinner table at their home outside Johnson Space Center near Houston in the mid 1970s, when his dad, who joined NASA in 1966 at the age of 28, wasn't sure he'd ever actually make it to space.
"Our dinners were somber affairs. We ate around a rectangular Formica table in the breakfast nook. Tracy and I sat on benches padded with orange vinyl cushions. Mom and Dad occupied faux-Spanish style chairs with green felt upholstery. Despite the informal, Howard Johnson's-at-the-airport feel of the furnishings, there was a tension in the air that set in right around the time the frozen string beans started steaming. I had the feeling that my sister and I had forgotten to do something important, though I couldn't figure out what it was, or that judgment had been rendered on us and we'd been found guilty of … something — again, it was unclear what. Horseplay was prohibited. The TV and all sources of music or other frivolity were turned off, and singing was strictly forbidden. The only sound came from the aquarium pump. My father had a 100-gallon tank along the wall behind his chair. Sometimes the big plecostomus would attach itself by its mouth to the glass facing us, and I imagined it sucking all the oxygen out of the room."
Imagining what it must have been like to require oxygen to survive, not in outer space but in the living room with your family, sets up the story of the McCandless ancestors, including a guy who was killed by Wild Bill Hickok and the author's grandfather, who was an admiral in the U.S. Navy.
No pressure, Bruce.
It was fascinating to read about the 18 years that Bruce McCandless II worked for NASA before he finally had his first flight, which debuted the Manned Maneuvering Unit, a jet-fueled backpack that he and Ed Whitsett Jr. spent so many years developing. (That's the joystick-controlled machine he's wearing in that mind-bending poster that hung on millions of Americans' walls over the following decade.)
The author McCandless has the unenviable task of trying to put into words what that flight must have felt like. His dad flew 150 feet away from the shuttle Challenger, which would, of course, break into a million little pieces just a few years later.
When President Reagan called the shuttle to congratulate the astronauts that day in 1984, the command center set up a demonstration space walk to give the president a live view of McCandless through the shuttle window.
Bruce McCandless II, trains with Kathy Sullivan, right, in preparation to launch the Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA)
The only problem was, there wasn't much fuel left. McCandless went out anyway, trying to stay within 10-15 feet of the spacecraft. He got into position and turned off the unit to preserve propellant. After the president said a few words and the video switched off, McCandless turned on the unit and "looked for the closest piece of the orbiter, pointed at it, put the hand controller in +X (and) got a sort of sighing noise as it accelerated in that direction." He ran out of fuel just as he grabbed onto a rail on the orbiter. Hand over hand, he brought himself back to the donning station.
It's that kind of suspense that made this book so thrilling to read.
There's space tension like when McCandless is operating as CAPCOM, the only person talking to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin while they are walking on the surface of the moon, and his commander wants him to break protocol and call them back early, even though there are no signs of distress.
The book is also so touching. I cried while reading about the declining health of Bernice, who survived so many astronaut wife struggles over the years and at the end of her life remained a loving partner and mother.
Bruce McCandless was a Navy pilot who was picked to join NASA in 1966. His first space flight wasn't until 1984. (NASA)
It's easy to forget that McCandless II had an entirely other memorable historic moment—launching the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990—and this one seems to have struck an even deeper chord with McCandless III.
The Hubble launch was McCandless' second and final flight. He was 52 and had worked at NASA for 24 years.
McCandless II spends the last chapters of the book making a compelling case that his dad's work to fix and update the Hubble are among the greatest achievements to science. He continued to work on Hubble for another two decades after retiring from NASA through his work at Lockheed Martin.
Bruce McCandless, left, and the flight crew that launched the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990. He was 52 years old. (NASA)
He was the "nuts, bolts, screws, and wires guy," the auto mechanic rather than the scientist, who kept the telescope going 340 miles above Earth for more than twice its life expectancy. The Hubble has been cited in more than 18,000 scientific papers and has revealed countless secrets and unsolved mysteries from around the universe and beyond.
"The size, shape, and sheer spectral weirdness of the images boggle the imagination and make prophets and dreamers of us all," McCandless writes toward the end of "Wonders All Around. "Some of us pay therapists to tell us we're important and unique. Then we check in with Hubble so the satellite can inform us just how galactically marginal we all are. The truth is somewhere in the middle."
What a beautiful reminder.
