Manny Fernandez came from California by way of the University of Utah, and this always was part of his good story, because the Miami Dolphins didn’t sign players west of the Mississippi River back then, due to added cost of scouting or travel.

Joe Thomas, as general manager, convinced team owner Joe Robbie to sign an undrafted Fernandez anyhow, because he was Mexican and spoke Spanish. He’d sell tickets in South Florida, Thomas said. Robbie needed that in 1968.

It shows where Fernandez took such flimsy beginnings that he told this story on Johnny Carson’s late-night talk show after the 1973 season’s Super Bowl win. But Fernandez noted his heritage was Spanish, not Mexican. He then delivered the punch line as only he could.

“And I can’t say ‘adios’ in Spanish,’’ he said.

And now another great one’s gone. Another football anchor and big personality of the undefeated 1972 Dolphins and that early-1970s dynasty. Fernandez died at 79, the team announced Tuesday morning, the sixth starter from the team’s “No-Name Defense” to pass.

“Taco,” his teammates still called him in tribute to his faux Mexican heritage in a time it was allowed to make such cultural nicknames. His good friend on the defensive line was Bill “Stretch” Stanfill for his 6-foot-7 frame, another rugged outdoorsman who shared Fernandez’s sense of fun and good stories.

Here’s one: Fernandez and Stanfill were out in the Everglades one morning deer hunting in big-wheeled buggies. Suddenly, they came across hundreds of alligators. They grabbed one, put it in a box in the buggy and then decided what to do with it.

“How about we …” Fernandez said.

That’s how coach Don Shula walked into his office shower and left it screaming after seeing the gator. There were other stories of that team and time that get dusted off today. Fernandez, also in 1972, was in Mercy Hospital with pneumonia when he got a call that Sunday morning before playing Buffalo. His tests were OK, he was told. He could play.

So, he drove to the Orange Bowl, and didn’t just show up and play while unable to breathe deeply or too hard. He made 20 tackles, a staggering number for a defensive lineman. He helped hold Buffalo’s O.J. Simpson to 57 yards. He then was told by the team doctor upon entering the winning locker room to check back in the hospital because he was still sick.

“The hell I am,’’ Fernandez said. “If I’m good enough to make 20 tackles, I’m well enough to have a couple of beers after the game.”

He checked into the hospital at midnight. It says so right here in my notes. They’re all in a file, collected through the years, because Fernandez wasn’t just a good enough player to make the Dolphins’ Ring of Honor, but a big enough personality to talk with whenever a story warranted.

His 17 tackles in the 1972 Super Bowl should have won him the game’s Most Valuable Player. But the sole voter at the time, Sport magazine’s Dick Schaap, stayed out late the night before and slept through much of the game. He saw safety Jake Scott had two interceptions on the stat sheet and voted him the MVP.

Fernandez didn’t care too much. He was having too much fun.

“I was bulletproof in those days,’’ he once said. “Nothing could hurt me.”

He said that from an age and perspective that knew otherwise. By 1975, his body began to erode from football. He began taking various, pain-killing drugs — including Butazolidin, now banned from human use — while trying to play with a separated shoulder, reconstructed knee, injured ankle and general body in such bad shape he retired that 1975 preseason.

“Walking? I feel something every step,’’ he said at 54.

“I wake up four or five times a night, having to change positions due to pain,’’ he said at 63.

“I’d do it all over again,’’ he said at 76.

He came from a time that wasn’t all about fame or money, a good thing considering Fernandez made $12,000 his first year and $32,000 in the memorable 1972 season. But when the World Football League bought teammates Larry Csonka, Paul Warfield and Jim Kiick, Fernandez had an epiphany one night at a party with Stanfill and their agent, Bill Keating.

“I said to them, ‘All three of us are in the office of the Jacksonville team, and they’ve offered Bill and me contracts,'’’ Fernandez said.

“What?” Keating and Stanfill said.

“We’re going to call Joe Robbie and say he has a chance to keep us with a good offer,” Fernandez said.

That’s how they bluffed their way to being the NFL’s first defensive linemen to earn $100,000. Now such money, like such stories, are part of yesteryear. Fernandez became an account executive in Broward after football, then retired to rural Georgia. But he never quit being that rookie from west of the Mississippi who stood on the practice sideline when line coach Les Bingham shouted they needed someone in there.

Fernandez ran on the field for the first time.

“Let’s see what you can do, Mexican,’’ Bingham said.

He did well enough to be voted the teams’ best defensive lineman for the next six seasons. And well enough for everyone to know he wasn’t Mexican. And that he didn’t speak Spanish, not even the word it hurts to write today.

Adios, Manny.

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